The Third Reich: The Return of the King

"Of course, General, please take us to your combat headquarters, we need a large sand table with 5-10 staff officers and an accurate map!"

With no ideological baggage, Manstein began his performance.

When Tukhachevsky heard Manstein's request, he immediately asked his subordinates to do so.

The operational command of the Soviet army was very rudimentary, and naturally it could not be compared with the general staff of the German army.

However, everyone didn't pay much attention to this kind of thing, after all, they were now on the front line, everything was simple, and naturally they couldn't ask for hairy bears according to the requirements of the German headquarters.

"General Tukhachevsky, if we want to conduct a campaign deduction, we need to know the detailed deployment of your army, including detailed data such as the distribution of troops, the rationing of weapons and equipment, the training level of soldiers, and logistics support!"

Manstein's request at this time made Tukhachevsky a little difficult!

He did not dare to agree to Manstein's request easily, because if he did, he would inevitably reveal a lot of information about the Soviet army.

Especially when it comes to information about weapons and equipment and soldier training, this information is leaked out, and the German army can comprehensively evaluate the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army based on these data!

"Do you have to need this data?"

Tukhachevsky himself felt that he was a bit stupid with this sentence, and if he did not tell the other side the details of the situation on his side, wouldn't it be funny to expect the other side to deduce this battle without knowing it?

"Of course!"

Sure enough, when Manstein heard Tukhachevsky's words, he looked at him with the eyes of a fool and gave an affirmative answer without hesitation.

All right!

There was no way, just now I was going to test the reality of the German army, so I put forward a request to let them deduce the battle, but I didn't expect this move to let them taste the consequences so quickly.

The bitter fruit of one's own planting will be swallowed with tears.

Tukhachevsky gritted his teeth and said to the left and right: "Tell them the detailed data!"

The Soviet soldiers reluctantly handed over to the German officer corps various detailed data on the number, equipment, and training of the Soviet troops.

And after getting these data, Manstein and others also had a general understanding of the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army.

Generally speaking, most of the Soviet army's establishment is lacking, and there are many of their divisions, armies, and even group armies, but the number of soldiers in them is not satisfactory, most of the troops are not fully established, and the lack of weapons and equipment is also quite serious.

To make matters worse, these Soviets lacked special training, and many of them were farmers who had been improvised by the woolly bear's conscription committee, stuffed with a rifle and sent them to the battlefield!

It's just a bunch of recruits!

The German officers who heard the news were very surprised, and Manstein exclaimed: "Have you all fought against the Allied armies in this state before?"

Second Lieutenant Zhukov, who was full of pride in the Soviet army himself, straightened his chest and said proudly: "Of course!"

After finishing speaking, there was still a little contempt in my heart, look at these Hans, as if they had no knowledge, isn't it just a lack of soldiers and guns? What's the big deal, this kind of thing is not a matter at all in the woolly bear, since the time of Tsarist Russia, this situation has always existed in the army, in order to drink the blood of the soldiers, not only withheld the soldiers' salaries, but also tried every means to take out the property in the army and sell it, and all kinds of weapons were sold after they were sent, resulting in the weapons and equipment issued to the soldiers were dilapidated and old, and they were not usable at all!

The Tsar did not treat his own people as human beings, and those noble officers could not have treated them as human beings!

At least, in the Red Army now, although they lack the same weapons and equipment, at least their establishment is accurate, and there is no such thing as a division with only 5,000 men but reporting 10,000 people and eating up 500 empty salaries like in the days of Tsarist Russia!

Zhukov knew that this fine tradition of empty salaries, even now, still exists in many White Army.

A large part of the reason why the woolly bear was able to survive tenaciously under the joint strangulation of the Entente and the White Army was because the White Army was not as large as they advertised!

The Entente did provide them with a lot of weapons, but after these weapons entered the hands of the White Army, more than half of them were sold in a blink of an eye, and some of them were even sold to the Soviet Army, and became the weapons used by the Soviet Army to fight the White Army.

If the Entente knew about this kind of thing, I was afraid that they would vomit blood in anger!

Hearing Zhukov's answer, Manstein could only smile helplessly.

Well, it can be regarded as a long insight, he thought that the armies of all countries should be the same as the German army, with unified and sufficient equipment, sufficient and well-trained soldiers, and the support of a perfect logistics support system, but now he found that this situation seems to be only available to the German army, and even the Allied army that I saw on the side of the Entente before does not seem to have been able to completely solve these three problems.

Because he had a new understanding of the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army, Manstein lowered his psychological expectations for the Soviet army, and in the campaign deduction, because he felt that the Soviet army was insufficient in strength, weapons, training, and supplies, so he felt that the probability of the Soviet army winning the battle was not high, no more than 4 at most.

This result was unanimously endorsed by the five generals of the German army, and everyone thought so.

"Hehe, does your army really think so?"

Tukhachevsky was not angry at this result, he was obviously despised, but he did not mean to be angry at all, but the company commander Zhukov was very angry!

"I'm sorry, we think that if your army had taken Kursk ahead of schedule, even if your army lacked troops, weapons and supplies, the chances of winning this battle would still be more than fifty percent, in fact, in our internal deduction, General Mainz thinks that your army has a 70 percent chance of victory!"

"Hmm? Did General Mainz do the same thing?"

As soon as he heard that Major General Mainz had also made a prediction about this battle, Tukhachevsky's heart suddenly became interested.

Tukhachevsky is relatively unfamiliar with these rising stars like Manstein, and he has never been in contact with or know these people before, but for Major General Mainz, because the two had been in contact the year before, he knows each other's strength very well.

A veteran who was able to defeat Prussia in a very short time, and became the commander-in-chief of Hans's three armies, was definitely not an easy man!

Tukhachevsky could ignore the opinions of Manstein and others, but he could not ignore the opinions of Mainz.

Manstein was a little confused, wondering why the other party's eyes suddenly lit up.

When I was deducing before, the other party didn't seem to care very much, and it looked very casual.

But when he said the name of Major General Mainz, the other party's reaction immediately changed!

Since the other side has so calmly handed over detailed information about the Soviet army, the German army does not need to hide it, so Manstein simply introduced the deduction that Mainz conducted when he was in Hamburg before.

"General Mainz believes that there are two key points in this battle, Kursk and the Sumy region in the south, if the Soviet army can take these two areas, then the Entente can only eat up to 200,000 Soviet troops, if the Soviet army only takes Kursk and fails to take Sumy, then the Soviet army will lose at least 500,000 people in this battle, and if the Soviet army fails to take any of them, the 1.2 million Soviet troops will be wiped out!"

Please see the ununderlined version of the novel