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Since the Germans occupied the entire right-bank Ukraine in the winter of 1942, and historically Latvia and Estonia were already the Baltic states of the German Empire. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info?? Thus, at the end of April 1943 on the Soviet-German battlefield there was a Belarusian salient.

It is a huge salient that is attacked on three sides, with a width of more than 4oo kilometers from north to south and a length of more than 3oo kilometers from east to west. At the same time, it was also the main defense area of the Western Front of the Soviet Red Army, which was still the "Western Front" instead of the "Belarusian Front", because it still had jurisdiction over the Red Banner Warsaw Army Group besieged in Warsaw.

Including the besieged Red Banner Warsaw Army, the number of troops under the command of Marshal Kulik, commander of the Western Front, exceeded 150,000, the largest number of the ten major fronts of the Soviet Union at present.

But after deducting the nearly 70,000 troops trapped in Warsaw, Marshal Kulik had only more than 8o troops at the end of April 1943. The front of more than 80,000 Red Army troops stretched from the junction of Smolensk and Kalinin oblasts in Russia to the confluence of the Pripyat and Dnieper rivers near Kiev in Ukraine. The total length of the defense line is more than 9oo kilometers!

Moreover, Marshal Kulik could not evenly deploy all his forces on this 9oo km long line. Because the Supreme High Command also gave two important cities that had to be defended, Minsk and Smolensk.

On the instructions of the Supreme High Command, Marshal Kulik put the elite 4th Army in the fortified Minsk and formed more than 80,000 Minsk militia units.

In Smolensk, Marshal Kulik released the 5th Tank Army, the 22nd Infantry Army, and the 51st Fortified Area directly under the Front Command, and also formed a militia unit with more than 50,000 people.

And on the Smolensk-Vitebsk front, Kulik deployed the elite 3rd Army; On the Vitebsk-Minsk half-moon front, Kulik deployed the 1O Army; On the Minsk-Pripyat front, Kulik placed the 11th Army; In the area of the Pripyat-Dnieper, Kulik put the 13th Army.

In addition, in the Belarusian salient, Kulik placed another 16th Army as a reserve.

In this way, 6 armies, 1 tank army, 1 infantry corps, more than a dozen militia divisions, as well as a number of independent artillery, rocket artillery, tank and cavalry units, as well as the 2nd Army of the Air Force, are the forces that the Western Front can use to defend the Belorussian salient.

These forces were of course very inadequate in the opinion of the commander of the Front, Field Marshal Kulik, and the Chief of Staff of the Front, Lieutenant General Pokrovsky. But they did not frequently ask Moscow for help, because they knew very well that the role of the Western Front and the Belarusian salient was only cannon fodder to attract the attention of the German army!

Although Belarus is important, it is not worth mentioning compared to Leningrad, which is in urgent need of liberation in the north, and the industrial region of eastern Ukraine, which must be defended on the southern front. Moreover, there is a strong reserve front army behind the Western Front, and even if the Western Front is encircled, the reserve front army can complete the difficult task of encircling Moscow.

Therefore, when Kulik and Pokrovsky were defending the Belarusian salient, they did not intend to fight hard with the Germans, but made a plan to fight and retreat to Minsk and Smolensk - most of the territory of the Belarusian salient could be lost, but the two cities of Minsk and Smolensk were better defended. As long as it is held, the main road from Western Belarus to Moscow will not be easy to walk, and it will be impossible for the German army to attack the capital of the Soviet Union.

But it's always easier to make a plan than to execute it. On the night of April 3o, 1943, Kulik and Pokrovsky were struggling with whether to shrink their forces immediately.

During the daytime battle on April 3o, the first line of defense of the two northern and southern roots of the Belorussian salient was breached by the German armoured clusters - this was not a very difficult task, because the four Soviet armies had to defend a long front of 9oo kilometers, and it was deployed in depth and layers, and the first line of troops was very limited. It is simply impossible to block the breakthrough of the Germans with concentrated forces!

