Chapter 963: A Variable in Moscow

As Zhukov and Stalin decided to send the main Soviet forces south for the Battle of Kursk, Stalin, unbeknownst to Zhukov, drew up another operational plan. The high-ranking Soviet officials and generals thought the same as Stalin: Stalingrad was of the utmost importance, but Moscow was the foundation and could not be easily abandoned.

This idea was understandable. So the southern campaign began, and Stalin threw everything he had into supporting Zhukov in a battle of destiny. But the empty defense of Moscow was undoubtedly a shadow in everyone’s hearts, so Stalin began to think of ways to strengthen the defense of the central region.

To mobilize the old, young, and women on the spot was, of course, a necessary step. But everyone knew that relying on these shrimp soldiers and crab generals would not be enough to stop Rundstedt’s monkey king. After much thought, since the southern Stalingrad could not be easily abandoned, and the central Moscow had to be defended with all their might, then they could only give up another direction.

So Stalin decided to abandon Leningrad, to abandon this “city named after the former leader.” With the spirit of “better the Daoist friend dies than the poor Daoist,” the 570,000 infantry of the three army groups of the Soviet Northern Group packed up their bedrolls and began their retreat south to reinforce Moscow.

Stalin’s idea was simple: I don’t want those places in the north anymore. With these hundreds of thousands of troops in Moscow, we can hold out for a while longer! And the sudden southward advance of the Soviet Northern Group did indeed put a great deal of pressure on the two German commanders, Rundstedt and Kluge. After all, the sudden appearance of more infantry had indeed increased the variables of the Battle of Moscow.

Once the more than 500,000 troops of the Northern Group were assembled around Moscow, it was very likely that Moscow would become the next Stalingrad. Germany did not have that many allied resources to fight another large-scale urban street battle. The after-effects of Stalingrad were still boiling in Germany’s occupied territories and among its allies.

The impact of hundreds of thousands of young lives being deliberately thrown into the meat grinder of street fighting would not be easily quelled. If it happened again, it was estimated that Ukraine, Belarus, and even Italy and Romania would all become hotbeds of partisans. Any so-called clever plan was not without its flaws. At the very least, that kind of “killing two birds with one stone” strategy only looked good on the surface; in fact, the after-effects were not few.

Germany’s plan had been prepared with two fundamental objectives: to weaken the occupied territories and to capture Stalingrad with fewer losses of its own. To mobilize the young and strong from Ukraine and other regions, to consciously consume the strength of these regions—this plan sounded good and was entirely in Germany’s interests. But upon closer examination, it was not difficult to see that this seemingly multi-beneficial plan was nothing more than an overdraft on the anti-Russian sentiment of regions like Ukraine and Belarus, as well as their goodwill towards the Third Reich. The manpower had been obtained by shaking the emotional foundations of the region. This also explained why Germany was desperately trying to aid in the reconstruction of Ukraine.

The entire German army on the Eastern Front was replenishing its forces and reorganizing its troops. They were receiving a large number of tanks, armored cars, trucks, and other equipment, accumulating their strength for the upcoming summer offensive. On the tenth day after the end of the Battle of Kursk, G Army Group had received a supplement of 71 King Tiger tanks.

Nearly two armored battalions’ worth of tanks had finally given the 1st Panzer Corps a breath of life. The 1st Panzer Regiment of the 1st Panzer Division, which had been almost completely wiped out, had, after receiving 17 tanks, slightly recovered its establishment. Unfortunately, the losses of armored cars and anti-tank guns were difficult to make up for in a short time. After all, losses that had occurred in an instant could not be immediately filled by production capacity.

At the same time, about 40,000 newly trained Wehrmacht soldiers had jumped off the trains and had joined the heavily damaged G Army Group sequence. Guderian had never expected to receive so much equipment and personnel immediately. He had thought it would take at least half a year for G Army Group to recover to a combat-ready state.

Comparing this with the Soviet army at this very moment, one could see just how quickly Germany was replenishing the consumption of its frontline troops. In the same period of time, the Soviet Union had replenished the front line with a total of 170,000 young and strong soldiers, but only a pitiful 144 tanks. Of the hundreds of planes lost, even with American aid, only 400 had been replaced, and the number of bombers was an insignificant four.

But these replacements were the entirety of the Soviet Union’s new supplements. When allocated to Zhukov’s southward-advancing group, he had only received 9,000 soldiers and 40 tanks, as well as a completely insufficient 40 fighter planes of various models. Compared to Guderian’s G Army Group, the difference in treatment was like heaven and earth.

And the German Air Force, after losing over 200 aircraft of various models, had been supplemented with a full 100 of the newest Ta-152 fighters, 35 Stuka IIs, 15 Do-217 medium multi-purpose bombers, and 23 “Butcher” bombers—almost completely making up for their losses.

