War Without Garlands: Operation Barbarossa 1941-1942

Moscow… A defence crust forms

The Soviet leadership was taken aback at the ‘Autumn Storm’, triumphantly announced by the German press, that burst upon them. Panzergruppe 4 drove a wedge between Maj-Gen Petrov’s Fiftieth Army and the Forty-third Reserve Front Army, and Second Panzer Army entered Bryansk on 6 October, at which point Moscow lost contact with its forward Army Groups. Major Ivan Schabalin, an NKVD staff officer with Fiftieth Army, jotted ‘we are surrounded’ in his diary on 4 October.

Schabalin assessed the front staff had lost all initiative from the very moment the German attack began. Two days later he despairingly admitted, ‘history has never witnessed anything like the defeat of the Bryansk Front’. The front command irretrievably lost control, ‘it’s rumoured the idiots are already on their way back to Moscow,’ the disillusioned officer complained.⁽¹⁾

At noon on 5 October a reconnaissance pilot from the 120th Fighter Squadron reported that he could see a 24km-long Nazi armoured column moving along the Warsaw highway from Spas-Demensk toward Yukhnov. This was about 160km south-west of Moscow. Nobody would believe him. He was ordered to fly back and confirm. Now the undisturbed German column could be seen approaching Yukhnov itself. A degree of authentication was provided by the damage the aircraft received from anti-aircraft fire. Colonel Sbytov, Air Commander of Moscow Military District, decided this was proof enough and passed the urgent report on. He was immediately accused by the NKVD of ‘encouraging panic’, and his staff was threatened with court martial and execution. A third reconnaissance report confirmed the column had actually entered the town. Stalin was informed. There were no Russian forces on the Warsaw highway between Yukhnov and Moscow. Units in the capital were placed on alert and an ad hoc force hastily assembled to hold up the German advance until major reserves could be committed.⁽²⁾

The next day, with the front before Moscow apparently falling apart, General Georgi Zhukov was recalled from Leningrad and ordered to report to the capital. On 10 October, he was appointed Commander of the West Front, responsible for all the defences west of the Soviet capital. He was to have a decisive influence on the approaching battle.

Zhukov’s immediate priority was to stabilise the front. He requested Stalin to begin transferring large reserves toward Moscow. The State Defence Committee, the Party’s Central Committee and the Supreme Command took measures to halt the enemy advance. Troop movements began on 7 October, reinforcing the concentric defence belts facing west. A total of 14 rifle divisions, 16 tank brigades and more than 40 artillery regiments were taken from the supreme Headquarters Reserve and adjoining fronts.⁽³⁾ They totalled some 90,000 men. Remnants of units that had cut their way out of the German double encirclements were filtered into the same defence lines.

In addition, existing West Front air forces were reinforced by Maj-Gen Klimov’s 6th Fighter Corps, all the fighter squadrons from the Moscow Military District, several long-range fighter divisions and four newly formed squadrons. On 13 October the State Defence Committee issued order number 0345, calling for maximum effort from the highest commander to the lowliest Red Army private. ‘Cowards and panic-mongers’ – any soldier who gave up a position without authorisation – would be ‘shot on the spot’ for crimes against the state.⁽⁴⁾

The power of the Communist Party lay in the cities. Its instruments of state reached out to control the geographical expanse of Russia from these political vantage-points. This explains the superhuman effort made to defend centres such as Leningrad, the cradle of the Bolshevik ideology, and Moscow, the capital of the Soviet apparatus – and later Stalingrad, the city that bore Stalin’s name. Hitler’s own totalitarian ideological convictions granted intuition that enabled him to discern the intrinsic value of such objectives. To despatch a rival ideology with lethal certainty necessitated the destruction of the primary cities of the Soviet Union: to blockade them, level them to the ground and disperse the populations. In choosing to conduct a Vernichtungskrieg (war of annihilation) the German regime ignored the possibility of exploiting home-grown dissatisfactions with the Soviet system, evident in rural areas. The Teutonic hordes portrayed in Eisenstein’s film Alexander Nevsky playing in Russian cinemas, with images of German Knights burning babies alive, was perceived in the Russian nationalist psyche as being not far from the truth.

