In the city of Lodz, groups of soldiers shuttled back and forth through the streets, bringing a depressing and tense atmosphere to the war-torn city.
The empty trenches that were originally dug in the city were now filled with soldiers who had been withdrawn from the front line. Viewed from a height, the trenches temporarily set up between the streets cut the originally smooth city avenues into one piece.
Blocks are independent grids.
Some grids are smaller, with only a dozen or so soldiers in them. Some grids are larger, and may even be filled with a company of soldiers.
A gray building in the city center temporarily served as the headquarters of the 30th Division, with endless bandaged soldiers spread out around it. Since this is the location of the 30th Division headquarters and the last line of defense, they
The division commander, Hans von Fremanred, decided to gather all the active wounded in the division here for a last-ditch effort.
There was a commotion in various positions. The remaining soldiers of the 30th Division were running back and forth between the streets, transporting ammunition boxes and dry food bags. Many soldiers with better marksmanship were arranged in buildings in Rhodes city.
By the window, he was holding a Mauser 98k rifle with a scope mounted on it, acting as a quasi-sniper in street battles.
In the previous defensive battles, many officers had been killed under the concentrated artillery fire of the Polish army. Many low-level officers, even non-commissioned officers, were temporarily appointed as commanders in the trenches of the streets. The surviving senior officers were in twos and threes.
They gathered together and discussed how to deploy defense gradients and deploy firepower in the dozen or so areas divided into the city.
Due to the previous defensive battle, the 30th Division's current strength is seriously insufficient. Hans assigned the remaining troops to five newly established battalion-level temporary headquarters to facilitate decentralized management. However, these five temporary headquarters said they needed to command
, is not an ordinary battalion, but is divided into squads and platoons as units, scattered and deployed on each street. It can be said that the difficulty of commanding the temporary headquarters is actually quite complex and difficult, and the battle
Later, it became almost impossible to effectively command the troops everywhere.
At this moment, both officers and soldiers were desperately strengthening the simple defense lines in the city. Even many large furniture such as tables and cabinets left behind from empty buildings were placed by the Germans in the trenches.
In front, it is used to block a group of enemy troops rushing forward, so as to give time to fix the bayonet and start the next step of hand-to-hand combat.
Although bayonet decisive battles are rare on European battlefields most of the time, this does not mean that European armies will not use hand-to-hand tactics!
In fact, the bayonet fighting training of the German 30th Division is quite outstanding among its peers. As the German head of state, Reinhard even visited the bayonet fighting skills of the 30th Division before this battle and issued
300 M1908 parade bayonets equipped with Mauser 98 rifles were given to the division headquarters of the 30th Division. This 430 mm long bayonet is definitely a good thing in hand-to-hand combat.
When Major General Hans distributed these bayonets to the soldiers in the trenches, he also lamented that it was fortunate that the head of state had rewarded these bayonets, which could be used in this platoon. As everyone knows, the situation the 30th Division is encountering now is Reinha
Te has long known that, but because he wanted his crony Manstein to take this opportunity to plan a brilliant response plan to establish his prestige like in history, he deliberately did not point it out to anyone.
.
It is a pity that Major General Hans and the officers and soldiers of the 30th Division were being used by Manstein as a bait to attract the Polish High Command without knowing it. It seemed that a disabled person could be taken immediately.
The German infantry division under the command was too tempting for the Polish command. Because only by capturing the 30th Division, it could threaten the rear of the attacking German 8th Army, thereby forcing the German 8th Army to
Do not stop the offensive, turn around and fight again with Poland's carefully assembled counterattack force.
In order to plan this counterattack, the Polish High Command, under the advice of French Major General Berlant, took great risks and deployed 9 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry brigades, and 10 cavalry brigades from other areas on the Western Front.
A newly formed division.
According to Berlant's idea, this counterattack corps, which contains all the remaining essence of the Polish army, can be used to carry out a large-scale counterattack in the Vistula meander, changing the Polish army's passive position since the beginning of the war on the Western Front.
fate. And advance to the south bank of the Vistula River through counter-assault, opening a way for the defeated Polish army there to retreat to Warsaw, allowing them to retrain in Warsaw before re-entering the battlefield.
Everything was so reasonable, but at the breakthrough point carefully chosen by Berante, in the Lodz area where the German 30th Division was located, an unexpected situation occurred.
A division of German infantry, under the successive attacks of a Polish group army and covered by the firepower of 9 Polish artillery regiments, actually endured for 48 hours!
How can this be?!
When Berlant received the Polish battle report the next afternoon, he was so surprised that he was speechless for a long time. After two days of fighting, the elite force of a Polish group army could only be snatched from the hands of one German division.
A forward main position and a covering position with troops evacuated were established. This is completely inconsistent with military common sense!
Berlant believed that even if a senior military teacher from France's most famous military academy was called in to analyze it, he would not be able to tell the full story of such a battle.
If one division can withstand the all-out attack of a group army, then why did his commander, Marshal Pétain, the famous French Marshal today, need to mobilize the same number of people as the Germans in the Battle of Verdun in the last world war?
A large French army came to resist, but in the end they barely managed to win a narrow victory?
Did the Germans get reinforcements? No, that's impossible. The breakthrough point in Lodz was found after a long period of research by Berante's French officers. They chose this place as a counterattack position, and the Polish High Command also repeatedly praised it.
At that time, what they thought was that the German military strength in Lodz would not exceed one division, and there would be almost no large reinforcements within a hundred miles.
And according to reports from the frontline troops, they have discovered a large number of dead medical soldiers on the newly occupied German forward positions. These medical troops wearing red cross armbands are not holding medicine boxes, but real guns and live ammunition!
From this point of view, the German division stationed in Lodz should have reached the point where it had no troops to mobilize, and had to arm the health battalions and send them to the front line. From this point of view, it seems that the Germans were more likely to get
They looked like reinforcements. Otherwise, they wouldn't have fought so hard and even brought out the most precious health battalion.
After preliminary statistics, Berlant estimated that the German division in Rhodes should have a casualty rate of 50%, right? Based on Berlant's knowledge, this German division can persist until now.