Chapter 680: Scare Stalin

"Marshal Imperial, where has our 18th Army advanced?"

In today's headquarters conference room, Hitler rarely got there first. When Hessmann walked in, he immediately asked about the war in Leningrad.

"Leader, the leading troops of the 1st SS Division and the Russian Guards have arrived near the city of Luga, which is still 30 kilometers away from Luga." Hersman replied, "Luga is the southern gate of Leningrad, located in Luga. Once captured by us, on the banks of the Ka River, between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ilmen, we can turn northeast, attack Chudovo, cut off the August railway line from Leningrad to Moscow, and encircle Leningrad from the east. Le. I estimate that this goal can be completed within 10 days.”

Leningrad is a huge city, with hundreds of thousands of garrison guards and hundreds of thousands of mobilizable militiamen. If you want to capture such a city, you usually have to encircle it first. Only under siege can the defenders' strength be gradually depleted through attacks, and finally captured.

If the siege cannot be achieved, the situation will become similar to that of Warsaw today. Although the Soviet Red Army has captured more than half of the urban area, it continues to receive reinforcements due to the total energy resources of the German 6th Army guarding Warsaw. As a result, the Battle of Warsaw turned into a tug-of-war that continued to bleed the Soviet Union. It lasted for nearly two months and resulted in nearly 400,000 Red Army soldiers being killed, missing, or seriously injured. In addition, nearly 2 million people were piled on the Polish battlefield east of Warsaw. It seems a bit like the division veterans are tired.

Therefore, if the German army does not want to make the same mistake in Leningrad, it should first complete the siege and then launch a siege.

To achieve encirclement, the first step is to cut off the communication between Leningrad and Moscow. The goal can be achieved by occupying Luga, Chudovo, Novgorod and other places. Since it was the German 18th Army attacking Leningrad from the south, its combat effectiveness was still very considerable, so this goal was not difficult to achieve.

After successfully cutting off the communication between Leningrad and Moscow, cutting off the communication between Leningrad and Murmansk, Molotovsk and other places in the north is the key to completing the encirclement. It is obviously difficult to achieve this goal by relying solely on Finland's Southeast Army and Karelian Army.

"Marshal Reich, are there any signs that the Soviets are increasing their troops in Leningrad now?" Hitler asked.

"No," Hersman shook his head, "There is currently no information in this regard."

Soviet intelligence is not easy to obtain, and Comrade Beria's NKVD is not transparent. Therefore, Hessmann does not know much about the situation of Soviet troop mobilization and can only draw conclusions through analysis of air force reconnaissance and bits of intelligence transmitted from Leningrad.

"However, there is general mobilization in the city of Leningrad. The Soviet People's Commissar of Defense Voroshilov is likely to have arrived there and assumed the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Northwest." The information Hersman said came from the apparently neutral Swedish Embassy. I found out about it from the Consulate General in Leningrad.

He sat down in his seat and continued: "Voroshilov mobilized millions of people to build fortifications outside the city of Leningrad, and also summoned a large number of militia battalions... These situations are in line with what we expected before. Almost the same.

It is estimated that Stalin has not yet dispatched a large number of troops from Belarus and Ukraine to reinforce Leningrad. "

"Stalin will probably not send troops from Belarus," Hitler said with his eyebrows twisted, "unless there is a real possibility that Leningrad will be captured by us... Reichsmarschall, is it possible for us to capture it?"

Stalin and the High Command of the Red Army were not fools. Of course they knew that the reserve front troops currently in Belarus could not be easily mobilized, otherwise the Western Front that broke into Poland might lose its way out.

Directly withdrawing the Western Front from the Polish front would not only have too great a negative political impact - it would be equivalent to admitting that the world revolution had suffered a major setback. Moreover, the negative impact on the military is also great, because once the Soviet Red Army retreats from Poland, Germany will be able to deploy troops from the Eastern Front to the island of Ireland. Once the island of Ireland is controlled by Germany, the British mainland will be completely blocked. , is very likely to choose to compromise with Germany.

Once the United Kingdom compromises, the Soviet Union will face an attack from the entire Europe (excluding Soviet territory)!

Therefore, Stalin would rather maintain the Polish battlefield as a big bleeding point and fight a war of attrition with the Germans in Warsaw. As for the 2 million mechanized Red Army in combat status, it is almost impossible to eat them in one bite. Moreover, there are a large number of reserve front armies and southwestern front army behind them. The total strength of the three front armies arranged in a Z-shaped formation is likely to be more than 4 million. If their forces cannot be dispersed, it will be very difficult to defeat and surround a large part of them.

