As the Chinese Red Army's power to rescue Tambov was expected to appear for a long time, it formed a change in the central front-line attack on Karachi. The differences between the front-line commanders were immediately transmitted back and became differences in the command center.

Model tended to Schmidt's opinion, believing that the entire central front has begun to move forward, and a large outcrop appeared in the direction of Tambov, and the tip of the outcrop is Tambov. Once the Red Army in the encirclement is eaten, the Central Army Group can quickly form an advantageous force. Whether he continues to attack the grassland military region, attack Moscow northward or turn southward to Stalingrad, he believes that his side has the initiative.

Zeitzler tends to Reinhardt's opinion. He believes that the significance of the armored army is not to be used for siege, nor is it enough to give full play to its advantages in siege. At present, except for 8 armored divisions of the two armored armies, there are only 10 infantry divisions in total, and 4 of them are very precious armored grenade divisions. Now there are fewer armored grenade divisions than armored divisions, and there are only 6 pure infantry divisions. It does not have a significant advantage over the defenders in the city. The losses of forced attack will definitely be huge.

In his opinion, since the Eastern Army Group has been transferred to take over the siege mission, Model's goal can also be completed, but it will be slightly delayed for a few days. The most important task of the armored forces at present is to attack the flanks of the Central Front in the south to fight to eat the 150,000 mobile forces, and then cut off Baglamyan's retreat. Although he is more confident in the Italian troops in Karachi, what if there is a big loophole? In his eyes, the Bryansk Front in the encirclement of Tambov was already caught in a jar. He hopes to adjust the target and eat the Central Front. When the gap between the north and south wings cannot be opened, it is an ideal choice to bloom in the center first.

These two proposals made Hoffman hesitate: on the one hand, he agreed that the armored army should not be used for siege, especially for street fighting; on the other hand, soldiers are very fast, and the benefits of eating the Bryansk front are visible and tangible, and he did not think that Tambov was as difficult as Stalingrad. As long as he was willing to pay the price, the city could be taken down in the short term.

However, the results of trying to siege in two days made him frown: the front-line exchange ratio quickly dropped from above 1:13 in the early stage to less than 1:4. With the strong assistance of the Air Force, the two armored armies of the north and south wings still paid more than 10,000 casualties, but the results were very few. They only compressed the Red Army's defense line by 10-15 kilometers. It is expected that the casualties caused to the opponent will be less than 50,000, and there are many minor wounded soldiers who can participate in the battle again.

The more than 10,000 casualties seemed not too great, but if the 17,000 casualties in the early stage were added, the total casualties of the German army were nearly 30,000, and several infantry divisions could be used as warning lines below 80%. This made Hoffman finally determined: the Eastern Army Group was responsible for siege, and the two armored armies quickly moved south to prepare to encircle and annihilate the flank of the Central Front 70 kilometers north of Borissogrebsk.

In order to alleviate the chaos in the army's dispatch and prevention, Zeitzler not only fine-tuned the marching order, but also suggested that the Second Armored Army did not have to transfer to the southern wing first, but directly let the Eastern Army Group take over the defense line at the cost of a day slowing down the overall process. Considering that the two Armored Army Groups had used up the fourth fuel base in the early operations, Hoffman agreed to the change and ordered the rapid strengthening of front-line supplies.

On the evening of May 30, the vanguard of the Eastern Army Group arrived at the Tambov defense line and successively replaced the defense with two armored armies. Although the defense change work continued until late at night on June 1, the dominance of the Tambov encirclement was fully in charge of Weix. He set up the command of the Eastern Army Group in Voronezh.

In order to better command the war, late at night that day, the German base camp began to move south, from Smolensk to the center of Kharkov, and the two army commands of the South B group merged! According to changes in the battlefield situation, the head of state issued a series of adjustment orders one after another, the most important ones were three:

First, General Ehad Rous's 3rd Armored Army cooperated with the Oriental Army Group to stand by on the front line of Orel and Voronezh;

Second, General Model commanded the 2nd and 4th Armored Army to annihilate the right wing troops of the enemy Central Front;

Third, General Hot commanded other troops of the B Army Group to defend the Karachi line.

The command center also formed a unified opinion on the remaining Bryansk Front Army in the encirclement of Tambov, believing that Tambov's enemy does not need to be rushed to fight, and it may be more useful to keep it. Weix and Zeitzler were not giving up and wanted to use this bait to hang fish from the Western Front or the Grassland Military Region. They did not believe that the Russians would put this huge gap and sit idly by. Once the Red Army was dispatched, the 3rd Army on standby would have a chance immediately.

