The Battle of Stalingrad was already raging back in May.

Although the Germans had obtained a large amount of oil resources by plundering the whole of Europe, and there were Romanian oil fields to supply, and even the Qinghuo Company provided 60,000 tons of oil to the Germans every month through its branch in Libya, these were still not enough to support the Germans' war and industrial and civilian needs.

The German ** team, which is far more powerful than history, is equipped with more mechanized equipment, especially more giant warships at sea, and with it a huge increase in oil consumption.

In the 41 years of the original history, Germany's annual fuel consumption reached 8.92 million tons, but the fuel consumption in 41 years of time and space exceeded 10 million tons.

Even if the Germans expand the scale of coal-to-synthetic oil and the multiple channels for importing, they can support a maximum of 12 million tons in a year. At the end of '41, even with the energy support of Mumxiang from places like Libya and Greenland, the Germans' oil stocks were still less than one million tons, less than a month's consumption.

Romania's Antonescu government had already confessed to Lao Xi at the beginning of this year that the Ploiesti oil fields in Romania were overloaded and that if the Germans needed oil, then there needed a new source of oil.

At this time, the largest oil-producing region in Europe was not Romania, which was first developed, but in Soviet Russia.

"On the other side of the mountain, the Russians produce 2.5 times as much oil as the whole of Europe!" The Baku oil field, the largest in Soviet Russia in the Caucasus, was a mouth-watering supply of blood to Stalin's industrial blueprints.

Now, Lao Xi needs this blood vessel to refuel the tired German tank.

"If I can't get the oil of Mykop and Grozny, I have to end this war!" Lao Xi attached great importance to the Baku oil field, and as early as the beginning of 42, he perfected the Blue Plan. The target is the Baku oil fields in the Caucasus.

"If the Russians run out of fuel, they'll be finished!" Lao Xi saw it very accurately, without Baku's oil, it would be difficult to support the operation of Soviet Russia's war machine only by relying on long-distance oil support from Britain and the United States.

The millions of tons of oil consumed by the Russians were enough to drag down the Anglo-American transport lines.

It's a pity that Lao Xi's eyes were stumped by Stalingrad. The Soviet Russian army put on a decisive battle posture here, which caused Lao Xi to want to complete the battle in one battle.

The enormous attrition of war. Let Lao Xi also want to end it as soon as possible. The deformed economy brought about by the war has already made Lao Xi feel the crisis.

But the defensive front of the Soviets and Russians, which was heavily massed, allowed the German tanks to sink here.

The Germans gathered heavy troops at Stalingrad and fought continuously for almost half a year, but in addition to harvesting more than 600,000 Soviet Russian corpses. But it did not win the strategic initiative.

Leaning on the ruins of the city of Stalingrad, the rat war of the Russians drilled into the soft underbelly of the Germans' modern steel-mechanical warfare.

The Russians directly used the most direct face-to-face white-knuckle combat, in close combat, street fighting, and hand-to-hand combat, using countless cannon fodder to repair every gap in the ruins of the Stalingrad defense line, and never let the Germans capture this city poured by Stalin's will.

The Russians, on the other hand, won the Caucasus oil fields as well as Moscow's strategic buffer.

But all this can only be a buffer. It is fundamentally impossible to solve the situation of passivity of the Soviet Russians. So Stalin and Zhukov and Vasilevsky launched the Uranus program.

Originally, this heavy army group, which used Stalingrad as a bait to attract the Germans, and carried out a larger-scale campaign with the reserve army of Soviet Russia to carry out the encirclement, was to be carried out in November, and it was necessary to make full use of the advantages of the severe winter of Soviet Russia, and it was also necessary to set aside time for the preparation of strategic materials.

The recruitment of cannon fodder for the reserve is simple, but the supply of strategic materials such as weapons and ammunition is tight even for daily consumption. The support of Britain and the United States and the accumulation of production in Soviet Russia required a long-term process.

But at this time, Lao Xi refused to drag out the war in Moscow until winter.

Although there are winter preparations. But winter still belonged to the Russians, and the Germans could only be on the defensive in full.

The result is October. Moscow's offensive intensified. When Stalin was anxious about whether to change the temporary capital, the support of the umbrella arrived.

Five hundred T-34/76A and B tanks were sent directly to the vicinity of Stalingrad, and with these 500 tanks, the Russians already had more than 1,550 tanks in their hands, more than 80 tanks in the original history of the counterattack stage. This made Zhukov's confidence suddenly stronger, and he proposed that Uranus plan to advance.