Leningrad seems to be the most likely direction to attract the forces of these three fronts.

"Of course there is a possibility," Hersman said calmly. "If we attack by force at all costs, we can defeat Leningrad, but that will result in us not having enough troops to defeat or annihilate the Soviet Union's Western Front."

"Then what should we do?" Hitler frowned.

"We are going to give Stalin a hard blow and let him see the possibility of Leningrad being surrounded."

Hessman paused before continuing: "The General Staff plans to use the European Combined Fleet's Baltic Squadron and airborne troops to launch a landing and airborne operation in the Gulf of Finland."

"Landing and airborne?" Hitler asked, "Where is the target?"

In "Blue Plan No. 3", there is a plan to conduct landing/airdrop operations somewhere in the Gulf of Finland, but there are many locations in advance.

"Kronstadt." Hersman said a surprising place name.

"What? Kronstadt? Is it that... the naval fortress guarding the gate of Leningrad?"

"Yes! That's it!" Hersman said, "As long as we capture it, Stalin will definitely believe that our goal is Leningrad."

The Kronstadt naval fortress is actually part of Leningrad. Once it is captured by the German army, the siege of Leningrad will begin. However, the Kronstadt naval fortress is theoretically the most heavily defended place in the entire Leningrad city. Since the time of Peter the Great, Kotlin Island, where Kronstadt is located, has been built as the foundation of the Russian Navy. Not only are there a large number of coastal defense artillery batteries on Kotlin Island, but there are also many artillery batteries built on artificial islands around the island. It is very easy to reclaim land in the Gulf of Finland. Just drag the reclamation materials to the designated location during the ice season.

In addition, Kotlin Island is at the bottom of a very narrow bay. The terrain is a bit like a wine bottle. The entrance is only 20 kilometers wide and is completely blocked by coastal artillery on both sides. Therefore, it is difficult for the invading fleet to break into this "wine bottle" to capture the Kronstadt Fortress on Kotlin Island.

Moreover, the current Kronstadt Fortress does not seem to have much value for occupation. It was originally the base camp of the Soviet Red Navy's Baltic Fleet, and it has some strategic value. But the main ships of the Baltic Fleet went to Molotovsk (Severodvinsk) to join the Northern Fleet before the war.

So Kronstadt is now an empty shell. It is useless to capture it, and it is impossible to use it as a springboard to attack the urban area of ​​Leningrad. Because Kronstadt's port facilities are all on the east side of Kotlin Island, close to Peterhof (belonging to Leningrad) and Lomonosov, the 152mm howitzers deployed in those two places can block the port, making it impossible for the German army to transport a large amount of supplies and troops into Kronstadt.

Finally, the sea area where Kronstadt is located will freeze in winter, and then the Red Army in Leningrad can counterattack the Kronstadt Fortress from the ice. Considering that the port of the fortress cannot be used, it can only use the beachhead (there is a beachhead that can be landed on the west side of Kotlin Island) for supplies. Therefore, even if the German army captured the fortress, it would be difficult to resist the counterattack of the Soviet mechanized forces.

Therefore, the military significance of capturing the Kronstadt Fortress was very limited. Its only function was probably to scare Stalin, an amateur. The Germans even took down a strong fortress like Kronstadt, which showed that they were determined to let Empress Olga ascend the throne in Petrograd.

"Can we really capture the Kronstadt Fortress?" Hitler seemed to lack confidence in the supermen of Germany.

"Of course," Hersman said with an unusually sure tone, "we can definitely capture it, because we have a means of attacking by surprise, which we learned from the Japanese."

"Japanese?"

"Yes, they have a very unique naval tank tactic." Hersman said, "Using submarines to transport amphibious tanks for surprise attacks. In the Battle of Oahu, the Japanese used this method to carry out surprise attacks. Now we plan to use this method to attack Kronstadt. As long as our amphibious tanks can seize a beachhead on Kotlin Island, the airborne troops can quickly participate in the battle to capture the island."

It turned out that the idea of ​​using submarines to transport tanks for surprise attacks was also learned by the Germans, but it was not used in the battle to land on the island of Ireland, because the specially developed Type 3P amphibious tank had not yet been produced at that time. Moreover, there were not many U-boats that had completed the modification of carrying tanks at that time, and it was impossible to complete this brain-opening surprise attack mission.

However, the elites of the German General Staff had already noticed the wonderful combination of "submarine + tank", so some people proposed the possibility of using this method in the Blue Plan to capture the Kronstadt Fortress or land on the Leningrad beach.