This is the first time in this war that I have ordered a withdrawal over a sizeable section of the front. I expect the movement to be carried out in a manner worthy of the German Army. Our men's confidence in their innate superiority and their absolute determination to cause the enemy as much damage as possible must also condition the way in which this withdrawal is carried out.

Adolf Hitler Orders issued January 15, 1942

On December 6 the Red Army under General Zhukov launched the counter attack at Moscow. It appeared ambitious, with attacks along a wide front by the North-Western Front, Kalinin Front, Western Front and South-Western Fronts that began in December and built up into the New Year. There was even an airborne landing on January 18-22 by the 21st Parachute Brigade and 250th Airborne Regiment to the rear of the forces of German Army Group Centre facing Moscow. Stavka (High Command) did not realise that the German attacks had literally frozen in their tracks and still saw the threat to Moscow as extremely serious. Their attacks were prompted as much by desperation to take the pressure off the city than as a move to exploit their tactical advantage in winter warfare. In fact the three fronts were outnumbered by the German forces at Army Group Centre - they had 718,800 men, 7,985 guns and 720 tanks, while the Germans had 800,000 men, 14,000 guns and 1,000 tanks. The German forces were now operating at the end of a long logistic chain that stretched back through western Russia to Poland and bases in Germany. Though attacks by partisans had not become the threat that they would pose in 1942-43, and particularly in the last two years of the war, following Stalin's broadcast of July 5,1941, they were beginning to disrupt the free flow of supplies.

The Red Air Force that had been virtually eliminated in the opening months of Barbarossa was becoming a real threat to the Luftwaffe. The obsolete slow types like the big radial-engined Polikarpovs had been destroyed in the air and on the ground, but now fighters like the Lavochkin LAGG-3, Mikoyan-Gurevitch MiG-3 and the Yakovlev YAK-1 operating from airfields with heated hangars located around Moscow were able to intercept German bombers.

On December 4 the chief-of-staff of the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres) - German High Command - General Franz Halder noted that the German forces opposite Moscow had encountered a Soviet armoured brigade equipped with British tanks. On the same day a young Waffen-SS artillery officer with Reich wrote:

"These Russians seem to have an inexhaustible supply of men. Here they unload fresh troops from Siberia every day; they bring up fresh guns and lay mines all over the place. On the 30th we made our last attack - a hill known as Pear Hill and a village called Lenino. With artillery and mortar support we managed to take all of the hill and half of the village. But at night we had to give it all up again in order to defend ourselves more effectively against continuous Russian counter-attacks. We only needed 15 kilometres (8 miles) to get the capital within gun range - but we just could not make it."

The first Soviet attack in the early hours of December 5 was by General Ivan Konev's Kalinin Front whose troops punched across the frozen waters of the Upper Volga. Despite the severe cold the German resistance was so strong that only one of the three armies, the 51st under Yushkevich, enjoyed any success. By the end of the second day it had penetrated nearly 40km (25 miles) and recaptured the town of Turginovo.

On December 6 Zhukov's West Front attacked the over-extended Panzertruppen III and IV. The attack was initially undertaken by the three most northerly armies who made slow progress even when the 16th Army joined in on December 7. The Soviet tactics of frontal assaults were being held and the Germans were withdrawing in good order. At Stalin's bidding Zhukov switched to flanking attacks focusing on the key town of Klin to the north of Moscow that straddled the railway link to Leningrad. If Zhukov could capture it quickly, Panzergruppe III would be cut off and the left flank of Army Group Centre unhinged. The staff of the West and Bryansk Fronts were not as experienced in planning and operational skills and the ambitious flanking attacks would prove difficult to control and co-ordinate.

On December 7, as Field Marshal von Leeb was receiving reports from the front lines and adjusting the deployment of his forces to meet these threats, he was informed that new attacks were being launched, directed against his right flank. In Berlin Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the Commander in Chief of the German Army (OKH), who had recently suffered a heart attack, tendered his resignation to Hitler, who did not accept it.

