It was the last day of May, and for Mr. Yang, he spent the whole day at the mine, personally involved in dealing with the mess. Especially in the afternoon of this day, Yevlov, Salinchkin and others all arrived, and the people held a meeting at the side of the mine.

Moreover, Salinchkin kept his promise, and in the morning all the settlements were plastered with urgently printed newspapers. Here is a description of the enemy's bombardment, the combat heroes of the air defense battalion, and one of the largest pages is reserved for Yang Mingzhi. The article was written by Salinchkin himself, who exaggerated Yang Mingzhi's exploits and the powerful power of the anti-aircraft machine gun he developed.

Even if Yang Mingzhi thinks that this tout is too much, others are surprisingly unanimous in their belief that this kind of tout is appropriate, at least, the panic of the military and civilians will be resolved a lot.

In the hospital, there are only three surgeons, and star fruit is one. She had to perform fifteen surgeries in a row, and all the foreign body fragments she removed weighed a kilogram! Her spirit simply collapsed, and the last operation was not completed, and she finally collapsed.

This result was unbearable for Raslyutin, who was the commander's wife and a pregnant woman. This child is too strong to resist her temperament, so she is allowed to operate desperately. Now, the doctor has become a patient, and now she has to drink a glass of sugar water and recuperate with peace of mind.

The German air raids, apparently, did not cause particularly serious losses to the partisan republics. They deeply stimulated the Soviet troops here, and on this day the impromptu meeting held at the mine site, the battle against Loyev was also put on the agenda.

"We must take down one of the enemy's strongholds as retaliation for them bombing us."

"Capture Loyev, seize the railway bridge!"

"Take this city, we will set up launchers here and fire rockets at Lechitsa under the control of the German army!"

The staff officers brought by Yevlov were furious when they saw the tragic situation in the mine, and they preferred to offer advice in front of the commander in order to be reused.

In Yang Mingzhi's view, many of their ideas are too slogan-oriented and have no substantive significance.

But the attack on Loyev, the military operation that must be carried out in the first half of June in the guerrilla republic! For this, the troops also have a reason to start combat readiness on the last day of May!

And for the hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops on the Kharkov battlefield, four hundred kilometers away, the battle went on until the end of May, and the balance of victory had already tipped in favor of Germany!

What's going on these days?!

The Soviets went on a full-scale offensive, with a force of 100,000 German defenders who ate Kharkov and planned to defeat its main force, the Sixth Army. The turn of the tide of the war shocked all the Soviet high-ranking personnel, including Stalin, and in order to avoid the tragedy of Kiev in 1941, Stalin allowed Timoshenko to retreat tactically.

In fact, Timoshenko wanted to withdraw a little further in order to preserve the absolute main force of the Southwestern Front.

Stalin did not give permission, he ordered him to hold the line of defense before the battle, and if the front stabilized as it was before May 19, then the Soviet Union would have no substantial losses. In the eyes of the Soviet leadership, even at the cost of many lives, the troops defended the territory under their current control, and the blood of the martyrs was not shed in vain.

Can the defense line of the Balvenko River really be held?

The Germans quickly used their actions to negate Stalin's illusions. The German Kleist Panzer Group was the first to advance eastward, encountering the Soviet 38th Army.

This Soviet army group, which was dominated by infantry and lacked tanks, was equipped with a large number of anti-tank guns, and RPG weapons that could be used by individual soldiers, gave Timoshenko confidence that the unit could hold the line.

The battle is really heartbreaking!

Perhaps it was because the morale of the German army was high, or maybe it was because the Soviet soldiers were mainly new recruits and were seriously undertrained. Even though the Soviets had good anti-tank weapons, their lines were first attacked by German air strikes, and then they were broken through by tanks No. 3 and No. 4 with welded fence armor.

The defensive line guarded by this army group was torn through many openings by the Germans.

At this point, the Soviet 6th Army and the 57th Army were completely surrounded, and the 9th Army was forced to retreat.

The Soviet 9th and 38th armies were forced to retreat, and it was no longer a question of whether they could hold the defense line on the Barvenko River, and the Soviets even lost control of the Severodonetsk River. The Germans erected pontoon bridges over the river, and tens of thousands of German troops had already crossed the river and continued to pursue the retreating Soviet 9th Army with victory.

At this point in the battle, most of the Soviet fighters participating in the battle were shot down, and several front-line airfields of the Soviet army were bombed indiscriminately by the Germans!

German warplanes even bombed the airfield in the city of Severodonetsk!

