Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
by Mikhail Kucherov
[Regnum] On September 30, 1941, German troops launched an offensive toward Moscow. Operation Typhoon began, with the aim of encircling Soviet forces and swiftly capturing the capital.
The threat of losing Moscow lingered until December. According to one version, German motorcyclists reached the outskirts of Khimki. But the Wehrmacht was stopped and, by April 1942, driven back from the city. Over the course of seven months, German losses on the Eastern Front amounted to over 615,000 (for comparison, 44,000 in Poland and 154,000 during the entire campaign in France).
It was near Moscow, as Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel admitted at the Nuremberg Trials, that his illusions about the success of the Barbarossa plan were finally dispelled.
But at the beginning of the Moscow operation, not only the ideologically charged Nazis but also the sober-minded Prussian generals expected Moscow to fall in the fall of 1941, just as the capital of another major warring power, Paris, had fallen in the summer of 1940. The progress of the war convinced the Germans that the "Barbarossa" scenario would be realized. But at some point, everything went wrong.
FAST HEINZ ATTACKS
By the time of the offensive on Moscow, the armies of Group Center constituted half of all Reich forces operating against the USSR. Adolf Hitler set the goal of taking Moscow by the end of the fourth month of the campaign, i.e., by the end of October 1941, regardless of the damage to the city. Long-term plans called for the liquidation of the city and the extermination of its inhabitants or their deportation to Germany.
The main obstacle for the invaders was the Vyazemskaya line of defense, located 300 km from Moscow and 800 kilometers long; its backbone was made up of forces from the Western, Reserve, and Bryansk fronts.
But, contrary to the expectations of the Soviet command, instead of the Minsk and Warsaw highways, the German leadership chose the south (the Shostka and Novgorod-Seversky region) for the offensive.
On October 3, Field Marshal Guderian, nicknamed "Swift Heinz," had reached Orel with tanks, covering a third of the distance to Moscow by the following day. That day, Hitler, from the podium of the Berlin Sports Palace, announced "an operation of gigantic proportions that will destroy the enemy in the East."
At the same time, the enemy launched a powerful attack in the direction of Kaluga and Vyazma. When the Red Army units were forced to retreat on October 7, 1941, the resulting 500-kilometer-long breach allowed the Germans to create two large pockets: Bryansk and Vyazma, which, according to various estimates, trapped up to 700,000 Red Army soldiers and officers. Only a few groups managed to break out, although occasionally regiments with artillery emerged from the encirclement.
Those captured were held in camps the Germans hastily erected, enclosing bare fields with barbed wire. Military medic Mstislav Yakovenko recalled:
“It was possible to survive for several days without food, but without water it was unbearable... As soon as a prisoner’s hand was pushed through the wire to fill a tin or a mug with water, a sentry’s shot would immediately ring out, and the prisoner would fall, killed or wounded.”
Social tensions in the capital grew. On October 15, the Central Committee of the Party, ministries, and foreign embassies were evacuated to Kuibyshev (now Samara). For the first time in its history, the metro stopped working (it was even prepared for an explosion), and grocery stores closed.
It seemed the situation was developing, if not according to the "Paris" scenario (the French capital was essentially surrendered without a fight), then according to the "Warsaw" scenario. However, by November, it became clear that the advancing divisions of Army Group Center were bogged down, literally and figuratively.
THERE IS NO BAD WEATHER
After the fact, German military leaders explained the failure near Moscow by the actions of "General Frost" in conjunction with "Colonel Rasputitsa" - just as Napoleon's marshals explained the failures of the 1812 campaign.
The torrential rains of mid-October did indeed make the roads muddy, making the German advance much more difficult. However, this same circumstance also hampered our troops' defense: the T-34s would get stuck on the mounds, making it extremely difficult to pull them out. Staff cars were towed by the tanks.
The enemy had a tool to overcome the muddy roads: half-track tractors, which were used at night when frost formed an icy crust on the road.
"General Frost" did indeed intervene, but not near Moscow, but in the area of the already blockaded Leningrad: the intrusion of Arctic air masses from the Kara Sea caused temperatures to drop to -35°C. However, in the Moscow region, the winter of 1941–1942 was not abnormally cold.
FACTOR ONE: TIME GAINED
The "weather" theory was correct in one respect: the Wehrmacht's strategic plans did not, in fact, involve delaying the capture of Moscow until winter. This is the primary reason for the Nazis' defeat in the battle for our capital.
The initial blitzkrieg plan envisioned taking the USSR's capital and advancing further east within the first 10-12 weeks of the campaign, meaning no later than October. The initial pace of combat gave the Wehrmacht high command the pretext for making precisely such plans. However, the enemy's advance was permanently constrained in three sectors of the front— near Kiev, in the central part of the RSFSR, and near Leningrad, which was blockaded but not captured.