Stalin nodded in agreement, and Operation Uranus detonated early.

However, he definitely did not expect that Lao Xi, who is now sitting in the wolf's den, is also planning to launch a general attack on the Russians.

"Accurate message?" Even though he knew that Skynet's news had always been accurate, Lao Xi cautiously asked again.

"We did find a large-scale transfer of reserves of the Russians in the rear!" Canaris, the head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, worded, "The news of large-scale campaign preparations within Soviet Russia has also returned!" ”

"Paulus's side has recently received a lot of new equipment, and he also intends to fight and solve Stalingrad before the first snow comes!" Lao Xi's right hand waved vigorously, as if to knock down the shadow of the extremely resilient Stalin in his mind.

……

"We are ready, but instead of capturing that rat's nest, we are waiting for the reinforcements of the Russians to come together and crush the Russians who dare to come out with steel tracks!" Although Paulus had decided to attack, the spearhead was not directed at Stalingrad, which was already in ruins, but was ready to swallow the encircled Russian reserves.

The buildings and ruins of Stalingrad limited the space for German tanks. Paulus clearly knew where the Germans had the advantage and wanted to gnaw at the reserves of the Russians.

Although the Russians have a lot of cannon fodder to fill, it also takes time, and losing so many soldiers at once will make a hole in the Russians' defense line that is difficult to fill in a short time. Without external support, Stalingrad could not survive the winter.

"Take Stalingrad first, and then occupy the Baku oil fields south!" However, Lao Xi advocated that Paulus use the large amount of materials supported by the copycat company to solve the problem of Stalingrad first.

He didn't know if Stalingrad would be able to go south after the winter came, but he knew that Germany's domestic oil would not be able to support the winter.

The Americans who entered the war have already sent 48 B-24 bombers to attack the Ploiesti oil fields in Romania.

Although the Germans, who had strengthened their air defenses, shot down 21 planes, the Ploiesti oil field also suffered considerable damage, reducing monthly oil production from more than 200,000 tons to 170,000 tons.

A key liquefaction facility at a coal-fired oil base in Germany was also sabotaged by British spies.

This series of actions aroused the vigilance of the Germans, and with the intensity of the war in Great Britain, fuel consumption had exceeded the maximum supply.

There was a shortage of oil throughout Europe, and even if civilian fuel was restricted, some fuel quotas were allocated, and the Germans, who controlled more European territory, were also burdened with a larger burden of fuel consumption.

Paulus and his group of supporting German generals may have been concerned with strategy on the battlefield, but the elder Xi needed to consider the overall strategic deployment of Germany as a whole and the occupied territories.

"The entire Baku oil field must be obtained by the end of the year!" Lao Xi ignored the opposition of the generals who only cared about the war, and gave the order to die.

When Paulus was still ready to fight for it, Zhukov gave the order, and the Russians took the lead in attacking.

On October 20, the Russian war machine began to run at high speed, and 1.9 million Russian troops, more than 15,000 artillery pieces, more than 1,554 tanks, and 1,223 aircraft threw themselves into this counteroffensive in one fell swoop, pressing the Germans around Stalingrad.

Zhukov was full of ambition, but he also did not know that the Germans on the other side had already numbered 1.6 million after a German reinforcement arrived.

Moreover, they have just integrated 300 Panthers, 200 Tiger tanks and 100 King Tiger tanks sent by the cottage company, as well as more than 1,000 self-propelled artillery and armored vehicles, into the troops, and more than 100,000 tons of fuel have also solved the urgent needs of the Germans.

What Zhukov didn't know was that a sub-base was still making use of the huge coal resources of the East Donbas coalfields, and was constantly producing all kinds of weapons, ammunition and military supplies to support the Germans' actions at any time.

This is also one of the reasons why the British and American intelligence services did not detect such a huge change in the Germans, perhaps they and the Russians knew that the Germans had come with reinforcements and supplies, but they would never have imagined that there would be such a big aid here with inconvenient transportation.

From the beginning, it was a battle of information asymmetry.

While the new Bf-109G fighters were constantly flying towards the airstrip near Stalingrad, a large number of I-16s and MiG-3s supported by the Russians were preparing to take off and escort the bomber group to the first wave of the attack.

The final decisive battle at Stalingrad began.