The opportunity to exploit internal political contradictions, which the German staff achieved in 1917 by aiding Lenin, was forgone in 1941. Major Ivan Nikitowitsch Kononov, the commander of the Russian 436th Rifle Regiment, cut off in the Vyazma pocket, claimed ‘an atmosphere of panic reigned within [Nineteenth] Army… the soldiers only attacked under considerable pressure from the political apparatus.’ This negative view of resistance inside the pocket was shared by his army commander, Lt-Gen Lukin. In his view, shared with his German captors after being wounded and taken prisoner, the infantry ‘did not demonstrate the necessary will to break out. They would rather go into captivity’. They were ‘driven’ into offering themselves in their thousands as victims ‘time and again’ in failed break-out attempts. A number of high-ranking Soviet generals captured at this time were eventually to switch loyalties against the communist cause. Lukin explained:

An alternative regime to Stalin was therefore conceivable. One could justifiably fight against ‘the hated Bolshevik system,’ claimed General Lukin, ‘without thereby compromising one’s claim to be a Russian patriot’.⁽⁵⁾ No such options were offered to the Soviet front soldier.

‘We have not seen a single one of our own aircraft in the last few days,’ wrote Major Schabalin with the Soviet Fiftieth Army on 7 October. ‘We are giving up cities with practically no resistance.’ Within three days he was on the run from pursuing German forces inside the pocket. His health was deteriorating and now it was snowing heavily. ‘Masses of cars and people’ were on the roads, mute testimony to the defeat and disintegration of the Russian armies. A colleague from the 217th Rifle Division told him that they had suffered 75% casualties. Resistance was collapsing all around. ‘Where are the rear areas and where is the front?’ he wrote on 11 October. ‘It is difficult to say,’ he reflected, ‘the noose around the Army is being drawn ever tighter.’ Two days later the situation had become even more tenuous.

Life was reduced to short snatches of rest during lulls, in woods, marshes and night bivouacs. He was soaked and cold. ‘I have not slept since 12 October,’ Schabalin complained, ‘or read a newspaper since the 2nd.’⁽⁶⁾

Pocket fighting was an unremitting nightmare for the Soviet soldier. Anatolij Tschernjajew, an infantry platoon commander, said, ‘the worst was when the Germans sent over their reconnaissance groups at nights into villages where we were accommodated, and threw grenades inside.’ This was generally the precursor to liquidation.

On 15 October Major Schabalin was ‘staggering about, bodies all around, constantly under fire’. His army ‘had been completely annihilated’, and he spent his final days filling in diary entries around a wood fire with soldiers he did not know. Schabalin’s body was recovered in light rain in a small village south-west of Paseka. There were no entries after 20 October. The importance of the little book was recognised by the searching German soldiers, who passed it on to the Second Army staff. Schabalin was one of thousands who failed to escape the pocket.⁽⁸⁾

Capture was worse than defeat. Vladimir Piotrowitsch Schirokow witnessed a column of 15,000 Soviet prisoners being driven from Vyazma to Smolensk.

Even von Bock, the army group commander travelling the same road on 20 October to check supply difficulties, stated:

Small wonder the Soviet soldier, despite being aware of the shortcomings of his own totalitarian regime, opted to fight to the death.

The rapid German advance, which resulted in the occupation of further towns and cities, was an unmitigated disaster for all that lay in its path. Panzergruppe 3 achieved the maximum progress: 400km compared to a minimum of 220km marched by Ninth Army.⁽¹¹⁾ Fifteen-year-old Alexander Igorowitsch Kristakow, in a village near Vyazma, had lived a simple and happy life up to this point. The family had geese, chickens, two pigs and a cow. After receiving instructions to herd their livestock to a collective farm near Gorki, ‘the Germans,’ Kristakow said, ‘time and time again attacked us with low-flying aircraft’. He survived the experience and returned in time to witness the arrival of the Germans at the beginning of October. ‘All the chickens and geese were taken away and eaten,’ he said. Their sole cow was taken the following year. The day after he was liberated by returning Russian troops, Alexander Kristakow stepped on a mine and was blinded.

