WWII:BtB, Turn 10, Summer 43

 

With only five cards in their hands, both commanders have taken cautious movements at the beginning of the summer.

The first encounter appeared when Russian begun to mobilize his Northern Flank towards Leningrad. Two Russian infantry Fronts moved towards Pskov and stopped at Kholm forests.
	But German quickly brought 4th Pz Army into the area and attacked the Russians. But, protected by the heavy forests, German assault was rejected and Russians kept the position.
Then Russian Infantry moved towards the swamp area of Luga where they were rejoined by the fresh Armies garrisoned at Leningrad. During the summer, Leningrad finally finished their works in trenches.
	All of these Russian movements were preparing a Summer offensive with the arrival of three more Mechanized Fronts. Two were designated to the Northern Area (Luga and Leningrad) and the other to the Center (Tambov).
Interestingly, for half of the summer, there was a corridor running from Kharkov to Odessa, vacant of Axis units that Soviet did not try to use. Probably they were afraid of the presence of the mobile Pz Armies at Kerch, Melitopol and Kaluga, all of them able to cut off any retreat. But it could be funny to explore the possibility of sending a Mechanized Russian corps to cut Axis supply around Crimea. Nevertheless this opportunity disappeared when Axis close the gap at Poltava. Then Russian moved his Mechanized units to retake Kharkov and launched again an attack against Kerch, but it failed.
	The German Staff took a courageous decision. A German and a Romanian corps were sent behind the Russian lines to disrupt the supply of the tanks at Kharkov and avoid a full offensive this turn. This could gave some breath to German to relocated his defense around Kharkov, abandoning Kursk. Russian easily destroyed the weak units and consolidated the supply lines.
At Pskov, after a first rejected attack, Russian sent his two Mechanized Fronts and obtained a crushing victory. But Russian tanks did not advance into Pskov and only a small infantry corps occupied the point.

 

Whereas all the above maneuvers happened in Russia, German commander spent a lot of efforts in defeating Allied invasion at Calais. He needed four consecutive attacks against Americans and British units to finally push them back into the Channel waters. It is worthy to say that Allied did not spend a single operation in this area. Not even sending more reinforcements into the beachheads. Although the invasion has been defeated, his main goal, i.e., to divert German efforts to France has been a success as war has seen two fronts for almost a year.

In the last action of the turn, with many possibilities to break the front line at the North around Pskov, Russian decided to go for Replacements. Although it would cost him losing the tempo of the attack, it felt that an excessive optimistic advance could put in danger the supply lines. The heavy German Armies still stationed around Moscow and Tula are too menacing.

Losses:

Russian: 17, British: 9, US: 8.

German: 20, Romanian: 6.

 

VP:+10 for Axis. Although Kharkov was retaken by Russians, they spent 1 VP to remove a Stand Fast marker.