When Zhang Chengzhu and Li Jinlong walked into the room, they saw An Yi standing in front of a map with red eyes and a sad look on his face. They couldn't help but look at each other in surprise.
An Yi was reminded by Yang Fei who was explaining the battle report. He looked back and greeted quickly: "Brother, second brother, you are here..." Then he pointed to the map with a choked voice:
"In the early hours of this morning, Stalingrad fell. My teachers at Whampoa, Lyushenkov, Hulin and Vasily... they and the city perished, and the German army found their bodies. The latest German newspaper
Relevant picture news has been published on the Internet..."
Only then did Zhang Chengzhu and Li Jinlong understand what was going on. Together they turned their attention to the large map of the Soviet Union and listened to Yang Fei's battle report.
In early April, after eliminating the threat of Soviet guerrillas in Ukraine and Belarus, the German Army Group South and the Caucasus Group concentrated a total of fifty-eight divisions, three thousand tanks and armored fighting vehicles, and twenty-five thousand artillery and mortars.
Artillery fire and more than 3,200 combat aircraft launched an attack on the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River.
The Soviet side that resisted the attack on this road was the Bryansk Front Army, the Southwest Front Army and the Southern Front Army, under the unified command of Marshal Lyushenkov. The number of troops was roughly the same as that of the German army, but the equipment of officers and soldiers, tanks, artillery and aviation were obviously at a disadvantage.
In accordance with the planned plan, the German army launched fierce attacks in the Kursk area, the middle and lower reaches of the Don River, and the Caspian estuary area of the Volga River.
The Soviet army, which was attacked by a powerful German tank and armored vehicle group, failed to repel the German attack due to various reasons. After learning about this situation, the Soviet Supreme Command dispatched three tank corps and fighter and assault aviation units.
Strengthen the Bryansk Front and order it to carry out counterattacks to prevent the enemy from advancing towards Stalingrad.
However, due to insufficient preparation, the hastily launched counterattack did not achieve any results. Four days later, the German army broke through the Soviet defense depth of about 80 kilometers, and the Soviet army was forced to retreat to the east.
Due to the danger that the German army would advance out of the Don River and seize Voronezh and Balashov, and then attack Moscow's rear flank from the Volga hilly area, the Soviet Supreme Command transferred three armies of its general reserves to the Don River area.
In order to strengthen the defense, at the same time, the Fifth Tank Army carried out a counterattack from Tula in the north on the flank of the German army group attacking from the Kursk area.
The Soviet counterattack, launched at the cost of heavy casualties, achieved certain results. Part of the German army began to move north to respond to the Soviet counterattack. The threat to Voronezh was somewhat reduced, but after several days of delay, the German army still
It entered Voronezh and started a fierce battle with the Soviet Bryansk Front and Don Front in the suburbs of Voronezh.
Since the Soviet artillery and aviation units were at a disadvantage, the German army quickly expanded the breakthrough to 300 kilometers and carried out a profound encirclement of the Soviet Southwest Front from the north. However, unlike the encirclement of the Soviet Southwest Front in Kiev,
When the Soviet army was in a state of encirclement, they resolutely carried out Lyushenkov's order and carried out an assault. After losing a large number of personnel and material equipment, they finally broke through the encirclement established by the German army.
But at this point, the Soviet Southern Front had to decisively choose to retreat under the pressure of the German army.
Twenty days after the German offensive was launched on the southern strategic front of the Soviet army, the entire front line had been breached to a depth of 150 to 400 kilometers, allowing the German army to launch an attack in the direction of Stalingrad at the Great Bend of the Don River.
.
The Soviet Southern Front withdrew to the other side of the lower Don River, joined the Caucasus Front that had withdrawn from the southern front, and organized solid defense in the area west of Kurmoyarskaya on the southern bank of the Don River to Astrakhan on the Volga River. The Southwest Front
The three armies it belonged to, together with the Southern Front and the Caucasus Front, were transferred to the newly formed Stalingrad Front, and Lyushenkov unified command of the Stalingrad defense operations.