On 15 October the Germans reached Rzhev. ‘That was it so far as employment was concerned,’ said 33-year-old postmistress Jelena Gregoriewna. This was a tragedy. She had already lost her second husband at Leningrad. ‘I had to sit there with four children with nothing to eat.’ They made their way into the cellar where they hid throughout the German occupation. Four days previously the town had been bombed, prior to German entry. ‘It’s awful,’ confided Nina Sernjonowa to her diary, ‘what is going to happen?’ It became impossible to sleep at night. ‘Gestapo people came persistently asking the same question – “where have all the Communists disappeared to?” If they were not given up, the family would be shot. A German officer billeted nearby boasted that Leningrad and Moscow had been occupied by the Germans. ‘I said nothing – I did not believe him.’ Nina Sernjonowa grew to detest the Germans once the executions started and soldiers took all their food. She was not to survive the occupation.

Kalinin had fallen on 14 October and, Nikolaj Antonowitsch Schuschakow said, ‘the Germans were given full freedom over five days to plunder everything.’ Moreover, ‘they freed the convicted criminals and got them to join in.’ In all 155 shops in the town were looted and then torched. Two weeks later Alexandra Scholowa and her friend Lobow Karalisowna entered the city. ‘My God, it was a sight!’ she exclaimed. She had lived in the city before ‘but I could hardly recognise it again’. All around, the houses were in ruins, trams stood forlornly, hollow shells, with their cables dangling grotesquely into the street. There was no light or electricity. They saw there were Panzers parked around the railway station. Soldiers had pulled the statue of Lenin from its plinth in Lenin Square and were smashing it into sections to the accompaniment of laughter. A huge swastika flag hung in its place, which a young Russian tried to remove the following day. Caught in the act, he was hanged, head down, from the very plinth he had sought to clear. ‘He took two days to die,’ remarked Scholowa, ‘which served only to harden our resolve to resist.’⁽¹²⁾

From the beginning of October and continuing into November, Luftwaffe air formations attacked transport, military installations and other targets in and around Moscow. Natalya Pavlicheva, a factory worker, remembered air raid warnings sounded mostly at night. They never went home.

Anastasia Egorova animatedly gesticulated during the same interview as she said:

The fall of Kaluga on 13 October and Kalinin the following day unhinged the defence belt south and north of Moscow. The weak defence line from Volokolamsk to Mozhaisk and Maloyaroslavets that lay in between was breached in several places. In Moscow there was little knowledge about what was going on. Actress Maria Mironowa remembered how ‘we listened to the radio the whole time, poring over the news’. It was all they lived for. ‘But it was a time full of worries. Nobody could get away from it, even a famous artist.’ In the factories workers slept in rows inside following a 12-hour day. Sixteen-year-old Natalie Shirowa, making parts for Katyusha rocket launchers, recalled: ‘We often thought of Moscow as already surrounded and did not even bother to go home after work.’⁽¹⁴⁾

The Communist Party Central Committee and State Defence Committee decided to evacuate a number of government agencies and the entire foreign diplomatic corps to Kuibyshev, a city 850km further east on the River Volga. The evacuation – nicknamed the ‘Big Skedaddle’ – began during the night of 15/16 October and witnessed scenes of stampeding at railway stations. These signs of collective panic, accompanied by some looting, represented the nadir of fortune for the Communist regime. Lorries loaded with families and their possessions began to move through the streets. Officials sought to leave without permits, and traffic jams developed on the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Rumours proliferated that surrender was imminent. Offices and factories stopped working. Trains entering stations were swamped by masses of passengers.

‘16 October was an awful day for Moscow,’ recalled journalist A. Maluchin, observing the panic at Kasaner station. ‘Trains were not just made up from passenger wagons,’ he said, ‘but also goods wagons and underground carriages.’ He noticed the trains were going only one direction – eastwards. ‘Trains set off without automatic safety governors [ensuring they were set distances apart], they departed in dense rows separated only by visual distance.’⁽¹⁵⁾ Even Lenin’s coffin was removed from its Red Square Mausoleum to be transported to safety. Stalin remained.