On December 13 Timoshenko's South West Front began to attack north-westwards between Yelets and Livny. His 13th Army ripped into the left flank of the German 2nd Army, forcing Guderian to make a hurried withdrawal as his right flank was exposed and vulnerable.

Von Brauchitsch flew to Russia to confer with Bock and decided that Army Group Centre should withdraw to a "Winter Line" about 180km (111 miles) west of the front line. The line followed the north-south roadway just east of Vyazma through Zubtsov, Gzhatsk and Yukhnov. In the OKH General Halder pronounced the Soviet counter attack as "the greatest crisis in two World Wars" -there would be greater to come.

In Berlin Hitler was enraged by the withdrawal and on December 14 countermanded the orders and initiated a round of sackings. The gaunt von Bock, now a sick man, was replaced by von Kluge on December 18 and on Christmas Day Guderian, the Panzer expert, was sacked, along with another exponent of armoured warfare, General Erich Hopner. On December 19 Hitler, the former World War I corporal, accepted the resignation of von Brauchitsch and assumed command of the German Army.

Soviet paratroops board a Tupolev TB-3 (ANT-6) bomber. They exited by a hatch in the fuselage roof, sliding off the wing.

From December 15, on the day that Klin was liberated, the threat to Moscow diminished and the government ministers begun to return to their posts from the towns to the east where they had been evacuated.

On December 18 the Bryansk Front under General Cherevichenko was established to the south of Moscow. It would attack northwestwards to assist in a double envelopment of Army Group Centre.

On December 19, 1941 Hitler issued a General Order:

"Commanders and officers must, by way of personal participation in the fighting, compel the troops to offer fanatical resistance in their positions, regardless of enemy breakthroughs on the flank and rear. Only after well-prepared shortened rearward positions have been manned by reserves may withdrawal to such positions be considered."

Where troops were forced back Hitler insisted that they destroy the buildings that could be used as shelter by the advancing Soviet forces. Though this scorched earth policy was followed in some withdrawals, many Germans knew that smoke would attract roving Soviet patrols and it was self interest that prompted them to spare some of the thatched wooden or mud brick houses.

General Schaal, commanding the 10th Panzer Division, paints a grim picture of the withdrawal: "Discipline began to crack. There were more and more soldiers making their own way back to the west, without any weapons, leading a calf on a rope, or drawing a sledge with potatoes behind them - just trudging westward with no one in command. Men killed by aerial bombardment were no longer buried. Supply units, frequently without officers, had the decisive way on the roads, while the fighting troops of all branches, including anti-aircraft artillery, were desperately holding out in the front line. The entire supply train - except where units were firmly led - was streaming back in wild flight." It was the first German retreat of World War II.

In the south in bitter weather on December 29 Soviet soldiers and naval infantry made a landing at Feodosiya in the Crimea and pushed back the German forces in the east of the peninsula. Just over two weeks later the South West Front under Marshal Timoshenko attacked Army Group South. Stalin had grand ambitions, hoping that they would be able to trap the Germans against the Sea of Azov in a huge pocket. The Soviet forces reached the River Orel and cut the Kharkov to Lozovaya railway but the attack finally halted in the spring mud in early March.

To the north on January 7 Stalin ordered General Kirill Merestkov, commanding the newly created Volkhov Front, to attack and destroy the German forces to the north of Lake Ilmen on the line of the River Volkhov. On a narrow front he committed the 59th Army, 2nd Shock Army and 52nd Army. The weather that had been an enemy for the Germans now came to their aid and the attack foundered in mud in the March thaw. Despite this Stalin insisted that the Soviet forces should not withdraw and the 62km (38.5-mile) salient was pinched out in June by German counter attacks. Among the prisoners captured was the commanding officer of the 2nd Shock Army Lt General Andrey Vlasov. Vlasov had distinguished himself earlier in the defence of Moscow and realised that Stalin's orders had condemned him and his men to death or capture. A loyal Soviet general he now became a disenchanted ally of the Germans.

