Paulus, who was walking at the front, almost jogged into Reinhardt's office. Behind him, several staff members from the headquarters who were also Reinhardt's confidants followed closely behind.
Considering Reinhard's status and identity, his office is not too big, just a rectangular room with an area of less than one hundred square meters. It is filled with several rows of filled bookshelves, bought from the East.
Come here, high-quality porcelain as tall as a man, and several famous paintings from France.
Having become accustomed to the decorations here, Paulus did not turn his attention to the decorations. Instead, he quickly walked to Reinhard who was sitting on the chair behind the desk. He placed a document marked in red with "Urgent" in his hand and placed it on the table.
On the table.
On the chair, Reinhardt, who had already formed a long-term tacit understanding with Paulus, tacitly opened the document handed over to him without even starting a conversation.
Sure enough, as soon as he turned the first page, Reinhard smiled sadly.
The first page is a dazzling combat map. On the map, hundreds of square kilometers of traffic arteries, towns, defense lines, fortification groups, airports, and strategic locations on the eastern front are all densely marked.
Countless red and blue arrows representing the Soviet Union and Germany are criss-crossing the map, but it is not difficult to see that the density of arrows on the Soviet side is much denser and larger than that of the German army.
As expected, another bad news.
"Pah!" Reinhard rubbed his temples, simply closed the document, threw it aside, and then said to Paulus with some trouble: "I won't read it. Please select the important content and report it to me."
Bar."
Knowing that the pressure on the head of state had increased sharply recently, Paulus did not say anything more and reported directly and respectfully.
"According to the battle situation on the front line, the Soviet army mobilized more than 400,000 troops from the rear in less than a month after we started the war against Britain, and all of them were transported to the southern front of our eastern garrison." Paulus said here.
At this time, his face looked a little embarrassed, and while talking, he glanced at Reinhard who was leaning on the chair and listening.
In fact, the reason why the Soviet army was able to assemble an additional force of more than 400,000 troops in such a short period of time after receiving news of the German attack on Britain was largely due to the railway network that German engineers had rebuilt for them over the years.
.
In fact, although the first railway in the world was invented and built by the British, the Germans were the first to keenly discover the strategic value behind the railway. At that time, the famous Prussian general staff Moltke even made a famous saying: "Don't do it again.
Build forts and give me more railroads!"
Prussia, the predecessor of Germany, relied on the full use of railways to quickly defeat the arrogant French Second Empire and establish the Second German Empire. At that time, the German army even called its railway trains "
"Paris Express"!
In the last World War, the German army was able to defeat Russia, the predecessor of the Soviet Union, because of its use of the railway network.
In the early days of World War I, a military train crossed the Hohenzollern Bridge on the Rhine River in Germany almost every 10 minutes. The most important thing was that a total of 11,000 trains participated in the mobilization, but no train was delayed.
Here, the meticulous and rigorous style of the German people plays a role, and Germany's complete railway transportation foundation plays a role.
Later, after Reinhard came to power, the first major thing he did was to unify the loose domestic railway companies and establish the Deutsche Bahn Company under the control of the Rhine Consortium.
During the blitz on Poland in 1939 and the French War in 40, German railways successfully completed tasks, including transporting soldiers, evacuating residents and other large-scale transportation tasks.
After that, the German Railways accepted and adapted the Polish and French railways without much effort, because the track width standards and technical levels of European countries were relatively modern. In Poland, the Germans established the Eastern Railway, which was at the same level as the German Railways.
Established at the same level, on the Western Line, in principle the railway is still under the jurisdiction of the host country, but in Paris Germany established the Western Railway Transport Department ETRA to supervise the operation of the local railway.
There is no problem with the above points. But the problem lies in that in order to solve the problem in the future Soviet-German war, after the German army invades the Soviet Union, it will fall into a logistical crisis due to the Soviet Union's poor railway and highway system.
The Soviet Union also launched cooperation in railway and highway reconstruction.
Before the cooperation between the two parties, the most dense railway network hubs in the Soviet Union were only located in Moscow, Leningrad and Donets. On the Soviet-Polish border, there were only four double-track railways that could be used by the German army after the war.
Those are the four railways from the Neman River to Leningrad, the Bug River to Moscow via Orsha, the Bug River to Donets via Klimenkok, and the San River to Odessa.
What's worse is that these four east-west railways are really sparse in the vast western Soviet territory.
From Reinhard's point of view, both Napoleon and Hitler suffered from road problems in Russia or the Soviet Union. As a time traveler, he should set out to change this known problem.
He arranged for German engineers to replace the soft pine wood originally used in the Soviet Union with 38 kilograms per meter in accordance with German railway standards with German standard sleepers with a railway load capacity of 49 kilograms per meter.
Moreover, it also completely changed the Soviet standard of 1,440 sleepers according to the German railway standard of 1,600 sleepers per kilometer.
Finally, because German railways used screws and washers to fix rails, German engineers followed Reinhardt's request and reminded the Soviets not to use long nails to fix them directly.
Basically, more than 85% of the Soviet Union's current railway network has completely copied the German railway structure.
Now, if the German army invades the Soviet Union again, even if the Soviets destroy part of the railway, the German army will be able to quickly and efficiently restore a high-quality railway based on the original Soviet railway, which can fully connect with the German railway.
In other words, the German army had the guarantee to attack the Soviet Union.
But something unexpected happened, the Soviet Union took action first!
"My head of state, on the southernmost front, because of the huge disparity in strength, and the Soviet army concentrated its elite troops in the south, using a large number of air forces and armored forces, Commander Steve, as the deputy commander-in-chief of the SS, has already
The Guards ordered a strategic shift of 50 kilometers." Paulus continued to report to Reinhardt the consequences that the upgrade of the Soviet railway network would bring to the German army.
"Steve retreated?!" Reinhardt, who had been silent until he heard this, said with excitement and disbelief: "How could they retreat? Where is Reichenau's Sixth Army? They just deployed
On the northern flank of the SS, why not provide timely support!"
Reinhard trusted General Reichenau very much. The outside world has always called this Wehrmacht general who was the first to join the National Socialist Party "Reinhard's most loyal lackey."
Reichenau's Sixth Army was deployed on the northern flank of the SS in the hope that he would be loyal and able to support the SS in a timely manner and coordinate perfectly with Steve.
Prior to this, Steve and the general of the National Defense Forces had indeed cooperated very well with each other, and there were no signs that Reinhardt could worry about.
"General Reichenau..." Paulus looked solemn and reported slowly in a low tone: "He suffered a heart attack and unfortunately died on the front line...The current Sixth Army
, the command structure is in chaos. The Sixth Army was able to stabilize its front only because the staff worked hard..."
