"These cunning and despicable Russians!" General Schweppenberg cursed through gritted teeth.
In his opinion, it was a dishonorable act for these Russians to fight his troops without a clear cut and open weapon.
But General Schweppenberg certainly would not have thought that if this logic was used... then the German army's insertion, encirclement, and even a sneak attack by the Blankenburg troops would also be a disgraceful act.
"What should we do, General?" the adjutant asked.
"Continue the attack!" Admiral Schwepenburg said: "Clean out those tanks. Their anti-tank gun positions have been destroyed by us, which means they have no tricks left to use!"
"Yes, General!"
General Schweppenberg's idea was right. Tank ambush warfare can only be used once on a certain road section. After the anti-tank gun positions are destroyed, it will be difficult to deploy anti-tank gun positions in front of the enemy whose location they do not know.
Unless the enemy has no artillery, these anti-tank gun positions will undoubtedly be blown up into the sky.
but……
"The enemy has retreated, General!" the adjutant reported to General Schweppenberg more than half an hour later: "After we have cleared the tank wreckage!"
Admiral Schwepenburg, who was looking at the map, raised his head in surprise when he heard this: "What? Retreat?"
"Yes, they retreated three hundred meters!" the adjutant replied: "In order to clean up the wreckage, we lost more than two hundred soldiers and five tanks!"
Cleaning up the wreckage is not something that can be done by just sending a few people up there and doing a lot of work. Those are "No. 3" and "No. 4" tanks, weighing more than ten tons at a time.
Therefore, it must let the infantry cover the two wings, and then send engineers to carry steel ropes to brave bullets and artillery shells, tie the steel ropes to the tank wreckage, and drag them away one by one... Sometimes the tanks must also cover the infantry.
Carry out cleanup work as we move forward, because the location of the wreckage has penetrated deep into the enemy's defense lines and is difficult to access.
As a result, more than 200 soldiers and five tanks were lost.
This made Admiral Schweppenberg very angry and had nowhere to vent his anger.
He originally thought that he only needed to clean up the tank wreckage and then he could give these Russians a lesson... But he didn't expect that they only needed to retreat three hundred meters.
Yes, the Soviet army really just needs to retreat.
Because retreating means that there is a new position next, that is, a position where anti-tank guns are hidden, so the German tanks still cannot rest assured that the tanks can penetrate along the railway, otherwise the same result will occur.
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Only then did General Schwepenburg truly understand the strategy of the Russians in front of him: this was an infinite loop of ambush, and the German army had to pay a staggering price every few hundred meters it advanced, whether it was tanks or soldiers.
Therefore, anyone who is not a fool can calculate this account clearly: Although the German army has an absolute advantage in equipment and strength, it does not mean that they can defeat the Russian army in front of them.
Although this Russian army is retreating step by step.
However... if the fighting continues like this, when the German army reaches the city of Tula, I am afraid that the entire mechanized army will be destroyed!
After thinking about it, General Schweppenberg ordered to his adjutant: "This time... we are going to use artillery fire to blow up both sides of the railway track!"
"Yes, General!"
Sure enough, the German army did just that. Shells hit the tracks 200 to 1,000 meters away on both sides of the track, plowing it like a field.
200 to 1000 meters is the range where anti-tank gun firepower is deployed.
The layout of anti-tank guns is also very particular. If they are too close, they will easily be discovered by enemy tanks and become targets. If they are too far away, the hit rate will decrease. Even in this rain curtain, it is difficult to find the target, even though the target is a huge tank.
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This method seemed to work, because the Soviet army retreated 200 meters after a slight resistance.
Of course, General Schweppenburg did not know that the position was empty this time, that is, there was not a single anti-tank gun.
Major Gavrilov was absolutely shocked by this.
"Comrade Shulka, I understand why some people always suspect that you are a spy?"
"Why?" Shulka asked.
He was really afraid of this aspect.
"Because you seem to know what they are thinking!" Major Gavrilov said: "How do you know they will bombard it with artillery fire?"
Shulka did not answer. He asked with a grimace: "Comrade Major, you won't report me for this!"
Major Gavrilov was amused and laughed.
In fact, it is not difficult to guess. In Sun Tzu's Art of War, "What is imaginary is real, and what is real is imaginary." This is all a gadget to the Chinese.
What's more, even if the Germans don't fall for the trick, there will be no loss to the Soviet army. They can just retreat a certain distance.
At this time, Admiral Schweppenberg was in trouble.
If the Germans had enough artillery shells, this would certainly not be a problem.
The problem is that the German troops are interspersed with troops, and the logistics are strained by the Kiev guerrillas attacking everywhere...
This can be said to be a slap in the face to Hitler.
Because when he decided to attack Moscow, he said impassionedly in his speech to mobilize frontline soldiers on the radio: "Since the beginning of the war, our troops have built 2,000 road bridges, more than 400 railway bridges, and repaired 29,000 kilometers.
All railways are now open to traffic. Now, I can tell all the soldiers fighting on the front line that our transportation difficulties in Russia no longer exist! We must work hard to completely wipe out the enemy before winter comes!"
Part of what Hitler said is true. The German army did build many roads, railways and bridges, many of which were even built by local people voluntarily and voluntarily for the Germans.
The problem is that after Kiev launched the guerrilla war, these railways, roads and bridges were all targets of attack, and the German logistics did not "difficulty no longer exist" as Hitler said.
This also prevented Admiral Schweppenburg from pushing all the way forward with artillery shells.
In fact, even if "supply difficulties no longer exist" as Hitler said, no army on the battlefield has the luxury of using artillery shells to push forward...except the US military.
So, after General Schweppenburg hesitated for a while, he ordered the adjutant: "Let the artillery observers come up, observe both sides of the railway track, bomb the suspicious areas, and then be ready to suppress them at any time!"
This is a way to save artillery shells, and it is also a very clever method: let experienced artillery observers search for them first, and then explode them when they find them.
There were still some that had not been found, so we suppressed them as soon as they fired shells at the tanks and exposed their positions.