The current Severodonetsk, in fact, where the command of the Southwestern Front is located, where Timoshenko himself is located. Originally, this was already the rear of the battle, but the battle situation took a sharp turn, and this place actually became the front line!

Currently, the Soviet-controlled city is home to up to 100,000 Soviet civilians! Most of them were women and the elderly, as men between the ages of eighteen and fifty in the cities were urgently mobilized to enlist in the army. Most of the reserve forces prepared by the Soviet army for this campaign were forcibly called up in this way. The inhabitants of Luhansk and Donetsk, almost all ethnic Russians, have nothing but hatred for the Germans and a great contempt for the traitorous actions of the Ukrainians.

The men joined the army on their own initiative, and at the last moment, Timoshenko also added nearly 100,000 so-called reserves. But these mobilized soldiers, they can aim and shoot at most, and they don't understand complex technical and tactical coordination at all! It's not enough for them to have a lot of blood! Because the Soviet army was able to go from offensive to defensive in this battle, in Timoshenko's opinion, the reason was the serious lack of training of the troops.

Except for a few elites, the same is true for all other troops!

Every day, every hour, the tide of battle is getting worse!

By May 31, the retreating Soviet 6th Army had all crossed the Oskol River eastward, only 50 kilometers from Severodonetsk, the center of the Southwestern Front's front.

The Oskol River will flow into the Severodonetsk River, and its impingement plain forms a narrow lake up to four kilometers wide, as well as a forest-swampy area almost forty kilometers long. This is a natural barrier to Severodonetsk, they can certainly hold off the frontal attack of the German army, but they do not prevent the German army from attacking from both flanks in the slightest!

Therefore, Stalin ordered the Soviets to defend their original positions, which was declared a defeat on May 30. The Germans captured the important city of Izyum, which led to the complete collapse of the Soviet Balvenkovo salient.

The Germans basically completed Operation Friedkus, and Paulus saw that the battle situation was a great benefit to the German army, and took the opportunity to defeat the Soviet Army's Southwestern Front and Southern Front.

If the historical Battle of Stalingrad is an inevitability, then the time of its beginning should begin with Paulus's decision to pursue it with victory!

On the morning of May 31, the German vanguard began to trace the Soviet 9th Army and reached the Oskol River. The Soviets had blown up all the bridges across the river, so that the Germans could only curse with contempt in the face of the wide river and the silt under their feet: "These Russians, you are a bunch of cowards." The offensive of the German troops, no difficulty could stop it! ”

The Germans, of course, did not stubbornly insist on crossing the river, and their main forces bypassed these unnatural areas and planned to advance from the south, targeting the Soviet-controlled city of Severodonetsk.

This ferocious movement of the enemy was already fully known to the Soviet troops.

Timoshenko was surprised to find that a superior German force was bypassing the forest, and their goal was self-evident.

Timoshenko angrily called the hotline directly to Stalin's office and reported the worse state of the war.

In fact, a large number of urgent telegrams from the front line have been piled up on the table of the Soviet leader, and bad news from the front has come one after another, as if there is no good news at all these days!

Stalin was well aware that someone was responsible for the fact that the campaign plan that he ordered and had to carry out was played out like this! Who is responsible? It's himself!

The front-line soldiers were not without their lives, the command was not unwise, and the Soviet army was also looking for teeth in the German army that fought in the first three days of the war, and Kharkov was also at his fingertips. I really never expected that the German army would have an extremely large number of troops, and many units of the Soviet army would once again be encircled.

So, in the face of Timoshenko's request to shrink the line of defense again, Stalin made a difficult choice. The so-called retreat means being forced to give up part of the territory and hold on, which cannot be achieved even with great sacrifices, but will cause more serious losses due to the lack of troops.

He supported Timoshenko's request, but also made one condition: "Your retreat should be slow, and if you feel that you can hold the line, try it!" You must also mobilize your forces and rescue the besieged 9th Army. ”

Timoshenko knew very well that the front-line troops in his hands were the 9th and 38th armies, and the elite 21st and 28th armies had suffered a frontal defeat, and they had paid a great price, and now they were very difficult to defend, let alone attack. Moreover, the elite of the elite, two tank armies that were given high hopes, they almost completely collapsed, and the survivors could only fight with infantry.

At least the leader supported the retreat, and even more acquiesced to the fact that the Soviets could abandon the city of Severodonetsk.

The current Timoshengo knew that he was really incapable of turning the tide, and the general could only sigh at this point: "Headquarters, you must move back!" ”