Stalin’s presence in the capital was a stabilising factor. Outside the city, reports of flight were causing unease. Gabriel Temkin, digging anti-tank ditches on the defence belt, said: ‘the gloomy news had a devastating effect on the morale of our labour battalion, creating a mood of complete apathy.’ Digging came to a virtual halt. There appeared little point. ‘People were grumbling, “our fortifications are just another exercise in futility”,’ he said. The morale-boosting talk from their Politruk (political party official) was seen as ‘hollow’ and he quickly left. ‘He knew everybody detested his speeches.’ Life for Temkin, like many others, deteriorated into a series of personal crises that quickly dwarfed the strategic events being conducted around them. As the weather got worse the left sole of his boot fell off. It could not be replaced and, worse still, with winter approaching, his underwear was stolen on one of the rare occasions the battalion received a shower. Temkin almost tangibly felt, as the weather got colder, his survival chances ebbing away.⁽¹⁶⁾

On 19 October General Zhukov declared Moscow to be under a state of siege and placed the capital and its population under martial law. Breakthroughs of the Mozhaisk line between Kalinin and Kaluga and another threatened breach in the Naro-Fominsk area, the third in-depth line in front of Moscow, were creating a bulge directly threatening the Soviet capital. Zhukov repeated the emergency measures he had previously enacted in front of Leningrad. Extensive defences were ordered to be constructed in depth, covering the main approaches to Moscow. Engineering work was already underway behind the first echelon of the West Front to erect anti-tank barriers in all sectors potentially vulnerable to an enemy armoured advance. Every morning and until it was dark, nearly 70,000 women and children and 30,000 factory workers marched out from the suburbs, wretchedly clothed and equipped only with hand tools, to work on the outskirts of the city. Vera Evsyukhova dug anti-tank ditches.

Within three weeks they had dug 361km of tank ditches and erected 366km of tank obstacles with 106km of ‘dragons’ teeth’ (tooth-shaped concrete buttresses) protected by 611km of barbed wire. They needed little encouragement. Gabriel Temkin remembered the atmosphere of unease that had permeated his labour battalion. ‘Everyone felt a nervous chill, listening to radio news about the Red Army again and again abandoning cities and territories,’ he said. ‘The Germans were coming closer and closer.’⁽¹⁸⁾

Bridges were prepared for demolition on all approaches, rivers and streams mined, and huge earth embankments raised, interspersed with one-metre deep ‘fish-bone’ pattern ditches, impassable to heavy vehicles. Anti-tank barriers, consisting of ditches covered with rows of barbed wire, and star-shaped iron ‘hedgehogs’, made from six jagged iron rails welded into clusters, were concreted into vital street intersections, to prevent the passage of tanks. Concrete bunkers covered these obstacles with machine guns, anti-tank and artillery pieces.⁽¹⁹⁾

The work was not allowed to continue totally unmolested. A 25-year-old cotton weaver, Olga Sapozhnikova, ordered to dig trenches alongside a crowd of other factory girls, remembered, ‘we were all very calm, but dazed and couldn’t take it in.’ On the first day they were strafed by a low-flying German fighter: ‘Eleven of the girls were killed and four wounded,’ she said.⁽²⁰⁾ They could sense the proximity of the approaching Germans. ‘They were strange, those nights in Moscow,’ said Elizaveta Shakhova. ‘You heard the guns firing so clearly.’

Through it all ‘they were bombing us all the time,’ said Evsyukhova. Rumour and uncertainty reigned. ‘The Germans dropped leaflets on us stating “Surrender – Moscow is kaputt!” But we did not believe it.’⁽²¹⁾

There was no sign – at any stage – that Moscow would ever have surrendered. The decision to transfer the most important Soviet ministries and agencies to Kuibyshev had already been taken, and the evacuation of vital industrial assets to the Urals continued. Over a number of weeks from mid-October, 498 industrial operations were transported eastwards, carried in 71,000 freight cars.⁽²²⁾ Stalin had clearly resolved to fight on, a view echoed by Soviet diplomat Valentin Bereschkow who learned later that all Moscow bridges and many public buildings, including the Kremlin, were prepared for demolition with delayed-action mines. ‘If the Germans had marched into the city,’ he said, ‘they would have experienced a lot of surprises.’ The tactic had already been employed in other overrun cities such as Kharkov and Kiev. Explosive charges fired after the occupation demolished entire buildings, killing many Germans in the process. ‘The mines were supposed to explode as the installations were occupied,’ Bereschkow explained, ‘hopefully causing heavy casualties among the military headquarters staff, expected to be the first to occupy them.’⁽²³⁾

