Chapter 870 Is There Still Hope for the Soviet Union? (3rd Update)

"So... can the situation in Left Bank Ukraine be restored?" Stalin asked slowly, smoking his pipe.

"Impossible!" Zhukov's answer was very simple. He said: "The pressure faced by the Southwest Front is unprecedentedly huge. On the northern front, the German army has surrounded Chernigov and is also fighting on the Desna River, a tributary of the Dnieper River. Along the coast, a tank group consisting of the remnants of the 1st and 2nd Tank Armies and the 3rd Tank Army (all belonging to the Southwestern Front) was defeated.

The Battle of the Desna River that Zhukov mentioned took place on May 20, which was the fifth day after the Battle of Gomel (the Battle of Gomel ended completely on May 16). General Konev gathered the remnants of the 1st and 2nd Tank Armies that had just been assigned to the Southwestern Front, as well as the 3rd Tank Army, a new force, to fight on the east bank of the Desna River with the forded German troops.

The result of the battle still disappointed the Soviets!

Although Konev gathered more than 600 tanks/assault artillery into combat, he was defeated and retreated by the German armored group that had the upper hand in numbers and air superiority. More than 500 tanks/assault artillery were lost! In addition, thousands of various vehicles were either destroyed or abandoned due to malfunctions.

On the large plains on the east bank of the Desna River, there are tanks and various vehicles that have been burned to scrap or appear to be still roughly intact, most of which belong to the Soviet Red Army.

After losing the battle on the south bank of the Desna River, the main armored force of the Southwest Front was also lost. Although Konev still has some combined armies including mechanized armies and tank armies. But there are no more tank units that can stop a German army-level armored group, so we can only watch the German armored group crossing the Desna River and advancing towards the territory of Kharkov Oblast.

However, it is not the main force of the German 1st Armored Group that is advancing towards Kharkov. In fact, most of the tanks and vehicles of this group are in the area between the east bank of the Desna River and the Dnieper River (near Kiev) due to lack of fuel. "Wait for oil".

However, General Mackensen still put together a "corps-level group" with enough fuel (including the 1st Armored Division and the 5th SS Panzergrenadier Division) to attack the city of Kharkov, more than 380 kilometers away. .

On the front of the Soviet Southwest Front, the offensive of the German Army Group South also made great progress. The Dnieper River defense line was divided into several sections by Marshal Rundstedt's front army, and all faced the dilemma of being surrounded - as long as the German 1st Armored Group Army, which is currently "waiting for fuel", received the fuel transported from Kiev, The Soviet troops guarding the Dnieper River defense line were almost finished.

Stalin hesitated and asked, "Can the Southwest Front be allowed to withdraw?"

In fact, Stalin did not necessarily disagree with the retreat of the troops. He just withheld this power step by step, and finally reached the Supreme Command - which resulted in the troops being unable to respond quickly when facing the risk of being surrounded.

"It is too late to retreat now," Zhukov told Stalin in a low tone. "There is no way to withdraw... The Southwest Front Army is stuck by the enemy. If we want to retreat, it will cause the entire line to collapse. And we have no air superiority. If we retreat too quickly, There will be a massive loss of technical equipment and baggage.

In this way, even if some troops can be withdrawn, they will lose their combat effectiveness. It is better to let them resist on the spot to attract German troops. "

At present, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Red Army does not have much reserve equipment that can immediately arm the empty-handed defeated Red Army troops, and unarmed troops are of little use on the battlefield. So it is better to let them "die on the spot", at least they can draw some German devils to back them up.

"However, necessary adjustments still need to be made in left-bank Ukraine," Zhukov said. "One is Kharkiv-Donetsk, and the other is the Crimean Peninsula... These two places must be defended, and they are also We can have a good fight with Germany there.”

Kharkiv-Donetsk is an industrial and mining area, which means there are many industrial and mining towns there that can be held out - factories, mines, and cities housing workers all have very strong buildings. Moreover, there are many Russian and Ukrainian workers and their families in the Kharkiv-Donetsk area. These people are all supporters of the Bolshevik Party and have a very good mass base.

Although the Crimean Peninsula does not have a mass base to rely on, it has easy-to-defend terrain and the Sevastopol naval fortress.

"As long as we can hold out in Kharkiv-Donetsk and the Crimean Peninsula until August," Zhukov paused and said, "then we have a chance to delay the war until after the mud season next spring, or ...to fight the Germans this winter."

Zhukov's idea is still the old way of delaying time. The decisive battle in winter is just to fool Stalin. Because the experience of the winter of 1942 has shown that the Germans will never repeat Napoleon's mistakes.

