The collapse of the Soviet-German war plunged the Soviet Supreme Command into shock and chaos.
Stalin really did not expect that the war he started in a hurry would usher in such a disastrous defeat today.
Looking at it now, it seems that the Soviet Union's war of outward expansion will basically develop into an unsatisfactory end - it seems that it has not achieved its strategic goals against Finland, Poland, and now Germany.
Under such circumstances, it is not so surprising that the challenge to Germany failed this time.
Many people even guessed that it would fail. After all, such an ill-prepared attack would be difficult to succeed. However, no one really guessed that the failure would be so disastrous.
Until now, although the frontline army headquarters have not calculated the specific losses and reported them to the Soviet Supreme Command.
But even so, the roughly summarized loss reports were enough to make Stalin tremble. For example, the Soviet Air Force lost more than 6,300 aircraft after the war began!
This number is not a complete statistical figure, because the German Air Force statistics indicate that it has destroyed more than 7,500 Soviet aircraft.
Although it is not certain how many aircraft were lost, it is certain that the front line lost air superiority.
The Soviet army had to fight under conditions without air superiority. Under this situation, both the attack that Stalin hoped for and the retreat that the frontline commanders expected have become extremely difficult.
The current situation is that the Soviet offensive across the board has completely stalled, and no front army is capable of continuing to advance.
On the other hand, the Allied Powers, the retreating Army Group North and the Finnish army are preparing to capture Leningrad. Bock's Army Group Center is leading the powerful Italian and Spanish expeditionary forces to seize the south of Minsk and Rundstedt on both wings.
Army Group, Antonescu's Romanian army is advancing in coordination with the main force of the SS led by Model, and is joining forces with the German Wehrmacht on the southern front to prepare for an encirclement battle outside Kiev.
At this time, the situation within the Allied Powers was already very good.
Marshal Lebu of Army Group North has made preparations to join forces with the Finnish army on the outskirts of Leningrad and surround this important Soviet town.
Marshal Bock of Army Group Center was busy coordinating Army Group North's efforts to rein in the enemy, and requested Army Group North to send a German force southward to cooperate with Army Group Center to encircle and suppress the Soviet troops in Belarus.
It can be said that Marshal Lundstedt of Army Group South will soon become the commander-in-chief of the "Universal Brand" joint force.
According to the plan put forward by Rundstadt's old subordinate Manstein, Army Group South will apply to Army Group Center to borrow troops, and all Spanish and Italian mobile units in Army Group Center will be transferred southward, together with Army Group South.
Complete a huge siege and annihilation campaign in Kiev.
Within Army Group South, hundreds of thousands of Romanian troops were already in front-line combat, joining forces with the German army to attack the Soviet troops dominated by the Southwest Front.
Further back, the two infantry divisions provided by Yugoslavia and the two infantry divisions provided by Greece have also arrived at their scheduled positions, ready to take over the occupied areas left by the German and Romanian troops, freeing up garrison troops for the front line.
.
Bulgaria had promised to send a division to the Soviet Union from the beginning, but because they had not yet resolved the logistics fleet arrangements for this division, and the fuel and vehicles for transporting vehicles had not yet been prepared, the Bulgarian division would be in place later.
After all, the German logistics department already has enough work on its own.
In addition to arranging the transportation and supplies of German equipment and supplies, they also had to transport some artillery captured from France to the front line.
Under the leadership of Reinhardt, German artillery research and development focused on maneuverability early on, so the caliber was somewhat small.
But French artillery is different. In this era, if you want to produce artillery with satisfactory caliber on the Soviet battlefield, you have to use a large number of artillery produced and equipped by the French army. Fortunately, when France surrendered, these artillery were already called out for offset
War reparations, so all the German logistics department needs to do is transportation.
Of course, just transportation is a great test of the scheduling and scheduling skills of German logistics personnel.
This is just the Eastern Front. On the Western Front, a large amount of strategic materials and various equipment seized from the United Kingdom are also being busily transported to the European continent.
As for the logistics needs of the allies, they have to be solved by themselves. Prepare enough logistics transport vehicles, equipped with enough fuel for one month, and arrive at the front line (the rest of the fuel is also gradually transported from the allies to the German Eastern Front, but
Can get part of the additional supplies from the German Petroleum Ministry.)
Therefore, Bulgaria, which is poor in logistics, was a little slow in preparation. However, the Bulgarian Ministry of Defense also made a guarantee that within two weeks, an infantry division of the Bulgarian Expeditionary Force, including its logistics and transportation team, would
We must start from the Balkans and rush to the front line.
All the member states of the League of Soviet Socialist Groups are already on the right track, which means that the member states of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are in trouble.
The most uncomfortable thing was of course Stalin himself in Russia, in the Kremlin in Moscow.
"Zhukov is incompetent! Pavlov is stupid! Can't one of them command the armored forces in a more decent manner like a German tank commander?" Stalin sat in his seat and looked at his men.
, asked with a frown.
Zhukov and Pavlov were both generals promoted by Stalin, and their role was to replace Tukhachevsky.
Due to the Great Purge, there was a hiatus in the Soviet Union's senior command, especially the large-scale mechanized warfare officer faction originally headed by Tukhachevsky, which was basically eliminated along with Tukhachevsky.
Therefore, Zhukov and Pavlov, two new experts in mechanized combat theory, joined the core command circle of the Soviet military as rising stars.
As a result, after the Soviet-German war, one of the two men stressed the need to retreat all day long, and the other shouted all day long that he wanted to attack.
Zhukov, who called for retreat, has now been put on the train to Siberia by Stalin. Pavlov, who called for attack... Now Stalin can't even find anyone at all, and is in a state of out of contact.
It now seems that even if he had listened to Zhukov, stopped the meaningless offensive, and tightened the defense line a little, he would not have been so completely suppressed by the Allied forces...