Now, Timoshenko no longer avoids anything. He responded in a pessimistic tone: "Dear Comrade Leader, we have lost this battle!"
"What? Failed! You have a million troops in your hands. Do you know what failure means? Could it be that last year's tragedy will happen again?"
Timoshenko's ears are very sensitive, and his mind is also very clever. Now he can guess what kind of emotions Stalin is feeling, anxious, panic, incomprehensible, etc. In fact, Timoshenko has long been slandering him
The leader of the Soviet Union is a willful "pseudo-military expert" who doesn't understand military affairs at all. This battle should not be launched at this time. The Soviet army rushed into the attack without being fully prepared. Now the attacking side is actually on the defensive and hastily built
The defense line was again easily pierced by the German blitzkrieg, like a knife piercing a piece of paper.
Stalin's questioning also deeply stimulated Timoshenko, who made a simple and bold suggestion: "Comrade leader, I think it's time for us to retreat! In order for our main force to avoid the tragic fate of being encircled by Kiev, we must withdraw in full and continue to
Organize a defense line on the Barvinko River. If the enemy breaks through this line of defense, then we will organize a defense line on the Northern Donets River..."
Stalin shouted at the top of his lungs: "No! We must not retreat."
If Stalin's words deeply stimulated Timoshenko, didn't Timoshenko's words also deeply stimulated Stalin?
"Comrade Leader! I won't lie. I must tell you that my troops suffered heavy casualties. If we continue to fight, many infantry divisions will exist in name only!"
"Where are the reinforcements? You have hundreds of thousands of troops! Don't say anything about failure. Keep fighting and block the damaged defense line. This is an order! You are not allowed to retreat without my order, otherwise, you know
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"Okay! I will continue to direct the battle!"
It is impossible to explain to a stubborn person, so Timoshenko ended the communication helplessly. He actually understood Stalin quite well. Although this man was too naive to command the army, the victory in the defense of Moscow also filled him with huge feelings.
Confidence, excessive self-confidence is arrogance! He did have a reason not to retreat. The Soviet Union needed a victory in a decisive strategic battle to gain a huge reputation in the world. It needed a great victory to boost the morale of the people across the country.
After all, Stalin was in no mood to read Ponomarenko's document, nor was he in the mood to care about the meager victory achieved by the 63rd Army.
Yes, what does it mean to just defeat an enemy infantry division?
Stalin knew very well that the front-line troops invested by the Soviet army in this battle were fifty divisions! He had a very vague understanding of the enemy's strength. In fact, Timoshenko also had a very limited understanding of the enemy's general profile.
This was the fatal mistake made by the Soviet army. The Soviet army invested 600,000 people. Not only did they not know that the day after their attack was the time when the German army planned to attack across the entire line, they also did not know that the German army had assembled more than 600,000 troops.
Five hundred thousand, if the servants of the Romanian army and the Hungarian army are added, the total strength of the Axis Army is slightly more than that of the Soviet army.
The advantage of the German army is not only that they have more soldiers than the Soviet army. Their huge advantage is that they can use their best blitzkrieg in the vast western Ukrainian plains. Furthermore, in terms of the quality of the soldiers, the German army has quite a number of troops on the front line.
He was a veteran who participated in the French campaign in 1940 and the siege of Kiev in 1941. The Soviet army here had a large number of new soldiers. Not only were their technical and tactical skills poor, their weapons and equipment were also poor.
Therefore, the Soviet army had a great disadvantage from the beginning.
Even if the Soviet army took the lead in attacking and achieved great results, their squandered luck soon came to an end. Starting on May 23, as the Kleist Armored Group occupied Pavlovsk on the flank of the Soviet defense line, the Soviet army
The death knell of defeat in the battle was officially sounded.
After all, Stalin was the leader, and he represented the people who were the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union. Timoshenko knew his own disadvantages, and he was very helpless. No matter how the war situation developed, a large number of soldiers would die for the country.
The war situation indeed began to deteriorate in the early morning of May 23. When the sun rose, the German Sixth Army also began a massive counterattack.
The Soviet army's sudden attack greatly caught Paulus by surprise, but he had already prepared for it. The losses suffered by the troops, especially the personnel losses, were not serious. He still followed the previous plan and launched "Operation Friedrichus"
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Operation Friedrichus began, and the German troops on the defensive turned to the offensive one after another. Starting at noon on May 23, the advancing Kleist troops were no longer alone. The German Sixth Army began a fierce attack, and they were the first to bear the brunt.
The purpose was to attack the Soviet 21st Army on the right flank of the Soviet army.
The Soviet army did not stop the German army's counterattack. In this wilderness, these infantrymen who lacked heavy equipment were harvested by the Luftwaffe. Even though these Soviet soldiers had poor skills and tactics, their fighting will was very high.
As for the Germans, they were surprised to find that these Russians refused to retreat. Only by using mortars to knock out machine gun positions one by one and completely eliminate all enemies on the defense line could the troops advance smoothly.
Therefore, throughout May 23, the Soviet army was bearing the huge impact of the German Operation Friedrichus.
The purpose of the German army is to eliminate the Soviet Union's effective forces. Paulus has a huge appetite. He believes that he has the ability to eat up the entire main force of the Soviet Army's Southwest Front. With the current evolving war situation, the balance of victory has begun to tilt toward the German army!
On the Kharkov front, the Soviet army began to face an all-out counterattack by the enemy from three directions.
Just after nightfall on May 23, the entire battlefield fell into the last silence before the storm.
All German troops must take an important rest to prepare for a more massive counterattack on May 24.
For the Soviet army, they finally got a rare chance to breathe. After a day's fighting, the Soviet armored forces suffered heavy losses, and the remaining tank units had to retreat. The Soviet army's front shrank significantly, giving up a large area.
The captured German positions were only part of this day's battle, and there were not many remaining gains from the Soviet army's previous days.
Kharkov is still in the hands of the German army. Before nightfall, some of the local German troops had joined forces with Kalist's flank attack force.
The terrible battle situation on the front line was known to Timoshenko at the first time. For the Soviet Union, the current war situation was already in danger. It was no longer the time to bite the bullet and fulfill the leader's fatal orders. In any case, Stalin could not do it more than disobeying orders.
Accept that his hundreds of thousands of troops were surrounded by enemies. The two siege disasters in 1941 must not be repeated again!
At this moment, Timoshenko had realized that the enemy's intention was to divide the Soviet army, first of all to eat all the Soviet troops west of the Barvinko River.
Those troops are the elite of the Southwest Front, especially the two tank armies!
In the early morning of May 24, while the front line entered a rare night truce, he issued a tactical retreat order to all Soviet troops on the right bank of the Barvinko River.
Because this was his unauthorized retreat, Timoshenko could no longer care about his own head. At one o'clock in the morning, he made a phone call to the Kremlin and Stalin himself that was related to the fate of the Southwest Front!