Similarly, due to the deployment of large depths, the first line of Soviet troops in the Belorussian salient was weak, and it was difficult to test the reality of the Germans in the process of being breached.

"Comrade commander, according to the reports of the 3rd Army and the 13th Army, the breakthrough Germans did not throw in a large number of Tiger tanks." Pokrovsky read a stack of reports and said to Kulik, "In fact, the Germans did not put in as many tanks and artillery as expected, but the intensity of the shelling was unexpected." The artillery of the 3rd Army and the 13th Army did not even have the strength to fight back. ”

Cannons don't burn oil. For the European Community, which has integrated most of Europe's industrial capacity and has an abundant supply of rare metals, the capacity to manufacture large-caliber artillery is very excessive, even beyond the American tyrants on the other side of the ocean.

At present, the US imperialism claims to produce 100 million tons of steel per year, but in fact it produces 8ooo tons per year. The annual steel output of Germany has exceeded 320o tons, France produced 82o tons of steel in 1942, Belgium produced more than 7oo tons of steel, Britain produced 130000 tons of steel, Croatia-Hungary produced 15o tons of steel, the European Community produced 230000 tons of steel, and the annual steel output of the remaining European Community countries is about 1oo tons, a total of 650000 tons!

In addition, Sweden and the Netherlands, two neutral countries with a clear preference for Germany, produced a total of about 5oo tons of steel in 1942.

As a result, the European Community and the United States are almost on par with the United States in terms of steel production. And in terms of the output of machine tools, electricity, various non-ferrous metals, the EC is in no way inferior to the United States.

These productions reflected in the military aspect, resulting in the fact that as long as there were no oil-burning weapons, Germany must have more weapons than the United States, let alone the Soviet Union.

The towed artillery was the most powerful of all non-oil-burning weapons, so by the end of April 1943, the Germans had far more artillery than the Soviets.

Moreover, the Soviet artillery did not dare to fire because of the threat from the air, so in the daytime battle on April 3o, it was entirely the German artillery that bullied the infantry of the Soviet Red Army.

Not only were the Red Army guarding the two areas that seemed to be the breakthrough points of the German concentration dazed by the German artillery, but the Red Army on the entire front was being bombarded. And in many important areas, the German artillery bombardment was unprecedented, almost in the style of the First World War!

Therefore, from the Supreme Command of the Red Army to the headquarters of the following fronts, on the night of April 3o, no one knew where the main direction of the German breakthrough was, although it seemed that the situation was going to eat the Belarusian salient first, but no one dared to be so sure.

Looking at the map, Marshal Kulik's eyebrows twisted into a Sichuan character, making his already fierce face look even more terrifying.

The marshal thought for a moment, and suddenly said to the chief of staff Pokrovsky beside him: "The purpose of the enemy's breakthrough from the roots of the Belarusian salient is not necessarily to encircle the Red Army in the salient. ”

"Not to surround us?" Pokrovsky looked at the two black arrows on the map and had a problem. "And that's to break through the Dnieper?"

"Yes!" Kulik nodded and said, "The main defensive section of the Dnieper defense line is downstream at the confluence of the Pripyat and Dnieper rivers. To the north of the confluence of the two rivers, the Southwestern Front did not deploy heavy troops, and the river channel was relatively narrow, which made it difficult to resist the German breakthrough. The Germans could quite well break through the Dnieper in the Chernihiv area and break through to the right flank of the Southwestern Front from our junction with the South-Western Front. Such a breakthrough would not have been fatal if the defense line of the Southwestern Front had been laid out in depth, but now the main forces of the Southwestern Front were concentrated on the Dnieper line. Once the Germans outflanked from the right flank of the Dnieper line, it was likely that the main forces of the Southwestern Front would be encircled. ”

Marshal Kulik paused and said slowly: "So...... We don't have to worry about the Germans breaking through the Velicaya River, it's a big deal to withdraw the 3rd Army to the 51st fortified area. But the Germans who broke through from the Pripyat River had to be paid enough attention!

We must be ready for a battle in Chernihiv or Bryansk, east of the Dnieper! ”8