In the offensive the town of Demyansk south of Lake Ilmen was cut off by the 3rd Shock Army and 54th Army, part of the North-West Front under General Korotchin. Some 100,000 men of the Army Group North, 2nd Army Corps and Waffen-SS 3rd SS-Panzer-Division "Totenkopf were trapped in the pocket for a 14-month siege from February 8, to April 21, 1942. The troops were re-supplied by air and though they suffered 3,535 killed and 10,966 wounded they were eventually able to break out on April 21, 1942. The defence of the pocket had tied down 18 Soviet divisions and six brigades that could have assisted in the winter offensive of 1941-42. Field Marshal von Leeb, commanding Army Group North, who had requested permission to withdraw, voluntarily relinquished his command.

The successful defence of these small pockets and the "stand and fight" order that actually prevented the collapse of Army Group Centre would be seen by Hitler as a panacea for all subsequent battles of encirclement. A year later, with fateful consequences, he would issue similar orders to the 6th Army at Stalingrad.

In the south, where Hitler had sacked von Rundstedt, commanding Army Group South, following withdrawals in the Crimea, his replacement. Von Reichenau, died of a heart attack on January 18 and was in turn replaced by von Bock.

The fighting had lasted from December 1941 to March 1942 and in that time, in some sectors around Moscow, German forces had been pushed back as much as 500km (310 miles).

The Soviet counter attack was not just confined to taking the pressure off Moscow. It was also intended to relieve the sieges of Leningrad and Sevastopol. The operations around Moscow were the most ambitious, with parachute drops and attacks by Partisans. With reports of German soldiers withdrawing, Hitler ordered that they should stand and fight. Though this prevented a complete collapse, he began to see it as the panacea for all Soviet offensives.

In the five months from June 22 to November 26. 1941 187,000 men were killed or posted missing in the German armed forces. The wounded for this period were 555,000, of whom two thirds might be expected to return to duty. The killed and missing for the whole of the Eastern Front from November 27 to March 31, 1942 were put at 108,000 and the wounded at 268,000, a total of 376,000 men. To this figure must be added 228,000 frost-bite cases and over a quarter of a million other sick, mainly from exhaustion, exposure, typhus, scarlet fever, jaundice, diphtheria and stomach and skin complaints. Most of these were the result of the terrible conditions in which front line troops were expected to live. By April the overall deficiency in manpower in the East stood at 625,000.

Men were not the only casualties of the fighting. A quarter of a million horses, half of those that had entered Russia, perished in the bitter cold. The Germans lost 2,300 armoured vehicles, of which 1,600 were either PzKpfw Mk III or Mk IV tanks or assault guns. In April the artillery were short of 2,000 guns and howitzers and 7,000 anti-tank guns.

Now, just as Stalin was listening to the advice of his senior commanders, Hitler was dismissing suggestions that German forces should withdraw to avoid being cut off in vulnerable salients. Hitler's tactics were described by Halder as Flickwerk - patchwork. Defences were cobbled together to restore breaks by deploying troops from other areas. Stalin, however, was giving his commanders strategic objectives, what today would be called "mission statements". They were tasked with defence or attack, but given freedom to conduct operations in the manner they thought was most effective at a tactical level. It was a winning formula.

With the onset of the spring mud the front finally stabilised. Territory had been liberated in the north, producing a large salient with a series of smaller salients, like the truncated fingers of a huge hand, facing south-west towards Vitebsk. To the south a German salient had been created with Vyazma at its base and Rzhev at its northernmost point. Hitler would delude himself that this was a potential jumping off point for a renewed attack on Moscow in the summer of 1942. Vyazma was held until the spring of 1943 and during its occupation thousands of young men and women were deported to Nazi Germany as slave labourers. Prior to their withdrawal the Germans destroyed practically the whole city.

To the south the long salient that had hooked around Tula had been eliminated by the Bryansk Front and the front line effectively straightened out into a rough north-south line. Zhukov's West Front had pushed towards the Dniepr north of Bryansk to produced a small salient.

