To this day, Timoshenko no longer shied away from anything, and he responded in a pessimistic tone: "Dear comrade leader, we have lost this battle!" ”

"What? Failed! You have an army of millions in your hands, do you know what it means to fail? Could it be that last year's tragedy is going to happen again? ”

Timoshenko's ears were very sensitive, and his brain was also very quick-witted. Now he could guess what kind of mood Stalin was, anxious, panicked, incomprehensible, and so on. In fact, Timoshenko had long accused his leader of being a "pseudo-military expert" who was stubborn and self-serving, and that he did not understand military affairs at all, so this battle should not have been launched at this point in time. The Soviets rushed to attack without being well prepared, and now the attacking side was actually on the defensive, and the hastily built defensive line was easily pierced by the German army's blitzkrieg, like a knife stabbing a blank piece of paper.

Stalin's questioning also deeply stimulated Timoshenko, who simply and boldly suggested: "Comrade leader, I think it's time for us to retreat!" In order for our main forces to avoid the tragic fate of the siege of Kiev, we retreated in full and continued to organize a defensive line on the Barvenko River. If the enemy breaks through this line, then we will organize a line of defense in the Severodonets River......"

Stalin shouted hoarsely: "No! We must not retreat. ”

If Stalin's words deeply stimulated Timoshenko, didn't Timoshenko's words also deeply stimulate Stalin?

"Comrade Leader! I won't lie, I must tell you that my troops suffered heavy casualties, and if they continue to fight, many infantry divisions will exist in name only! ”

"What about reinforcements? You have hundreds of thousands of troops! Don't say anything more about failure, give me to keep fighting and block the broken line, this is an order! You are not allowed to retreat without my orders, or else, you know! ”

"Alright! I continue to command the battle! ”

It was incomplacent to talk to a stubborn person, and Timoshenko reluctantly ended the correspondence. He actually understood Stalin quite well, although this man was too naïve about commanding the army, and the victory in the defense of Moscow also filled him with great self-confidence, and excessive self-confidence is conceit! The Soviet Union needed too much victory in a strategic decisive battle to gain great prestige in the international arena, and it needed a big victory to boost the morale of the people of the whole country.

Stalin was in no mood to read Ponomarenko's document after all, and he had no heart to care about the insignificant victory of the 63rd Army.

Yes, what is it to defeat an infantry division of the enemy?

Stalin knew very well that the front-line forces invested by the Soviet army in this battle were the size of fifty divisions! He had a very vague idea of the enemy's forces, and in fact Timoshenko had very limited knowledge of the enemy's profile.

This was the fatal mistake of 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 of the German army's planned attack on the whole front, so they also did not know that the German army had gathered more than 500,000 troops, and if you add the Romanian army and the Hungarian army of servants, the total strength of the Axis army was more than that of the Soviet army.

The Germans had the advantage not only of having a little more soldiers than the Soviets, but also that they could use their best blitzkrieg in the vast plains of western Ukraine. Moreover, in terms of the quality of soldiers, a considerable number of troops on the front line of the German army were veterans who participated in the French campaign in 1940 and the siege of Kiev in 1941. Here in the Soviet army, there are a large number of recruits, not to mention the poor technical and tactical level, and their weapons and equipment are also bad.

Therefore, from the very beginning, the Soviet army had a great disadvantage.

Even if the Soviets took the lead in the offensive and achieved great success, their squandered luck soon came to an end, and from May 23, with the Kleist Panzer Group occupying Pavlovsk on the flank of the Soviet line, the death knell of the Soviet army's defeat in the battle was officially sounded.

After all, Stalin was the leader, and he represented the chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, and Timoshenko knew that he was worth two pounds, and he was very helpless, no matter how the war situation would develop, a large number of soldiers would sacrifice their lives for the country.

The situation did deteriorate in the early hours of May 23, when the sun rose and the German Sixth Army began a massive counteroffensive.

Paulus's sudden attack was much beyond Paulus's expectations, but he had been prepared, and the losses suffered by the troops, especially the loss of personnel, were not serious, and he still carried out the "Operation Friedricus" according to the previous plan.

Operation Friedricus began, the German troops on the defensive turned to the offensive, and from noon on May 23, the advancing Kleist troops were no longer alone, and the German Sixth Army began to attack, and they were the first to attack the Soviet 21st Army on the right flank of the Soviet army.

The Soviets did not stop the German army's air-ground counterattack, and in this wilderness, these infantry who lacked heavy equipment were harvested by the Luftwaffe. Even if these Soviet soldiers were poor in technology and tactics, their will to fight was very high, so much so that the Germans were surprised to find that these Russians were fighting to the death, and only by knocking out machine gun positions with mortars and completely destroying all the enemies on the defensive line could the troops advance smoothly.

So, throughout May 23, the Soviet army was bearing the enormous impact of the actions of the German Friedricus.

The aim of the German army was to destroy the living forces of the Soviet Union, and Paulus had a great appetite, and he believed that he was capable of eating the entire main force of the Soviet Southwestern Front, and in view of the current developing war situation, the balance of victory had begun to tilt in favor of the German army!

On the Kharkov front, Soviet troops began to face an all-out counteroffensive of enemy forces in three directions.

Just after the night of May 23, the entire battlefield fell into the last silence before the storm.

All German units had to take an important break in preparation for an even more aggressive counteroffensive on 24 May.

For the Soviet army, they finally got a rare respite. After a day of fighting, the Soviet armored forces suffered heavy losses, and the remaining tank units had to retreat. The Soviet front shrank sharply, abandoning large areas of the German positions that had been captured at one time, and it was only this day's battle that the Soviet army had not had much left of the results of the previous days.

Kharkov was still in German hands, and part of the German army there had joined up with the flank attacking forces at Calester before nightfall.

The terrible situation at the front was known to Timoshenko at the first time, and the current situation for the Soviet Union was already in jeopardy, and now was no time to bite the bullet and fulfill the leader's death order. In any case, Stalin could not accept that his hundreds of thousands of troops were surrounded by the enemy more than disobedience. The two-sided disaster of 1941 cannot be repeated!

At this moment, Timoshenko had already realized that the enemy's intention was to divide the Soviet army into a show, first of all, to eat all the Soviet troops west of the Barvenko River.

Those units were the elite of the Southwestern Front, especially those two tank armies!

In the early hours of May 24, taking advantage of the fact that the front was entering a rare overnight truce, he gave the order to all Soviet troops on the right bank of the Balvenko River to retreat tactically.

Because he retreated without authorization, Timoshenko could no longer take care of his head, and at one o'clock in the morning, he made a call to the Kremlin and to Stalin himself about the fate of the Southwestern Front!