Stalin also understood what Zhukov was thinking. He asked: "Are we going to fight the Germans around Leningrad in the north while delaying in Crimea and Kharkiv-Donetsk in the south?"

"Yes." Zhukov frowned and said, "Comrade General Secretary, all we can do now is delay..."

"Can you drag it on?"

Zhukov thought for a while and replied: "If the Leningrad-Smolensk battle can be won, then we can undoubtedly drag the war into 1944 or even 1945."

"What if we don't win?" Stalin asked.

He wanted to know the worst case scenario!

"Once Leningrad falls or is trapped again..." Zhukov said, "defending Moscow, the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River and the Caucasus will be of decisive significance."

If Leningrad is not protected and Moscow is lost, then the Soviet Union is basically finished! If Moscow must be defended, and the middle and lower reaches of the Volga River and the Caucasus are lost, then the Soviet Union can survive for 44 years but not 45 years.

Because the Soviet Union's war potential is based on the Russian population, coal, iron and food in Ukraine (including Kursk), and oil in the Caucasus. If the Soviet Union loses Leningrad, the Russian empress will have the support of at least half of the Russian population. Losing Ukraine will not only cause problems for the Soviet Union's industry, but also a large gap in food supply. And if the Caucasus oil (or oil transportation channel) is lost again, the Soviet Union's war potential will be further weakened, so that it will not be able to sustain the war.

"Then..." Stalin suddenly said to Zhukov in a low voice, "If Leningrad is likely to fall, or Moscow is likely to fall, or we are about to lose the oil in the Caucasus, you must report to me in person as soon as possible."

"Got it, Comrade General Secretary." Zhukov saluted and was about to end his report when Lieutenant General Kokopev, the chief of operations of the General Staff, walked quickly to Zhukov and handed him a note.

Zhukov took the note and took a look at it, and a very sad expression appeared on his face.

"What's the matter?" Stalin asked.

"It's a telegram from Comrade Lukin." Zhukov said, "The enemy has attacked near his headquarters..."

It turned out that this telegram was sent by General Lukin, commander of the 5th Tank Army. His army had been fighting hard with the German army near the 13th collective farm for nearly 20 days, and now it was finally on the verge of annihilation.

"Lukin is a good comrade!" Stalin sighed, "His 5th Tank Army fought the best in this battle at the junction. The current situation... He and the commanders, soldiers and political workers of the 5th Tank Army are not responsible at all. We can never forget them. They are heroes of the Soviet Union. Comrade Zhukov, please tell Comrade Lukin these words by telegram."

Being able to hold out for 20 days under the overwhelming advantage of the German armored group, Admiral Lukin is indeed worthy of being a Soviet hero. And Stalin's words were not said in vain - in fact, he "pardoned" Lukin and the remnants of the 5th Tank Army for "treason."

Lukin and his comrades can surrender and become prisoners with peace of mind!

When Admiral Lukin received the telegram from the Supreme Command, he was in his last headquarters - the headquarters building of the 13th collective farm. The 5th Tank Army was now compressed in the ruins of two or three square kilometers around this building, with less than a few thousand people left, half of whom were wounded.

This building, which has collapsed for the most part, once saw a battle that shocked Bolshevik warriors like General Lukin. A small group of SS officers and soldiers from Ukraine fought tenaciously here, fighting to the end with unimaginable determination. No one surrendered... even though Lukin personally promised to spare their lives. In the end, everyone died heroically, including a Ukrainian female sniper (Pavlyuchenko).

In the end, these people were buried with military honors, and Lukin also asked the engineers of the 5th Tank Army to erect tombstones for them. As an old soldier who participated in the Soviet-Russian Revolutionary War, Lukin certainly knew the situation of "Little Russia" (the old name of Ukraine). In the Tsarist era, there was basically a Ukrainian independence movement, which was also extremely unknown and unpopular - in the Tsarist era, the Russian Empire was a country with a strong religious atmosphere. In the "Little Russia region" where the Orthodox power was strong, opposing the Tsar was opposing Orthodoxy (the Tsar was the leader of Orthodoxy).

So ordinary Little Russians (most of them were peasants) would not even think about opposing the Tsar and Russia... This was equivalent to opposing God!

But now, these Ukrainians have become the Soviet Union's mortal enemies, and their performance on the battlefield is more tenacious than the authentic German army and the Soviet Red Army.

Thinking of this, General Lukin just sighed and said to the staff beside him: "Send a military envoy to the Germans..."