The counter offensive liberated areas that had been under German control and revealed the brutal character of Rassenkampf and the German occupation. It provided further fuel to the fire of anger felt by many Russians.

In Moscow the Russian Ilya Ehrenburg, writing in the Soviet Army newspaper Red Star, commented dryly on the successful counter attack and the German Army's experience of the winter of 1941-1942.

"The Russian winter was a surprise for the Prussian tourists".

Headed by an officer a typical German horse-drawn supply column moves along a dirt track in Russia.

Though the tanks would be the cutting edge of the attacks, supported by Panzergrenadiers in SdKfz 251 half tracks, the bulk of German forces would advance at the same speed as Napoleon's Grande Armee when it entered Russia in 1812. Men marched and were backed up by horse-drawn wagons, guns and field kitchens - the German Army deployed 750,000 horses for the attack on the Soviet Union. Of the 153 divisions in Barbarossa, 119 still contained horse-drawn vehicles.

A former Czech Army Skoda 100mm horse-drawn field gun and limber taken into service with the German Army.

Hitler never fully grasped the scale of operations in Russia. The victories in Poland and the West had been because roads were good or the distances short. The Germans were attacking from well-stocked and accessible depots and the action was so fast that Hitler had little chance to interfere. Had he made Moscow the priority target from the outset the two Panzertruppen that straddled the Moscow highway, the only metalled road outside of the cities, could have used it to push through to the city. If Moscow had been captured, it might have been fought for like Stalingrad a year later, but capturing it would have been a savage blow to Russian morale. It would also have severed the north-south rail communications in the USSR. Stalin might have taken the USSR out of the war even before the USA had joined the fight against Nazi Germany.

On September 27 the first autumn rains began to fall, they would create the rasputitsa - "the season of no roads" - in which dusty tracks became deep muddy sloughs that halted or slowed down men and vehicles. The rasputitsa occurred twice a year, in the autumn rains and in the spring thaw. Known by the Germans as the Schlammperiode it had a significant effect on operations between 1941 and 1944 and could stop or slow down Soviet as well as German offensives.

Three days after the first rain, Operation Taifun (Typhoon) was launched with Moscow as its objective. The II Panzerarmee and Panzergruppen III and IV faced three Soviet Fronts: the West Front under General Ivan Konev composed of seven armies, the Bryansk Front under General Andrey Eremenko with three armies, and in the rear Stalin's old comrade from the Civil War, the incompetent Marshal Semyon Budenny, commanded the Reserve Front of five armies.

A column of supply wagons moves along a muddy, but viable, road. In later years Partisan attacks would make these "safe" areas behind the lines another war zone.

It was a formidable force but a greater threat was "General Winter", the severe Russian winter that was beginning to show itself following the autumn rains. The poor roads caused the German supply system to break down and the delivery of food, fuel and ammunition became erratic.

On December 8, as winter gripped Russia, the German commanders realised that they must dig in to see out one of the coldest winters on record. The thermometers now registered -35°C (-31°F). The German armies had suffered 250,000 dead and twice that number of wounded and by the end of the year were 340,000 under strength. Troop reinforcements were being transferred from France to bring formations up to strength. A soldier in the 69th Rifle Regiment in the 10th Panzer Division confided ruefully to his diary: "We are waging the winter war as if this was one of our Black Forest winters back home." Of the 26 supply trains required daily by Army Group Centre only eight or ten were making it through the bitter weather.

The horses that had accompanied the German forces from Europe suffered cruelly in the Russian winter. Oats and fodder were in short supply and unlike tough Russian ponies they could not use their hoofs to clear the snow and graze on winter grass.

THE KIEV ENCIRCLEMENT
MAP LEGEND

(A) Von Bock's drive toward Moscow halted by Timoshenko's Group of Armies. (B)

(C) Von Rundstedt's drive toward Kiev halted by Budenny's Group of Armies. (D)

(E) The von Weichs and Guderian Armies (von Bock Group) advance to the Desna.