Communist Party activists formed workers’ battalions in every city borough. Within a few days of the crisis Moscow scraped together 25 ad hoc companies and battalions numbering 12,000 men, most of them Party or Young Communist League members. Another 100,000 workers began military training in their spare time, while 17,000 women and girls were trained as nurses and medical assistants. Journalist A. Maluchin recalled lorried convoys full of these volunteers rolling westwards, passed by refugees streaming out of the eastern exits of the city. These reinforcements were hastily incorporated into the Western Moscow defence zone. In all, 40,000 volunteer troops formed rudimentary militia divisions. By the end of October, 13 rifle divisions and five tank brigades were despatched to create a measure of stability to the threatened Volokolamsk sectors on the River Nara and Aleksin on the River Oka. By the middle of November the STAVKA was to provide the West Front with 100,000 men, 300 tanks, 2,000 artillery pieces and numerous anti-tank guns. They were redirected to the threatened sectors.⁽²⁴⁾

Mud and Soviet resistance had checked the German offensive at the end of October along a line running from Kalinin on the Volga, through Turginovo, Volokolamsk, Dorokhovo, Naro-Fominsk and Aleksin on the River Oka and south to the outskirts of Tula. Army Group Centre had bitten off a linear strip of 230–260km penetrating into the Russian interior. Some units were within 120–140km of Moscow. Army Group North meanwhile had retained its stranglehold on Leningrad in the north, while in the south Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt’s Army Group South was successfully maintaining its drive along the Azov coast toward Rostov. Sebastopol might hold out but the Crimean peninsula seemed about to fall. Harsh early winter sleet and rain alternating with freezing night conditions, which thawed again by day, brought the front to a standstill for three weeks. During this interlude Soviet reserves achieved a degree of stability in the threatened areas, enabling the Moscow labour force to erect an extensive series of fortifications and obstacles across the likely future route of the German advance.

General Zhukov was summoned to Stalin’s Supreme Headquarters on 1 November and questioned whether the traditional October Revolution Anniversary parade could be held on 7 November. Holding it would send a strong and politically tangible message to the international community and Russian population, demonstrating the ability of the regime to survive despite recent setbacks. Stalin had consulted General Artemev, the Moscow District Commander, the day before to assess its practicality. Alexei Rybin, a member of Artemev’s security team, recalled the general’s fear of a Luftwaffe bombing raid. ‘In the first place,’ Stalin admonished, ‘you will not let a single plane through to Moscow.’ Reality suggested, however, it could still conceivably happen. If that was the case, Stalin instructed he should ‘clear away the dead and wounded and continue with the parade’.⁽²⁵⁾ Zhukov, appreciating this resolve, advised that although there was unlikely to be a major German ground offensive, the Luftwaffe could interfere. Additional fighter squadrons were transferred from nearby fronts to minimise the chances of this happening.

In wartime Russia every official utterance, particularly a speech from Stalin, was awaited with enormous expectation. The speeches and the October Revolution Parade delivered in the dramatic setting of Red Square, with the Germans virtually at the gates of Moscow, were to make a lasting impression on the population and world community alike. Artillery Cadet Mark Ivanikhin marched across a desolate Red Square on 7 November, the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution.

Stalin adapted himself to the nationalist mood, making a considerable impression on both the army and workers. He reminded those present of previous invasions: the Tartars, French and Poles, and played upon the population’s deep feeling of insult aroused by this latest incursion. The Germans had lost four and a half million men in the last four months, he claimed.

Ivanikhin, crunching through the snow as he was marched off the square, was as unimpressed by Stalin’s speech as he was by his size. ‘At the bottom of my heart I felt a little dubious when he said that the war would be over in six months to a year.’ It was likely to last a lot longer than that. Actress Maria Mironowa, living in Moscow, said, ‘everybody paid attention when Stalin spoke on the radio, because he rarely spoke and when he did it was not for long’. Everybody sat still and listened because ‘despite this, his remarks were treated as gold dust’. Stalin’s nationalist propaganda was appealing but the population saw through it. Like many soldiers and Cadet Ivanikhin, Maria Mironowa had her doubts.