Under the Soviet special mobilization system, the stage of rapidly producing troops had already been weathered by Germany. The current Soviet Union was no different from Germany and could only rely on slow replenishment to transfuse blood to its frontline troops. And under the influence of the overall battlefield situation, the place that the Soviet Union prioritized strengthening was inevitably Moscow, not the Kursk surrounding area, which had already lost its offensive capability.

So even if Zhukov had cried and begged, in the end, he had only received a pitiful bottom line of supplies. The Soviet main force, the 1st Guards Tank Army, commanded by Konev under him, had lost a full 17,000 men but could only receive a replacement of 1,700. Just how much their combat capability had declined was imaginable.

What was even more exaggerated was that several of the Soviet fronts had lost over 2,000 tanks of various models in the offensive, most of them elite KV-1s and T-34s. But they had only received 40 new tanks. How to distribute them was simply despairing.

The establishments of a large number of Soviet tank units had to be canceled. The independent armored brigades and tank regiments had almost disappeared overnight. The remaining miscellaneous tanks were all, regardless of model, thrown into the 1st and 3rd Guards Fronts, which was what had allowed these two fronts to have the ability to continue fighting.

By comparison, the Soviet forces in the direction of Moscow had been strengthened to a certain extent. Besides the more than 500,000 men of the Northern Group who were approaching them, they had also received a supplement of 100,000 new recruits. Stalin had personally ordered the transfer of 84 tanks to form the “Stalin 1st Panzer Division” in the Moscow direction.

Of course, it wasn’t all bad news. The Far Eastern Front, commanded by Chuikov, had held off the northward-advancing Japanese army. Under Chuikov’s command, the Soviet Red Army had fought a beautiful tank flanking battle near Vladivostok, using the classic “scythe” from the German armored forces’ Battle of France to directly educate their “Far Eastern guests.”

The Japanese army, after using poison gas in the Far East, had not achieved the results they had fantasized about. Because, after all, the Soviet Union and the weak China could not be compared. At the very least, the Soviet troops were quite well-equipped with gas masks for their infantry.

It was precisely because the Soviet troops were better in this aspect than the Chinese army, and the quality and education level of the soldiers were also higher, that Chuikov’s troops had not fallen into a state of chaos and collapse. The result was that although the Japanese army had used about 500 chemical shells of various models, they had not achieved the effect they had hoped for.

Chuikov’s armored group had finally finished off the so-called armored forces of Japan on the flank. With a devastating momentum that the Japanese army had never seen before, they had directly swept through the two forward-jutting Japanese divisions. By the time the Japanese army had been beaten to the point of throwing down their helmets and armor, the Japanese Army had finally seen clearly the equipment gap between their own armored forces and the mainstream European armies.

A surprise attack that Ishihara Kanji had meticulously planned had ultimately devolved into a positional war of attrition, similar to an island-hopping campaign. More than twenty Japanese divisions, hundreds of thousands of troops, were bogged down in their positions in the area south of Vladivostok. Chuikov, lacking reserves, was for a time also unable to do anything about them.

This time, it wasn’t just Ishihara Kanji. All the high-ranking officials in Japan, including Tojo Hideki, knew that the operational plan of plundering the Far East to subsidize the Japanese home islands had completely failed. And the consequences of this war, and the wasted supplies and manpower, could only be silently “paid for” by the Japanese army itself.

In northwestern Australia, the Japanese troops who were trapped in the port of Darwin were fighting a life-or-death battle with the superior American forces. These Japanese troops were enduring the constant bombing of hundreds of American planes, showing the Americans the terror of street fighting and the terrifying combat effectiveness of the elite Japanese infantry.

These Japanese soldiers’ marksmanship was very accurate, and they had the courage and resolve to fight to the death. Many Japanese soldiers had even used explosive packs to counter the American tanks, launching frantic night counter-attacks and desperate charges regardless of sacrifice. This strongest “World War I” army had left a deep impression on the Americans and had also, with its own tenacity, made the Americans realize the cruelty of war.

More than two hundred thousand Japanese soldiers were fighting the American army for every house and every street in the port of Darwin, turning Darwin into an eastern Stalingrad with their spirit of Bushido. After losing 70 tanks and more than 10,000 soldiers, the United States had still not been able to completely occupy this port city.

The scene of the American battleships bombarding Darwin day and night had also been made into a documentary. However, the Japanese Navy had been fishing in troubled waters. The submarine I-19 had, with its torpedoes, taken the opportunity at night to sink three American cruisers, opening the prelude to the Japanese Combined Fleet’s torpedo attack on Darwin.

In just 30 days of engagement, the Japanese Navy, at the cost of 4 destroyers and 22 submarines, had sunk 40 American warships and transport ships of various types, creating another great victory after the “great victory of the Solomon Sea.” Unfortunately, at noon on May 22nd, the port of Darwin was occupied by the American army. The Battle of Australia ended in a disastrous defeat for the Japanese Army.

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