(F) The von Stuelpnegel, von Kleist, and von Schobert armies (von Rundstedt Group) advance to the Dnieper.

(G) The initial crossing of the Dnieper.

(H) The "wedge and trap" encirclement of the Kiev salient.

In September 1941, after Red Army resistance stiffened east of Smolensk, Hitler temporarily abandoned his direct thrust on Moscow by turning one half of Army Group Center’s panzer forces (Guderian’s Second Panzer Group) to the south to envelop and destroy the Soviet Southwestern Front, which was defending Kiev. By virtue of Guderian’s southward turn, the Wehrmacht destroyed the entire Southwestern Front east of Kiev during September, inflicting 600,000 losses on the Red Army, while Soviet forces west of Moscow conducted a futile and costly offensive against German forces around Smolensk. After this Kiev diversion, Hitler launched Operation Typhoon in October, only to see his offensive falter at the gates of Moscow in early December. Some claim that had Hitler launched Operation Typhoon in September rather than October, the Wehrmacht would have avoided the terrible weather conditions and reached and captured Moscow before the onset of winter.

This argument too does not hold up to close scrutiny. Had Hitler launched Operation Typhoon in September, Army Group Center would have had to penetrate deep Soviet defenses manned by a force that had not squandered its strength in fruitless offensives against German positions east of Smolensk. Furthermore, Army Group Center would have launched its offensive with a force of more than 600,000 men threatening its ever-extending right flank and, in the best reckoning, would have reached the gates of Moscow after mid-October just as the fall rainy season was beginning.

Finally, the Stavka saved Moscow by raising and fielding 10 reserve armies that took part in the final defense of the city, the December 1941 counterstrokes, and the January 1942 counteroffensive. These armies would have gone into action regardless of when Hitler launched Operation Typhoon. While they effectively halted and drove back the German offensive short of Moscow as the operation actually developed, they would also have been available to do so had the Germans attacked Moscow a month earlier. Furthermore, if the latter were the case, they would have been able to operate in conjunction with the 600,000 plus force of Army Group Center’s overextended right flank.

Battle of Kiev

Hitler commenced Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941, after delaying his invasion of the Soviet Union for roughly two months so that the Wehrmacht could conquer Yugoslavia and Greece. Some have claimed that this delay proved fatal for Operation Barbarossa. Had Germany invaded the Soviet Union in April rather than June, they state, Moscow and Leningrad would have fallen, and Hitler would have achieved his Barbarossa objectives.

This assertion is incorrect. Hitler’s Balkan diversion took place at a time of year when the spring thaw (the rasputitsa [literally, “time of clogged roads”]) prevented extensive military operations of any scale, particularly mobile panzer operations, in the western Soviet Union. Furthermore, the forces Hitler committed in the Balkans was only a small portion of his overall Barbarossa force, and it returned from the Balkans in good condition and in time to play its role in Barbarossa.

A corollary to this issue is the thesis that the Wehrmacht would have performed better if Hitler had postponed Barbarossa until the summer of 1942. This is quite unlikely, since Stalin’s program to reform, reorganize, and reequip the Red Army, which was woefully incomplete when the Germans struck in 1941, would have been fully completed by the summer of 1942. Although the Wehrmacht would still have been more tactically and operationally proficient than the Red Army in 1942, the latter would have possessed a larger and more formidable mechanized force equipped with armor superior to that of the Germans. In addition, Hitler would have invaded the Soviet Union with the full knowledge that he was then engaging in a two-front war with the United States (and perhaps Britain) and the Soviet Union.