They never expected that Stalin was actually more anxious than them. When Leiper reported that the Bryant Front had only 200,000 troops left after the war lasted for several days, and there were not enough supplies, equipment and supplies, he was completely in a hurry and even those who did not understand military could understand what such a large gap meant on the Central Front, let alone Stalin, who claimed to be a "strategic commander". On the one hand, he no longer interfered in the specific command of the General Staff, but on the other hand, he tried every means to mobilize troops to reinforce Tambov, but this effort hit a nail in all aspects:

At first, he hoped that Konev could take the initiative to stand up and say that the Grassland Military Region was willing to send troops to support him. However, before he could speak, Konev's telegram to seek help first hit the base camp and reported that the Grassland Military Region was threatened by enemy armored forces, and its troops were unbearable to use, and demanded that the troops and materials and equipment be quickly increased;

Then he hoped to put his hopes on Meletskov, hoping to draw troops from the Western Front to attack Orel to relieve the pressure on Tambov. Meletskov did not refuse explicitly, but made a request: the Western Front would weaken the defense of Moscow. He hoped that the base camp could give up support to Leningrad and replenish its troops to Moscow, and then he sent troops to attack Orel to demand that Volkhov's front be handed over to the Western Front.

Although Hoffmann clearly stated that siege rather than capturing Leningrad was the current main task when explaining the combat mission of the Northern Army Group, the German army has not built a tight siege of Leningrad in recent times. However, Stalin must not lose Leningrad politically, rather than lose Tambov, and cannot lose Leningrad! Therefore, he refused to transfer Volkhov's front to Moscow and only agreed to let the Independent 7th Army go south.

Although the 7th Independent Army was relatively large, with a number of more than 150,000 people, the strength of one Independent Army alone was far from enough. Meletskov knew very well that the German army had ambushed at least an armored army in the central area. With the strong defense line in the Orel area and the more than 100,000 troops defended, any force with less than 300,000 troops to attack Orel was a delivery of vegetables, so he continued to ask for troops and resources.

Discussions surrounding saving the central defense line quickly formed ripples at the Moscow Base Camp.

Stalin first frowned and listened to Zhukov's report: Bagramiyan had begun an attack on Karachi, but the battle was not smooth. The Italians not only relied on the solid defense line to resist, but the German air force also added huge pressure to the front line.

"Tambov is in danger, Comrade Leider's telegrams asked for help were called one by one, and Karachi was unable to start the situation for a long time." Stalin held his beloved carved pipe. Although his tone was calm, his inner anxiety was vividly revealed on the paper. "Comrade Constantine, what are you going to do next?"

"Now I can only hope that the comrades of the Bryansk Front can persist to the end, at least until Karachi is completely conquered." Zhukov was also embarrassed. The Central Front had no air superiority, and the troops in Baglamyan's hands were restrained when fighting. What was even more unexpected was that the two Italian infantry divisions and one Italian armored division defending near Karachi were not weak, and there were two German infantry divisions next to it to provide flanking cover, which was not smooth to fight.

"Then please tell me how much time will it take to conquer Karachi?"

“It may take 7-10 days.”

"I don't think Tambov can hold on for that long." Stalin shook his head, "Once Tambov is lost, there will be huge loopholes in the entire front, and even if you capture Karachi at that time, it will be useless. Another method must be used."

"What do you mean?" Vasilevsky already knew that Stalin was secretly contacting the troops in the past two days. He and Zhukov were completely aware of this private action, but they both pretended not to know and did not point it out. There was only one thing that the two had the same opinion. They must not send reinforcements to Tambov, as they would definitely be eaten.

"I want to establish the Moscow Front, with Comrade Tolbuhin as the commander of the front, responsible for the defense in the southwest and southern directions of Moscow." Stalin said calmly, "It is initially considered to transfer the 7th Army and the Base Camp reserves into the Western Front, and then 4-5 armies were drawn from the Western Front to form the Moscow Front."

Given that the Western Front's strength was not enough to fully support the battle between the two ends, Stalin, who was forced to helplessly, finally forced all the reserve fronts, which had just formed and had weak combat power, into the Western Front, and then distributed 400,000 troops from the Western Front to form the Moscow Front. On the surface, it seemed that the strength and garrison of the Western Front had not changed, but in fact, due to combat effectiveness, the combat capability of the Western Front has been reduced by a large margin.

Huasilevsky's face was very wonderful. He pretended to have just learned the news and shouted in surprise: "Oh, this is great, but the base camp cannot have a reserve team. Do you see if you can deploy the troops to the grassland military region first and ask Comrade Konev to pull the current troops of the grassland military region to Moscow to form a reserve team, so that we can gain another strong team in autumn."

Facing Vasilevsky who was pretending to be confused, Stalin was really anxious. (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!