Although Stalin had already seen that the German army would attack Stalingrad, he was sensitively aware that the two major combat groups in southern Germany were only launching a relatively active secondary battlefield. With the fall of Leningrad, the main German army
The battlefield will still be in the direction of Moscow. The German Central Group and the Northern Group are waiting for him to transfer his troops from the central line to the south. Therefore, Stalin did not transfer the most elite Far East Red Flag Army to Stalingrad, but asked Liu
Shenkov must rely on existing forces to defend Stalingrad, a heavy industrial center city named after the Supreme Commander of the Soviet Union.
In early May, the German army concentrated nine divisions of tanks and 500,000 motorized infantry in various vehicles to officially launch the offensive against Stalingrad.
The German commanding the Battle of Stalingrad was Marshal Manstein, who had distinguished himself in the conquest of southern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula. He first assembled heavy troops and tried to encircle and annihilate the Soviet army west of the Don River. Then two tank troops went straight to the battle.
Insert the Soviet army in the rear and form a pincer-shaped offensive at the great bend of the Don River.
Faced with the fierce German offensive, Lyushenkov did not obey Moscow's order to wait for reinforcements, commanding the Soviet army to fight and retreat, and successively lost Karachi, Sovietsky, and Upper Kurmoyar, which had no solid city defenses west of the Don River.
All the cities including Skaya retreated towards the urban area of Stalingrad. As a result, Manstein's carefully designed encirclements west of the Don River only trapped a small group of Soviet rearguard troops.
Manstein did not feel depressed when he met his opponent. He knew that the former Far Eastern Republic generals were veterans of defensive warfare, so he calmly commanded the troops and continued to move from the northwest, west, southwest, south and southeast.
, surrounded Stalingrad.
Lyushenkov mobilized his troops and transferred one of his troops to the area north of Stalingrad to continuously exert pressure on the German left wing.
What followed was a tough battle that lasted more than two months.
In mid-May, the mighty main force of the German army began to attack the city of Stalingrad. German planes bombed the city into ruins. However, it was in these ruins that the Soviet army continued to attack Stalingrad from the sewers, from the buildings, from the basements,
He rushed out from the dark places such as among the ruins and started a fierce battle with the German army.
The German troops advancing cautiously among the rubble seemed to have stung countless hornet's nests, each of which was deadly. The Soviet troops were hiding in the dark, while the German troops were in the open. The attack turned into a battle from house to house, trench to ditch.
war.
In the blink of an eye, June entered, and the German army, which had suffered heavy losses, withdrew from the ruins that they had fought so hard to capture. Planes carrying incendiary bombs and tons of heavy bombs began to bomb Stalingrad again.
Buildings fell down like building blocks, providing a new barrier for the defending Soviet troops.
Then, the German army launched a second wave of offensive, going deep into the city under the cover of the air force, and continued to fight hard.
When the Germans bombed indiscriminately, the Soviet troops hid in sewers and basements. After the German ground troops launched an attack, they quickly rushed out. Lyushenkov used every building in the city and ordered the barbed wire fence to be electrified.
Not only were landmines laid, but also remote-controlled detonation devices such as bomb bags and nails were laid. The Soviets no longer threw fragmentation grenades, but modified mortar shells and large bomb bags.
The Soviet officers and soldiers made full use of their familiarity with the city and suddenly appeared behind the German troops through the sewers. They threw the blasting tubes and bomb bags purchased from Nanhua behind the German troops, and used fake smoke bombs to direct the bombing of the German aircraft onto the German troops themselves.
.
After continuous fighting, the German army actually surpassed the Soviet army in terms of casualty ratio.
In late June, brutal fighting continued. Oil depots across the city were set on fire one after another, buildings were blasted in a targeted manner, and German companies were swallowed up by the falling buildings. The Germans also tried to enter the sewers, but were attacked by the Soviets with water.
, countless deaths.
At this time, the German Army Group Center and Army Group North, plus the servant army, totaling more than five million troops, had launched a fierce attack on Moscow. The situation in Moscow was not good either, and it was unable to send reinforcements and supplies to Stalingrad.
, with the gradual depletion of troops, Lyushenkov, who was surrounded by encirclement, became more and more difficult. The Stalingrad Front fought less and less, and could only continue to issue orders to let the Bryansk Front and the main force of the Southwest Front move closer to him as soon as possible.
However, the German army strengthened its defense on the northern front of Stalingrad. The two Soviet front armies fought hard for more than a month and only advanced the front five kilometers. Just these five kilometers, the two front armies sacrificed more than 300,000 Red Army officers and soldiers.
lives, and overall the Soviet army was at a huge disadvantage.