At the beginning of winter, the Wehrmacht's infantry divisions faced a massive loss of horses, as there was simply nothing to feed them. Goebbels's newsreels portrayed the Reich army as being completely motorized, but in reality, horse-drawn transport played a significant role—it was horses that pulled the heavy weapons.
Moreover, the Germans, not counting on long-term battles, were forced to waste precious fuel on heating.
The front didn't collapse, time was gained, although the situation remained critical in October. Georgy Zhukov, commander of the Western Front since October 10, assumed command at a time when the Mozhaisk defensive line, 120 kilometers from Moscow, was the final line of defense.
One of the key moments in the defense of Moscow was the feat of the Panfilovites on November 16, when a detachment of the 4th company of the 1075th regiment, under the command of political instructor Vasily Klochkov, held off the onslaught of German tanks for several hours at the Dubosekovo siding, destroying up to 18 enemy vehicles on the approaches to the Volokolamsk highway.
At the same time, the encircled units near Bryansk and Vyazma continued to fight, holding back 24 German divisions. They won critically important weeks.
It is known that the Siberian and Far Eastern divisions played a key role in the victory at Moscow. They began to be transferred from the Amur and Primorye regions to the west as early as the summer of 1941. Intelligence reports that Japan had no intention of entering the war against the USSR also played a role.
Less well known is that at the crucial moment, a difficult decision was made to transfer tank reserves from Leningrad, intended to break the blockade.
In addition, approximately 140 minefields were erected around the capital, and in the forests near Moscow, teams of five to seven men chopped down pine trees to create impassable obstacles for tanks. The enemy was held back by trench warfare until the Siberians arrived—and the decisive turning point in the battle.
THE SECOND FACTOR IS AIR DEFENSE
The second factor was winning the battle in the air. Reichsmarschall of the Air Force Hermann Göring and his generals greatly underestimated the capabilities of our air defenses. Addressing the Luftwaffe, Göring declared:
"You bombed England. It will be much easier over Moscow. If the Russians have anti-aircraft guns, they are few in number. They don't have searchlights, balloons, or night fighters."
In reality, Moscow was defended by approximately 1,000 anti-aircraft guns of all calibers. Floating at altitudes of 2–4.5 kilometers (higher than in the skies over London, a battle for which the Germans also lost), the balloons interfered with Luftwaffe bombers, forcing them to climb higher, which significantly reduced the accuracy of their shells.
At night, the capital was darkened: light in the window, as a famous Soviet poster proclaimed, was help to the enemy.
As a result of the heaviest raid by the German Air Force on October 29, 1941 (when the Bolshoi Theater, the Moscow State University building on Mokhovaya Street, and part of the party buildings on Staraya Square were hit), air defense forces shot down 74 of the more than 300 bombers that took part in the raid.
Soon, the air raids began to taper off due to heavy Luftwaffe losses. Bomber aircraft harassed the capital and rear areas less and less—the ground forces, which were increasingly struggling on the ground, needed assistance.
FACTOR THREE: DISCIPLINE AND IDEOLOGY
The third factor was winning the psychological war. Here, the work was conducted in two directions: force and propaganda.
On October 17, the first secretary of the Moscow city committee, Alexander Shcherbakov, assured the city's residents over the radio that the capital would not be surrendered, and NKVD forces restored order within 24 hours, arresting or executing looters and setting up guard posts along the entire perimeter. As an additional measure, they hung huge posters announcing Lyubov Orlova's concert, which had a particularly encouraging effect on Muscovites.
Muscovites were informed daily via radio and newspapers that Comrade Joseph Stalin and the Red Army command were at work.
On November 7, the famous parade on Red Square took place, lasting 25 minutes. It was prepared in the strictest secrecy. Even the commanders of the units participating in the event, to whom invitations were delivered overnight, were not informed. Even the scheduled start time of 10:00 was moved forward two hours.
Stalin's speech, delivered at 8:10 a.m., demonstrated the USSR's readiness to fight to the last—including against its British allies (the United States had not yet entered the war at that time).
Soon the enemy and allies became convinced that the statements that Moscow would not be surrendered were backed up by military force.
During the December counteroffensive, Soviet troops pushed the Germans back 100–350 kilometers from Moscow. By April 1942, they had liberated the Moscow, Tula, Kalinin, and Ryazan regions, as well as some districts of the Smolensk and Oryol regions.
Heads rolled at German headquarters amid the failed offensive. Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was forced to hand over his duties as commander of the ground forces to the Führer personally. Colonel General Erich Hoepner, commander of the 4th Panzer Group advancing on Moscow, was dismissed from service and stripped of his awards and pension. In 1944, out of bitterness, he joined the organizers of the anti-Hitler assassination attempt and was executed.
And then, by the end of 1941, the first, catastrophic phase of the war had ended. The Great Patriotic War continued to be a terrible ordeal, but the threat of Nazi enslavement had receded.
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