A week has passed since the end of the second Kharkov, and the Soviet and German armies have basically determined each other's new lines of defense.

At present, the Soviet army is building a field defense line at an average distance of 50 kilometers on the Oskol River. In the initial German offensive, the Soviets spent a lot of manpower and material resources to defeat any attempt by the Germans to break through. To storm Severodonetsk, the city was still firmly in the hands of the Soviets, but its strategic value was rapidly decreasing.

It was a blood-stained city that the German infantry could not capture, and its air force targeted it to vent its discontent. Cities were bombarded indiscriminately, killing tens of thousands of civilians. Kostenko, the wounded deputy commander of the Southwestern Front, finally fulfilled his conviction in the midst of days of bombardment, to live and die with the city.

The new plane did not give the general more luck, he was actually lucky enough to lead the military and civilians of Severodonetsk to defend the city. He died like a hero, and his death was a huge loss and a heavy blow to the morale of the Southwestern Front, which was facing tremendous military pressure.

Timoshenko clearly realized that the Soviet army was able to hold back the German army, although its desperate defense played a certain role, and the enemy's lack of offensive stamina was the reason why the enemy stopped attacking. Now is the time of dangerous interfighting, the enemy is sharpening their swords and accumulating strength, has the shield of the Soviet army been forged?

The situation of the war did not give the marshal the slightest optimism.

This is a strategist who sees the big picture!

The intelligence network of the USSR spread throughout Europe and even had their tentacles in the Far East. The Soviet authorities already knew the details of the great battle between Japan and the United States in the Pacific, as well as the true reaction of the United States to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Kharkov. The reaction of the United States pleased the Supreme Soviet, because from the standpoint of the United States, if the Soviet Union was defeated, then Germany and Japan would be caught between the United States, and it would be a disaster for the United States. With this attitude of the United States, large-scale strategic assistance is no longer a matter of time.

The Soviet Union was most concerned about the immediate crisis, and the spy agencies stationed in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and even Sweden had some important information. These intelligence realities that the Germans are building up troops on the Eastern Front. New troops are being massed from within Germany, in the direction of Ukraine. Some new weapons and equipment have also begun to be transported by rail.

Even the spy also claimed that they had learned that the Porsche factory in Germany was producing a powerful weapon for land warfare.

This is exactly the tiger.

As history has evolved, the design concept of the Tiger tank can be traced back to 1940, which was the days before Yang Mingzhi crossed over. The general trend of history is difficult to be fundamentally rewritten by a small butterfly in an instant. If Yang Mingzhi really played any role, it was to accelerate the manufacture and installation of Tiger tanks.

At the outbreak of the war, the German army was greatly surprised by the crushing defeat of the German 7th Panzer Division. They saw the power of the man-propelled grenade weapon, a powerful and simple anti-tank weapon that was quickly copied after being captured by the Germans.

In the subsequent battles, both the Soviet Union and Germany used this weapon, and they won and lost each other, and also found ways to restrain this weapon. For example, on existing tanks, weld fence nets, or place some sundries, or even wooden blocks. Or increase the thickness of the armor and the alloy material of the armor, i.e. nickel-chromium steel armor.

The effective range of the super-caliber rocket-propelled grenade was not far, and the Soviet troops did not use this weapon intensively, so the anti-tank pressure on the German army mainly came from anti-tank guns and Soviet T3476 medium tanks.

Today, the T3476 tank, as the mainstay of the Soviet army, is slightly superior to the German No. 4 tank in combat performance. The reason for this result was also the 76-mm tank guns of the Soviet army, and their shells.

As early as the end of 1941, the Germans found a magic weapon to counter this tank - 88-mm anti-aircraft guns.

This kind of anti-aircraft gun, which has an extremely high rate of fire, is bound to be fatal when it hits an enemy plane. In the late stages of the failed Moscow offensive operation, the retreating German officers and soldiers had to use various artillery pieces to shoot at the counter-attacking Soviet troops. Among them, the performance of this anti-aircraft gun shocked the German army, because all the Soviet tanks hit by it turned into a magnificent fireball.

The Germans needed a tank with strong protection and firepower, and now the Germans already had the territory and engine for such a tank, and now the right artillery has been found!

As early as the beginning of 1942, the Tiger tank was officially installed in the troops.

The "tiger" of this plane not only has the famous 88-mm anti-aircraft gun and the box-like chassis, but also conforms to the times and adds a layer of steel fence, which is covered with a layer of ironwood for the sake of beauty. The military industry painted it with autumn camouflage, as well as the iconic Iron Cross.

The tiger is fatter, and its tonnage is also up to 57 tons! At this time, Germany was not able to produce the more than 1,400 horsepower engines that drove the Leopard 2 tank wildly, so the Tiger was not as maneuverable as the No. 4, its turret was as heavy as the turret, and the speed was not fast, but fortunately it was very powerful!

It was on Hitler's birthday in April 1942 that a separate heavy tank battalion was formed, a formidable mix of Tiger and Four.

The unit was still in the experimental stage, they remained in Germany and did not participate in the battle of Kharkov at the end of May. However, in a series of tests, they showed strong combat effectiveness, which made the German army believe that once such tanks were installed on a large scale, quantitative changes would turn into qualitative changes!

Hitler was convinced of the blitzkrieg and looked forward to the tiger.

Throughout the first half of 1942, Hitler was very disappointed with the situation of the war, and the Germans were unable to continue to expand their gains, but were counterattacked by the Russians, for many reasons. At a meeting of the High Command at Wolfsburg, numerous generals came to a simple consensus - Germany underestimated Soviet resistance.

How to defeat the Soviet Union, attacking Moscow was already an impossible task, and marching to southern Russia became almost the only possibility of defeating the Soviet Union.

The Kharkov offensive campaign took place under such conditions, and after this battle, the poor performance of the Soviet army made the once nervous Hitler, and even many generals, hope for a quick defeat of the Soviet Union rekindled! In particular, Paulus, a German general with a habit of cleanliness, immediately became a popular man on Hitler's side.

The Germans have stopped continuing their offensive to the east, and the German Sixth Army is facing off with the Soviet Southwestern Front in the eastern Donbas region. At the same time, the Germans intensified their offensive on the Southern Front, the ultimate goal of which was to occupy the entire Crimea.

The combined strength of the Southern Front and the Crimean Front is not as good as that of the Southwestern Front, and their continued rout is not a matter of course.

The German armored forces maneuvered in the direction of the Crimea, and the main tank of the German armored forces today is the improved version of the four. These No. 4 tanks, with their frontal armor thickened again, were already immune to long-range fire from a variety of Soviet anti-tank guns, and the 45-mm anti-tank guns, which were the most heavily equipped by the Soviet army, could only penetrate the No. 4 armor within 200 meters.

The Germans not only continued to bombard the Soviet army's powerful coastal batteries and important targets, but also widely used the Gustav train gun, which could fire two-ton heavy artillery shells. Under the bombardment of these crazy weapons, the Soviets lost the defense line of Mount Sapong, retreated a large number of troops to Savastopol and the Kerch Peninsula, and relied on the naval guns of the Black Sea Fleet to stabilize the situation of the war.

During this period, the heroic female sniper Pavlyuchenko was forced to evacuate from Sevastopol by submarine. The Soviet authorities have lost confidence in holding Crimea, and all the local Soviet troops can do is to defend as much as possible before the evacuation of the old, young and wounded!