Part 35: Turn 32: January 22, 1942

The blizzard is winding down but we've still got time to do some serious damage.




More mediocre commanders getting promoted, nice win/loss ratio though.



Uhhhh alright.
On the Kalinin front we've got the 19th rifles in the 55th army, the 20th and 22nd rifles in the 30th army and the 23rd rifles in the 16th army. The 24th rifles are part of the 13th army up on the Leningrad front and the 21st rifles are part of the 61st army on the Southwestern front. The 4th and 6th Cavalry corps are in the 60th army on the Kalinin front, the 5th is in the 1st Shock Army and the 7th is in the Coastal Army down on the southern front.




Leningrad is free but we don't control the rails here yet so supplies are still trickling in. The rest of the front is looking a lot better, our troops have been taking it easier for the last turn or two and are in much better shape than most of the Germans.



The divisions in the city are in terrible shape, I really need to push the Germans back another 20 miles or so and get the supplies and reinforcements flowing in and get these armies up to full strength.



Further east the 4th Shock army gets deployed to the frontlines. These guys are well rested, well equipped and well trained. They're going to cut through the weakened divisions up here like butter.



And the trap starts to swing shut, unfortunately I fell just short of cutting the rail but I'll get it next turn. 3 German infantry divisions and a Panzer division get encircled with another dozen divisions or so under threat of being bagged in the next few turns. The panzer division's pocket is incredibly weak and I would not be surprised if it managed to escape.




With 2 cavalry armies swinging north our northern flank here is suddenly pretty weak. To fix this I rail in a reserve army, the 42nd, to occupy the gap. Unfortunately our rail system is still garbage at the front so they're going to have to walk the rest of the way.



Nothing much happens on this front until we get down to here. We manage to encircle a panzer and 2 motorized divisions (barely.) This encirclement is held together with shoestring and wishful thinking and I'd be very surprised if it held.




The 1st shock is pretty tired but the rest of the front is in pretty good shape. Overall the German line here looks pretty weak, there's probably some troops my planes didn't find though.



More Germans get cutoff. I've got too much infantry around here though and can't finish the encirclement.



2 more infantry divisions for my collection.




I'd love to scoop up a few more Germans down here as well.



That's 2 panzer divisions, a Hungarian mountain division, an elite Italian cavalry division and the Totenkopf SS division. Quite the prize.



A lot of units got sucked up into forming that pocket so I rail in a new army, the 47th, to prevent any counterattack from gaining momentum.



The southern front doesn't want to be left out and bags their own pet German infantry division to stay on par with the rest of the Red Army.




In the north the Germans realize that they're about to lose an entire army and begin a mass retreat. The 4 divisions that were pocketed are left to their fate.



On the western front our pocket fails and the Panzers escape, which is about what I expected. Oh well, the rest of the front makes up for it.







12 divisions pocketed this turn and more to come in the next few turns, beautiful. We launched 68 attacks this turn with 48 succeeding, no units were captured but we're about to make up for that.



I love putting those dots behind the line of advance.