On Stalin's side, he was probably aware of the fighting on the Kharkiv front on May 23.

This self-proclaimed comrade Dzhugashvili, on the eve of such a seemingly defeated, could not really be like a piece of steel.

On the same day, he convened an emergency military meeting in the Kremlin, which was attended by a number of high-ranking military officers who were still in Moscow and who were prominent in the war, as well as senior Soviet personnel such as Beria and Molotov.

The focus of everyone's discussion is, of course, how to continue this battle.

At the meeting, Stalin made a rare self-examination: "I miscalculated the situation, the enemy is far stronger than we think. We are still able to hold on to our current front, but I am very worried about whether we will be able to continue to stabilize the front as the Germans continue to attack. If this battle is lost, it means that our counteroffensive in the past six months has come to naught! ”

Someone like Beria, who had a keen sense of what Stalin meant, made his attitude clear: "Since this battle is of great importance to our country, we must win it, no matter what the cost." ”

Beria took the lead, and even if the others disagreed, they had to be stuffed in their stomachs. Here, Stalin's words are the truth, and since he meant to fight unswervingly, then fully support the fight to the death!

The meeting was thus inconclusively fruitful, and Stalin was disappointed, his mind was in disarray, as if his wise self had disappeared today!

He had to carefully consider the telephone call of Timoshenko in the morning, if it was really as the old marshal pessimistically speculated, there was a great possibility that the tragedy of Kiev would be repeated, and the Soviet Union would lose hundreds of thousands more, and this would not only be a problem for Donbass and Crimea, but the entire Don River basin and the Caucasus!

The sense of foreboding had always hung over him, so much so that he had no intention of flipping through the other documents handed over, and after nightfall, he couldn't sleep at night.

Stalin sat in his office, his already old face looking even older. He stood still, staring at the phone on the desk. This was a phone that could talk directly to Timoshenko on the front line, and he no longer dared to personally supervise the situation at the front, but only hoped that when the phone rang, he could get good news that the Soviet army had withstood the German attack.

The wait is so long, every second is as long as an hour! The bread and sausages on the table had long been cold, Stalin had not eaten a bite, his forehead was covered with sweat, and the endless anxiety made him have a lot more gray hair in just a few hours.

What should come will come!

The phone suddenly remembered, and Stalin kept his composure and picked it up, hoping that Timoshenko would bring good news.

"Comrade Leader! I sincerely ask you for your life, please save the 300,000 soldiers on the front line! Just this past day, the Germans launched a frantic counterattack, and throughout the battlefield, the Germans were creating a huge encirclement network. I hope you will give the order to withdraw the troops before the enemy's encirclement is closed, and as long as we maintain enough troops, we can still hold on to the previous line! ”

The worst finally happened, and Stalin felt a little relieved to hear this.

He took a deep breath and asked, "You mean, our army is unable to stop the enemy's attack on all fronts. And what about the 21st Army? And what about the 8th Army? And the elite tank corps at your disposal, how are they doing? ”

"The 21st Army was defeated by the Germans and had to retreat across the river, and the enemy even crossed the Barvenko River on the right front and attacked the 28th Army as a reserve. The 8th Army suffered huge losses in personnel, and the left front of our army, which they were stationing, had completely collapsed! And the two tank armies on which we had high hopes, they advanced too fast when attacking, leaving the troops behind, and without infantry cover, they had already lost at least seventy percent of their tanks! These two tank armies almost exist in name only! ”

"This ...... Is this all true?! Stalin's standing body trembled involuntarily, and it was only less than twenty hours before the situation of the battle deteriorated to such a deterioration, which greatly surprised him.

"Comrade Leader! Once again, I implore you, we must have a strategic retreat! ”

"Where's your reserves?" Stalin roared anxiously.

"Reserves! We already have no reserves! No, we used to have reserves, but the reserves have long been filling the huge losses at the front, and now, we don't have reserves! We don't have a steady stream of reinforcements to stabilize the current front! ”

Stalin did not fully believe Timoshenko's personal report, after all, it was too alarmist, but he could not help but believe it. The situation in which the situation began to deteriorate probably began on the 22nd, and since then, the Soviets have begun to lose the initiative. For the whole day of the 23rd, he hesitated, and he wanted to continue to expand the results of the battle, for fear that the enemy would take away the gains that the Soviet army had already obtained.

At this time, Timoshenko clenched the phone and once again stimulated Stalin's heart: "Comrade leader, isn't the lesson of the Minsk battle, the Kiev battle, our great defeat deep enough?" As the commander-in-chief of the Southwestern Front, I explain to you with my honor that for the second time, the Front is faced with a choice of life and death!

Compared with last year's battle of Kiev, we have a greater initiative, and now the encirclement of the German army has not yet been closed, this is our last chance to break through! If you continue to hold out, all the troops that cross the river will be annihilated by the enemy, and our direct losses will exceed 200,000 men! And the result of this is that I already have no elite troops on hand, counting on the general forces to be able to defend the defense line of our army on the Severodonetsk River, which is too optimistic! At that time, I may also be like my predecessor, Comrade Kirponos, who died, and personally fight the enemy and die a glorious death! ”

"No! You! I will not allow you to die! ”

When Timoshenko said these words, Stalin did panic. After all, in the army, Timoshenko had great prestige, he was one of the few strategists and military strategists in the Soviet Union, and he was one of the most important members of the Military Council, and he was also the right-hand man of Stalin himself.

The intelligence services and the military council received more detailed information from the front than Stalin. In fact, many people have already met with him and explained to him that the situation on the Kharkiv front is getting worse and worse.

There were already too many people hinting at a strategic retreat of the troops, and now that Timoshenko had asked for a retreat without hesitation, Stalin had realized that perhaps it was already a minority who would continue to support the campaign and continue the offensive.

Stalin did not give Timoshenko a reply, but announced that he would reply an hour later.

It was during this small period of time that he decisively convened an emergency military meeting and ordered a group of military commissars who had stayed up all night to hold an emergency meeting.

When Stalin himself explained the phone call that Timoshenko had just made, all the people present at the meeting immediately gave up their daytime rhetoric. Could it be that who else claims to know more about military affairs than Timoshenko? No! They believed that even if Zhukov had returned from the northern front to participate in this meeting, he would not have claimed that he would have fought the Kharkov campaign better if he had commanded it.

The attitude of the committee members was surprisingly unanimous, that is, given the current precarious situation on the front line, the front-line troops could no longer continue to fight for a long time.

What should the troops do? Withdraw, of course! Withdraw to the front before the battle and take the defensive.

Several senior staff officers of the General Staff attending the meeting showed the attitude of their chief of staff, Zhukov, that is, the Kharkov offensive campaign could not achieve the previously set campaign goals in any case, which was tantamount to saying that the campaign had failed. There were only two options given to the Soviet army, either a strategic retreat followed by defense, which was a decent defeat, or a desperate fight to the end, in which the troops suffered heavy losses, which was both a repetition of the tragedy of Kiev in 1941!

The attitude of the Military Council and the General Staff was surprisingly consistent, and Stalin knew that he had no choice either.

He made his difficult choice, that is, the defeat of this battle could not be avoided, that is, to preserve the main forces of the Southwestern Front, try to stabilize after retreating to the past front, and stop the German advance.

So, at three o'clock in the morning on the 24th, Timoshenko finally received a call from Stalin, whose order was very simple: "I agree, the Southwestern Front withdraws the line of defense before the campaign was launched!" ”