Chapter 998 Deliberately Showing Weakness

In the early morning of April 21, 1944, the sounds of gunfire, the roar of tank motors, and the shouts of "Ula! Ula!" that had been heard for many days on the Kalinin-Tver battlefield north of Moscow suddenly disappeared without a trace. No trace, as if it had never appeared. Except for sporadic exchanges of fire between the front lines and scouts of both sides, the battlefield was filled with tranquility between battles.

The Soviet Red Army's offensive has stopped!

However, all senior coalition officers on the battlefield knew that the fighting near Moscow was not over, and had not even really begun. The fierce fighting from April 5th to 21st was just the prelude to the Battle of Moscow.

"The Soviet Union stopped fighting? Is it because of the attack of Army Group Center?"

On the morning of the 21st, Marshal Hessmann, Chief of the General Staff of the German Wehrmacht, was finally convinced that the Soviet army on the Kalinin-Tver battlefield had stopped attacking. He asked Marshal Guderian, the first munitions director: "Can you confirm that the Soviet army is retreating across the board?"

If the Soviet army retreats across the board, then the German Army Group Northern should immediately launch a counterattack to prevent the Soviet Army's Northern Front Group from safely retreating to Moscow. However, if the Soviet army did not retreat across the board, the German Army Group North had better lie down and not move, lest the Soviets would be frightened and dare not engage in a decisive tank battle with the German army in the west of Moscow.

If those JS-2s and T-34/85s all retreat to Moscow, Olga's "old white men" and "new white men" will suffer - because Hersman is still thinking about getting it done. After the Soviet Union had a fight with the United States, he was unwilling to allow the German army to suffer too many casualties on the Soviet-German battlefield, otherwise the people's willingness to support the war would be significantly reduced. Therefore, Hessman planned to leave a strong city like Moscow to the White Army to deal with.

And the combat effectiveness of the White Army is far inferior to that of the German army. If the strength of the Moscow garrison is too strong, the possibility of the White Army's defeat in the attack still exists...

Therefore, the current battle outside Moscow is actually quite difficult to fight.

"It's not certain yet, the reconnaissance plane has not found anything." Guderian also had the same idea as Hessman, and both hoped to consume the strength of the Soviet army as much as possible in the peripheral operations of Moscow. He said to Hessman: "And cut off The Soviet troops on the Red October Railway showed no signs of retreat... They seemed to be building fortifications."

"Building fortifications?" Hessmann was puzzled. "Do they want to continue to surround Paulus's army?"

"This is impossible," Guderian said. "In fact, Paulus was not surrounded...Borovitch east of the Red October railway line is still in our hands. I think the purpose of the Soviet army is just to force Paulus to The group retreated north so that most of its forces could be concentrated on the defense of Moscow."

Guderian guessed the Soviet army's intention at once - it was actually not difficult to guess. Everyone wanted to fight the annihilation battle, but what could be done if they couldn't win? Being able to push back the German northern front is always beneficial to the defense of Moscow.

"But they didn't achieve their goal." Hersman pressed his hand on the edge of the map table. "They have... given up now?"

"It is possible." Guderian said, "The ultimate goal of the Soviet army is not to fight us in the Kalinin-Tver area. If it cannot achieve the goal of forcing our army to retreat at a lower cost, it is also possible to give up. "

"Then why are they still stuck on the Red October Railway?" Hersman pointed to a red circle on the Red October Railway - there was about a Soviet division-level battle group there. "They could evacuate last night, why didn't they leave?"

Guderian shrugged, he didn't quite understand.

If the Soviet troops stuck on the Red October Railway retreated, Guderian would immediately judge that the Soviet counterattack north of Moscow had ended.

But the Soviet army did not do this. Not only did the Soviet troops on the Red October Railway not withdraw, they also did not withdraw in Valde, Andreapol, Toropets, Kuvshinovo, Tornok, Liku In Slavl and other places, the Red Army showed no signs of withdrawing.

The Soviet army seemed to have switched to defense on the spot after stopping the attack, forming a semicircular front. Although such a front did not encircle the Paulus Cluster of the coalition forces, it was very uncomfortable for Paulus. If it was not opened up, the Paulus Cluster and the German Army Group North would not be able to attack the north of Moscow freely. .

Maybe this is the purpose of the Soviet high command?

"May Day Town should be attacked," Guderian thought for a long time and said to Hersman, "but it cannot be defeated, otherwise it will scare the Soviets."

"A deliberate show of weakness?" Hersman asked.

"Yes." Guderian said, "I studied the battle reports and loss exchange rate statistics from April 5 to the present, and found that the advantage of armored troops over infantry is weakening. Not only can our infantry be able to repel the Soviet Union's troops more easily, A tank group attack and even a counterattack by our tank group have about a 75% chance of being repulsed by the Soviet infantry defense."

The changes in the battlefield situation discovered by the famous Soviet generals were also noticed by some on the German side.

