In fact, the Thunderstorm Plan followed the Soviet Union's thinking and was nothing more than a routine.
The northern route besieged Königsberg, the southern route crossed the Carpathian Mountains and entered the Danube Plain, and the middle route broke through the Vistula River and headed straight for Berlin.
In fact, Stalin's attitude was exactly the same as Reinhardt's. Both regarded the non-aggression pact as a tool to cover their war plans. Both leaders had decided that once the time was right for an attack, they would attack without hesitation.
Break the treaty.
However, this time Stalin took action before Reinhardt!
As the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin not only had the same ambition to swallow up the entire Europe as Reinhardt, but also had the same confidence in the Soviet combat capabilities of the Soviet Union as the Soviet Union's bloated and inefficient system.
, and also extremely confident.
At the beginning, Stalin did not believe that the German army could penetrate the Maginot Line, which was said to be insurmountable, during the French campaign. However, the German army's lightning operations surprised him. He completely defeated the French army, the number one in Europe, and the Germans
It only took less than 6 weeks!
In this way, the Soviet Union's previous strategies would no longer apply.
Stalin and his think tanks originally thought that the German army would be trapped by the insurmountable Maginot Line, while the Soviet army would seize the opportunity and launch a massive attack on eastern Germany, seize the German army's weak links, and occupy Poland and Slovakia.
, the Czech Republic, took advantage of the victory and headed straight to Berlin.
Then, meet up with the grateful British and French allies somewhere on the Elbe River—or, if you're lucky, on the banks of the Rhine.
In this way, half of Europe will be under the control of the Soviet Union, and the peaceful revolution created by the Soviet Red Army with bayonets will not be far away.
However, Stalin's plan had just begun, and the war on the other side was over.
Stalin was not a fool. After his calculation failed again, he was determined not to make the same mistake again.
This time, Germany's massive landing on the British Isles was the second opportunity the Soviet Union had been waiting for.
On the one hand, the German army is now at its peak and its combat effectiveness is at its peak. Except for the isolated island of Britain, there is no decent opponent on the entire battlefield.
In other words, if the Soviet Union does not seize this opportunity and send troops immediately, there will be no chance for Germany to be attacked from both sides in the future, and there will be no teammates to participate in the attack.
Everyone knows that fighting on two fronts is a taboo for military strategists. It is the best choice for the Soviet Union to plunge Germany's neighbors into the quagmire of a war with enemies on both sides. When the French tried their best, they missed an opportunity. Now it is the British's turn to fight on Germany's western front
Try your best, Stalin will never be stupid enough to let the German Eastern Front continue to be peaceful!
On the other hand, Stalin and even most of his cronies were extremely confident in the Soviet army's combat effectiveness.
Stalin did not think that the strength of the Red Army was far inferior to that of Germany. On the contrary, he believed that the quality of the Red Army was at least as good as that of the German army, and the size of the Red Army was significantly stronger than that of the German army. Therefore, Stalin, who had a heavy army at his disposal, was confident in this surprise attack.
He felt that he had more planes, tanks, artillery, and more soldiers than Reinhardt. Even if Sud and Germany fought one-on-one, he would have a great chance of winning.
In addition, the German army was still being restrained by the British army on the Western Front. At this time, the Soviet army went all out and seemed to have won a sure victory.
In order to be able to launch a powerful attack at any time, the Soviet army deployed its forces very close to the border, which obviously lacked depth and did not even conform to the deployment principle of the depth echelon configuration of strategic defense. Zhukov once advised Stalin that once the German army launched an attack first, the Soviet army would now
The deployment of troops will lead to a large number of troops being surrounded and annihilated by the German army on the border.
However, Stalin stubbornly refused Zhukov's suggestion to deploy troops behind the scenes. His stubborn decision was to ensure that the frontline troops were saturated, so as to deal the most fatal first blow to the German army.
Fortunately, Stalin made the right bet this time. Because the German army did not attack the Soviet Union first, invisibly, a large number of Soviet troops on the border escaped the fate of being surrounded and annihilated. They even really waited for the opportunity to attack.
!
Stalin's luck was naturally Reinhard's misfortune.
Sadly, after Manstein clearly reminded that the Soviet army's deployment on the border was not purely for defense, but a deployment that could attack at any time, Reinhardt still had a gambler's mentality and launched his plan.
British war.
I can’t help but Reinhardt doesn’t gamble!
He has won so many times, and now he only needs to win one from Churchill to rest assured about the fate of the Third Reich!
But this time, Reinhardt really underestimated Stalin's IQ and persistence. In other words, Reinhardt, who was already sitting at the gambling table, could no longer care about so much and wanted to win like a gambler who got jealous.
Like Hitler who launched Barbarossa, he was already helpless!
Historically, Hitler lost his main naval force in Norway, let go of the British troops at Dunkirk, and failed to win the air battle over Britain. Therefore, at that time, he could only choose to blitz the Soviet Union and win a high-risk victory.
Hitler was not stupid, but at that time, he did not have any favorable background factors to leave the Soviet Union alone and attack Britain first.
Therefore, he could only choose to attack the Soviet Union first.
But now, Reinhard has these factors, and he has stronger navy, land and air forces than in history. Therefore, for him, attacking Britain first is the most appropriate choice now.
After all, he knows better than anyone how dangerous Britain, the time bomb left behind the Third Reich, is!
However, it is a pity that Stalin was not stupid. After missing the opportunity to intervene in the German-French War like in history, he intervened in the current Anglo-German War with determination and timely.
But this intervention was fatal to Germany!
Therefore, any leader in history will not be an idiot who can be complained about by any editor on the Internet.
The seemingly flawed choices made by leaders of various countries during World War II were basically the best options at the time.
Don't say why Hitler was too stupid to take Britain first, and don't blame Stalin for why he was too stupid to know how to deploy enough deep troops. Judging from the situation they were in, many things summarized by later generations are biased.
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Of course, there is one exception among the leaders of various countries, and that is the Italian leader Mussolini, who is still lying on the hospital bed and is not yet fully conscious. Many of the decisions he made... are 100% pure stupidity!
And now, on the German Eastern Front.
A country with twice as many tanks as the German troops stationed in Poland, 10,000 more cannons than the German army, 10 times more fighter planes than the German army, and nearly twice as many troops as the German army on the Eastern Front that had not yet been assembled, declared war on the Third Reich!