Important Eastern Front land battle. After German forces encircled Leningrad in the north, Adolf Hitler turned his attention to the center part of the Soviet front. His Führer Directive 36 on 6 September focused German preparations on a drive against Moscow in Operation TAIFUN (TYPHOON), entrusted to Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center. Bock commanded 5 field armies consisting of 14 panzer divisions, 9 panzergrenadier divisions, and 44 infantry divisions. He planned to use his armor to seize two key towns, Vyazma (some 150 miles west of Moscow) and Bryansk (220 miles southwest of Moscow) in order to open the road to the Soviet capital for his infantry. The leading German units involved were Colonel General Heinz Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group, Colonel General Hermann Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Group, Colonel General Erich Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group, and Colonel General Maximillian von Weich’s Second Army.

To defend Moscow, the Soviets had assembled 6 armies under Colonel General Ivan Konev’s Western Front. They were backed by 4 second-echelon armies. To Konev’s immediate south were 2 additional armies of Marshal Semen Budenny’s Reserve Front. Three more reserve armies were eventually brought forward. All the armies were badly understrength: totaling 80 divisions, they were, in fact, the equivalent of only 25 full-strength divisions. The Germans had more than twice the number of tanks (an estimated 1,000 to 479), and the Soviets had only about 360 aircraft to at least twice as many German planes. The Soviets also suffered from a shortage of trained officers, as many had been pulled out of their units in August and September to organize new formations in the rear. In addition, the Soviets had shortages in modern antitank and antiaircraft weapons.

Lieutenant General Andrei Yeremenko commanded Soviet forces in the Bryansk area where the Germans planned to attack. On 2 September, Stavka (the Soviet High Command) ordered Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front to move in two different directions, toward Roslav and southwest on Starodub in an effort to halt the German advance. The Soviet effort ended in failure, necessitating a return to defensive operations by 13 September. German forces also moved into a gap of some 36 miles between the Bryansk and Southwestern Fronts.

On 30 September, Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group began an advance that carried it 50 miles the first day and 100 miles over the next three days. Guderian took the key rail junction of Orel, 150 miles in the Soviet rear, on 8 October. Two days earlier, 2nd Panzer Group had surrounded Bryansk. At the same time, von Weich’s forces moved from the west, trapping the Soviet Third, Thirteenth, and Fiftieth Armies, although some of Yeremenko’s forces escaped to the east on 25 October.

To the north, meanwhile, Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Group drove into the gap between the Soviet Nineteenth and Thirtieth Armies northwest of Vyazma, while 4th Panzer Group penetrated a vulnerable area between the Reserve and Bryansk Fronts. Konev countered by sending his deputy, Lieutenant General I. V. Boldin, and his operational group of three divisions and two tank brigades to strike the flank of 3rd Panzer Group on 3–4 October, but these efforts came too late. Boldin’s force was caught in the German encirclement, along with the greater part of Konev’s Nineteenth, Twentieth, Twenty-Fourth, and Third-Second Armies west of Vyazma. General Konstantin Rokossovsky had been sent to Vyazma with his staff to gather five reinforced divisions there for a counterattack on 6 October, only to find no Soviet divisions and German tanks already on the scene. He fled the town and soon discovered that he was between the inner and outer rings of the encirclement; he decided to break out to the northeast, picking up units along the way, including the 18th Infantry (the Home Guard Division) and an NKVD unit. These units broke out and joined Konev in Mozhaisk, 40 miles west of Moscow, where surviving elements of the Western and Reserve Fronts were forming a new 135-mile-long line to Kaluga.

Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin, Nineteenth Army’s commander, also broke out of the encirclement to the east with two-plus divisions on the night of 12–13 October. The Germans were hampered by the onset of the rainy season, which turned the roads into quagmires. But Stalin’s penchant for linear defense with fronts deployed in single operational echelon had been pierced by German armor supported by artillery and Stukas, resulting in the encirclement and capture of as many as 660,000 Soviet troops, 1,242 tanks, and 5,412 artillery pieces. Vyazma surrendered on 14 October and Bryansk on 20 October. This engagement was, however, the last of the great German encirclements.

When word reached Moscow of the defeat, a great many citizens took flight, necessitating the proclamation of martial law in the capital on 19 October. Konev received the blame for the defeat; he was replaced by General of the Army Georgii Zhukov, who was charged with the final defense of Moscow.