"I believe that the Soviet command has also discovered this problem." Guderian said, "They now let the infantry deploy in Wuyi Town because they are confident in the infantry's anti-tank capabilities. And we can strengthen their confidence. , so that the retreat of the Soviet Northern Front Group may be delayed.”

"Okay," Hersman continued to follow Guderian's advice as usual (he was Guderian), but he still made an additional suggestion, "Let the Air Force suspend air strikes on the industrial centers in the Volga-Urals region and concentrate on bombing roads, bridges, and transportation hubs in the Soviet-controlled areas around Moscow to paralyze the mobility of the Soviet tank clusters."

The air strikes on the Volga-Urals industrial area began as early as the outbreak of the World Revolution in 1942. However, at that time, German planes only carried out harassment bombing, not real strategic bombing.

It was not until the autumn of 1943, after the White Russians basically controlled the Petrograd Oblast, that the German Air Force began to station a large number of airports in the Petrograd Oblast (all of which were former Soviet military airports, with a large number and good facilities), and the Volga-Urals Industrial Zone also entered the "1,000-kilometer combat radius" of the German Air Force, and the bombing really began.

And now, Hersman is ready to use the planes that bombed the Volga-Urals Industrial Zone to destroy the Soviet transportation lines around Moscow.

…

Ivan Vasilyevich Panfilov, the commander of the 8th Guards Infantry Division of the Red Army, who was old and had a mustache similar to Hitler's, was riding a Kazakh horse and patrolling the defensive positions.

His 14,000 Kazakh soldiers had not experienced any real hard fighting in the past ten days of fighting. Therefore, they were the fresh troops in the 7th Guards Tank Army, so on the night of April 20, they were transferred to a small town called "May Day Town" on the Red October Railway Line for defense.

Along with the 8th Guards Division, there was also a tank destroyer brigade assigned to the division, numbered the 28th Guards Tank Destroyer Brigade, equipped with 39 SU-57s converted from BT-7 tanks, 4 captured "Olga" tank destroyers, 1 "Leopard" reconnaissance tank and 1 "Puma" armored vehicle.

Among them, the "Olga" tank destroyer was an abandoned vehicle "picked up" on the battlefield, while the Leopard and Puma were snatched from the Poles by the "Red German" who infiltrated behind the enemy.

Because these 6 captured vehicles all had some armor-piercing shells, they became Panfilov's trump card, specifically for the Tiger tanks.

However, even with 39 SU-57s and 5 armored vehicles with armor-piercing shells, Panfilov was still very clear that his troops were about to fall into a tough battle.

According to the order of General Fezhuninsky, the 8th Guards Infantry Division must hold out in May Day Town for a week before breaking out of the forest to the west at night. However, the Kazakh soldiers who knew they were going to fall into a tough battle were still in high spirits. They started working hard on the muddy land last night. In less than 20 hours, they had renovated the originally sloppy fortifications inside and out.

Through the completely oriental faces, Major General Panfilov, who is a Russian (he was born near Moscow), saw a determination to defend the Soviet motherland that was completely different from that of many Russians!

Admittedly, the collectivization movement in Kazakhstan that began in 1932 also hurt many people. Hundreds of thousands of people starved to death, and 1.5 million people were exiled for resisting collectivization.

But compared to the more brutal Tsarist Russia, the Kazakhs still prefer to live in the Soviet Union. After all, the painful collectivization movement is over, and the Kazakhs are now the masters of the Soviet motherland, just like the Russians. But if Tsarist Russia is completely restored, then the Kazakhs will immediately become lowly inferiors.

Because Empress Olga is Russia's little mother and the protector of the Eastern Orthodox Church... Even the loyal GCist Panfilov cannot deny this in his heart.

Empress Olga's position won her the loyalty of many Russians and Cossacks (Cossacks are not a nation, they were considered Russians in the Tsarist era). She established a regime in a very short time and had a huge army, turning the Soviet-German War into a de facto second Soviet-Russian civil war.

However, due to the same "Russia first" position, Olga also had no appeal to non-Russian people in the Soviet Union - except for Orthodox Russians, there would be no one else in the Soviet Union who regarded a tsar as a liberator!

The firm opposition to the issue of Tsarist Russia is probably the reason why General Fezuninsky now gave the most difficult and dangerous blocking mission to the 8th Guards Infantry Division, an infantry division mainly composed of Kazakhs?

Just thinking about this, the sound of the air defense alarm suddenly sounded in Panfilov's ears, and the German air raid began!

Since the muddy roads affected the deployment of the German and French heavy artillery groups, the Panfilov Division first encountered not an overwhelming bombardment, but a large attack aircraft group consisting of dozens of Fw-190F and Fw-190G series fighter-bombers and Hs-129 anti-tank attack aircraft.

In addition, there were dozens of Fokker Zero D fighters and Fw-190A series fighters circling in the surrounding airspace, and their mission was to shoot down any Soviet Red Air Force fighters that dared to approach the battlefield.