The thoughts emanating from the serried columns marching across Red Square were also of little consequence because after the parade they continued directly on to the front.⁽²⁶⁾

On the same day, the snow turned to rain across the main part of the Central Front. All roads, except in the German Ninth Army area further north, remained impassable. During the evening of 10 November, there was snow and a light frost, but it was not accompanied by any appreciable improvement in the state of the roads. Conditions marginally improved the following day but 12 November produced clear blue skies and freezing weather. The OKW War Diary reported ‘clear, frost, roads negotiable with deep ruts in places’. Temperatures fell to −15°C and dropped to −22° the following day. ‘There was frost across the entire Army Group Front,’ the War Diary recorded. ‘All routes are frozen hard and drivable.’⁽²⁷⁾ Winter had arrived and was to last for four months. The German offensive could resume.

Dilemma at Orscha

General Halder, the Chief of the German General Staff, arrived at Army Group Centre’s headquarters in Orscha, near Smolensk, on 13 November. There was a conflict of opinion between OKW in Berlin and staffs at the front over the future conduct of the campaign. All three Panzergruppen commanders – Guderian, Hoth and Hoepner – were concerned at their ability to push their spearheads to the final objective. The perception gap between front and rear was increasing.

Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was concerned about his Army Status reports. Although the 95th Infantry Division belonging to Second Army had reached Kursk at the end of October, part of it still remained at Kiev, dispersed over 500km. The Führer was questioning Fourth Army’s progress, slowed down by appalling weather and road conditions. ‘He probably refused to believe the written reports,’ commented von Bock, ‘which is not surprising, for anyone who hasn’t seen this muck doesn’t think it’s possible.’⁽¹⁾

At Orscha the army group chiefs of staff – Generalmajor Sodenstern from South, Brennecke from North and von Greiffenburg from Army Group Centre – were summoned to discuss the feasibility of continuing the proposed advance. Should the Ostheer commit itself to a final dash, or dig in for the winter months before resuming the offensive in the spring? Army Groups North and South were blocked and overstretched and wished to halt. Army Group Centre’s Generalmajor von Greifenberg accepted ‘the danger that we might not succeed must be taken into account’. But, he said, ‘it would be even worse to be left lying in the snow and the cold on open ground only 50km from the tempting objective.’⁽²⁾ This was precisely the conclusion the Führer and Halder sought. The offensive was to be resumed.

Behind von Bock’s decision to continue was his belief that ‘the enemy was at the end of his combat resources’, even though he ‘still retained his determination’. Von Bockwas buoyed by the conviction that ‘the enemy has no more depth and is certainly in a worse position than ourselves’. Soviet reinforcements had appeared at the front but this was interpreted as ‘a last-ditch effort’, and, being volunteer worker battalions, were likely to be of dubious quality.⁽³⁾

The decision to attack was taken following painstaking appreciations in early November of relative opposing strength ratios across all three fronts. German infantry divisions were assessed at two-thirds their normal strength and artillery not quite so bad. If sickness, casualties and vehicle losses were brought into the equation, infantry divisions were considered to be at 65% of their combat potential. Panzer divisions had lost 40% to 50% of their effectiveness and were down to about 35% their normal strengths. The 101 infantry divisions, 17 Panzer and 13 motorised infantry divisions of the Ostheer, according to these equations, represented only 65 infantry, eight Panzer, eight motorised infantry divisions and two other regiments in real terms. In summary, a ‘paper’ battle strength of 136 divisions had been reduced to a much fewer 83 in reality. Despite shortcomings, the risk was considered acceptable because it was felt the Russians were worse off.