In early July, the German army made a breakthrough on both sides of the canyon. The troops from the south occupied the Stalingrad South Railway Station and launched a fierce attack in the direction of the Volga River. From the north, tanks and armored vehicles loaded with infantry poured into the city center and captured the horse.
Mayev Hilltop and occupies the main railway station as well as part of the nearby Red Square.
The further west you go, the slower the pace of the German offensive becomes. Every inch of land must be fought for repeatedly. The train station once changed hands fifteen times in three days. The battle for the top of the Mamayev Heights is going on all the time. The battles in the city are ongoing.
Countless bodies were piled up on every street.
On the way to the Volga River, the German army left behind those strongholds that were still resisting that would take several days to clear. When they besieged one of the barns, they faced a huge concrete building guarded by fifty Red Army soldiers.
He paid a heavy price of more than 900 people.
Due to the continuous investment of troops, the German army, which had an absolute advantage in strength, eliminated those "isolated islands" that were resisting fiercely. By July 10, the German army had occupied half of Stalingrad and controlled the south of the Sarissa River.
The focus of the battle shifted to the four major factory areas in the north of the city.
At the same time, the troops heading south to carry out counter-assaults on the German blocking positions on the northern line were also compressed back by the Germans, and joined the Soviet troops retreating from the old city of Stalingrad to jointly defend the factory area.
At this time, Manstein also summed up a lot of experience in attacking difficult situations. He concentrated all flamethrowers and weapons on the siege troops. The air force was mainly used to bombard the Soviet Volga River Fleet, the Soviet heavy artillery positions and docks on the east coast.
The German army dropped thousands of mines into the river on the banks of the controlled Volga River. The Soviet ships crossing the river were intensively bombed, and many ships hit mines. The German army poured a large amount of gasoline into the river, and raging fires broke out, destroying the entire river.
The river was illuminated brightly. At the same time, the German army sent landing troops to seize many islands on the Volga River, arranged for artillery to station, and used firepower to block the river channel, slowly cutting off the connection between the two sides of the Volga River.
In the blink of an eye, more than ten days passed. Lyushenkov, who had set up his headquarters at the "Red October" Steel Plant, no longer had the troops to dispatch, so he had to lead the members of the headquarters to fight with the area that supplied a quarter of the Soviet Union's supplies.
The factory area of tanks and armored vehicles coexists and dies.
The final battle took place at the headquarters building of the "Red October" steel plant. The German army paid a heavy price of more than 2,000 casualties before finally capturing it. According to German newspapers, Lyushenkov performed very bravely.
During the battle, he showed his excellent marksmanship and killed sixty-nine German soldiers. Finally, he was hit by a bullet in the chest and died.
Hu Lin and Vasily shot themselves in the underground headquarters. The entire Stalingrad Front was killed in the battle, with almost no prisoners. The level of tragedy was unprecedented since the Soviet-German war began.
At this time, the Soviet Bryansk Front and Southwest Front were still fighting fiercely with the German blocking forces on the northern line of Stalingrad. When they learned that Stalingrad had fallen, the two fronts took the initiative to break away from the battle and retreated to Saratov. Balashov arrived
The Tambov front line prevented the German army from advancing into the Volga Hills and Ural areas and outflanked Moscow from behind.
Zhang Chengzhu and Li Jinlong comforted An Yi, and An Yi wiped his eyes and said: "I have already informed my wife of the bad news, and Chu'er and Jieyun must have been with my wife by now... In addition,
I called Hitler and asked him to protect the bodies of my teachers, but I have not received a reply yet!
"With the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, the German army can free up a large number of troops for Moscow, and the situation on the Soviet-German battlefield continues to deteriorate! We must now make plans for the Soviet Union to lose Moscow. Once Germany achieves its strategic goals, it will continue to act as an Allied power.
We, as elements, will directly face the threat of millions of German troops!"
~~~~~~~~~
ps: Don’t worry, everyone, although Tianzi is publishing two books at the same time, he will never relax his quality requirements for "Iron Bones"! And during the period of charging for monthly tickets for new books, Tianzi is also working hard to make "Iron Bones" a hit!