Soviet forces in December were calculated to total 200 rifle and 35 cavalry divisions, with 40 tank brigades. They could be reinforced with a potential 63 rifle and 6.5 cavalry divisions and possibly 11 tank brigades from the Russian interior. German planners were not intimidated by this data. ‘The combat strength of the majority of the Russian units is small at the moment,’ OKW rationalised, and ‘they are insufficiently equipped with enough heavy weapons and artillery’. Significantly, reports assessed ‘previously unidentified units now rarely emerge’, which appeared to indicate ‘that integrated reserve units are no longer available in appreciable numbers’. Although units might appear from the interior, they ‘were not expected to appear for the foreseeable future.’.⁽⁴⁾

The actual extent of the mauling the Soviet Army had received since the invasion was suspected but misappreciated. Soviet figures released after the war reveal the significance of the damage. The Russian Army, which maintained an average field strength of 3.3 million men, lost an ‘irrecoverable’ 2.1 million casualties between June and the end of September, and 676,694 sick and wounded. They were to prove the highest losses to be sustained by Russian forces throughout the rest of the war.⁽⁵⁾ The figures included 142,043 officers and 310,955 senior NCOs (or sergeants) with some 1,676,679 men, representing 18.9% of the average monthly strength of the army. This fell to 8.9% in the next quarter, a reflection, among other factors, of the diminishing impact of the surprise occasioned by the initial invasion.⁽⁶⁾ Strengths were, nevertheless, laboriously maintained.

Daily losses during the early border battles had been stupendous, confirming Wehrmacht claims. From 22 June until 9 July 23,207 soldiers were lost each day on the Belorussian front, which amounted to 341,000 irrecoverable losses from 625,000 soldiers committed to battle. At Smolensk 12,063 men were killed or irretrievably injured each day from 10 July until 10 September, ie 486,171 irrecoverable losses from a committed strength of 581,600. The reeling Russia colossus was dealt a further crushing blow at Kiev when 8,543 men fell on average each day, which was 616,304 from a combined defeated armies total of 627,000.⁽⁷⁾

Losses in material were equally appalling. On the Belorussian front, 4,799 tanks were destroyed at a rate of 267 per day from the start of the invasion until 9 July, alongside 9,427 artillery and mortar pieces captured or knocked out at 524 per day, and 1,779 aircraft shot down or hit on the ground at 99 per day. At Smolensk 1,348 tanks were lost in two months between July and September at 21 per day, 9,290 artillery and mortar pieces at 147 per day and 903 aircraft at a daily destruction rate of 14. Fewer tanks were operable by the time of the Kiev encirclement battle, but 411 were knocked out at five per day between 7 July and 26 September. Artillery and mortars provided the main Russian fire power in the pockets and 28,419 guns were lost, picked off at 347 per day with 343 aircraft.⁽⁸⁾

The double encirclement battles at Bryansk and Vyazma cost the Soviet field armies caught either in the pockets or on the retreat some 9,825 soldiers per day. By the end of November their losses were to total 658,279 men. Soviet tank losses from the beginning of Operation ‘Taifun’ were running at 42 per day and were eventually to total 2,785. Artillery and mortar losses reached 3,832 pieces at 57 per day, and, despite the poor weather, four aircraft were being lost on average each day.⁽⁹⁾

Stupendous though these losses were, the Red Army was not persuaded or indeed reduced sufficiently to advise Stalin and the Communist regime to sue for peace. Officer and senior NCO losses were serious but absorbed by a centralised structure, which – unlike the Ostheer – was not reliant upon initiative. Contrary to the German Auftragstaktik style of leadership, Soviet formations were committed to battle as large closely supervised blocs. German contemporary accounts constantly dwell on the ‘unpredictability’ such methods conferred. General von Mellenthin, a panzer commander, emphasising this characteristic, remarked ‘today he is a hero attacking in great depth – tomorrow he is completely afraid and not willing to do anything’.⁽¹⁰⁾ Panzer General Hermann Balck was to comment after the war:

It was this ‘unknowable’ element that clouded German intelligence thinking. Having survived the shock of the initial onslaught, the Soviet Army was relying upon space and its considerable manpower resources to buy the time necessary to develop the experience that would eventually reduce casualties. In short, the Ostheer had to deliver a knock-out blow to win. The Russian Army, by contrast, had merely to remain standing to achieve eventual victory. It was this apparently inhuman capability to endure punishment and losses that German planners were never able to quantify. They applied their own psychological and rational parameters, irrelevant to the Russian context of waging war.

General Balck, observing the steady dissipation of German strength with some concern, admitted, ‘when we advanced on Moscow, the general opinion, including my own, was that if we take Moscow the war will be ended’. This was the logic applied by the German General Staff in pursuing its final reckless push against the city. Soldiers at the front, facing the reality of continued and sustained bitter resistance, thought otherwise. ‘Looking back in the light of my subsequent experience,’ Balck concurred, ‘it now seems clear that it simply would have been the beginning of a new [phase in the] war.’⁽¹²⁾

The perception of the Ostheer, the field army, differed from that of planners at OKW in Berlin academically assessing relative strengths. There were disagreements over objectives as a consequence. Second Panzer Army was, for example, allocated Gorki, 500km east of Moscow, as an attack objective. Its Chief of Staff, Oberstleutnant von Liebenstein, frustratedly retorted, ‘This is not May again and we are not fighting in France.’ He changed the objective to Wenjew, 50km north-east of Tula, considered to be the maximum achievable objective for the Second Panzer Army.⁽¹³⁾ Von Bock acknowledged ‘the attack cannot become a great strategic masterpiece’; rather the aim was ‘to conduct the thrust in concentration at the tactically most favourable points’. This was a clarification of earlier statements which suggested the best that might be achieved was the creation of conditions for a future encirclement of Moscow. ‘Our planned interim objective is Moskva and the Moskva-Volga canal and the capture of its crossings,’ he said, warning ‘it is not impossible that the state of the attack forces units may force us to halt on this line.’

There were too many conflicting pressures to overcome. Plans were deteriorating to the status of a gamble. Von Bock was only too aware of the situation:

Hitler and Halder had achieved their intention, the acceptance of a last gamble: a Flucht nach Vorn (headlong dash) against Moscow in the hope it might succumb. Halder privately admitted, ‘the time for spectacular operational feats is past… the only course lies in purposeful exploitation of tactical opportunities’. Generalmajor von Greiffenburg returned from Orscha and reported to von Bock, ‘all that remains of the recently propagated distant objectives opposed by the army group is that the army groups are to do what they can.’⁽¹⁴⁾

Fundamental shortcomings that had applied at the end of September prior to Operation ‘Taifun’ were even more apparent. The Ostheer had attacked, despite serious logistic sustainability shortfalls, to annihilate what it perceived to be the last Soviet field armies before Moscow. These logistic and manpower shortages reduced the latest attempt to rush Moscow to the status of combined raiding forays. Mortally wounded, the Ostheer was at the end of its strength. Second Panzer Army reported on 17 November:

This was a snapshot of the extent to which the previous 500km ‘trip-wire’ hurdle had worsened at the 1,000km point. It was now a positive barrier. The 1,000km distance to the Reich frontier was served by only two main rail links (Warsaw–Minsk–Smolensk and from Brest through Gomel and Bryansk). Both were frequently cut and harassed by partisan groups. Distribution from railheads was through the available Grosstransportraum of lorried transport. Many of these had been stuck fast for three weeks with mud up to their axles. When the mud froze they were hauled out but hundreds were severely damaged in the process. By the middle of November, 50% of the Army Group Centre lorry fleet was out of action. Fourth Army had been reduced to one eighth of its original complement of trucks. Panzergruppe 4, which had relocated from the Leningrad front to the centre, had only half its motorised transport running, even before Operation ‘Taifun’ at the beginning of October. Many vehicles failed to receive timely deliveries of anti-freeze and broke down. Meanwhile the Minsk–Moscow ‘Autobahn’ had its concrete covering stripped away between Smolensk and Vyazma during the difficult weather. A whole infantry division was required to expedite sufficient repairs to get traffic moving again.⁽¹⁶⁾ Artillery soldier Franz Frisch with Panzergruppe 4 summed up the problems:

Nobody questioned Hitler’s determination. As Frisch explained, ‘he was absolutely crazy, but everybody was saying “Heil Hitler”.’⁽¹⁷⁾

Resupply by rail, vital to sustain any operational advance of consequence, began to disintegrate in freezing conditions. Ninth Army received only four fuel trains between 23 October and 13 November, while Second Army gained only one of three required from late October. As temperatures plummeted to minus double figures, 70% to 80% of German steam locomotives, whose water pipes – unlike Russian types – were outside their boilers, froze and burst. This provided the prelude to a transport crisis that dwarfed all those that had preceded it. Virtually no trains reached Second Army between 12 November and 2 December and only one fuel train reached Ninth Army between 9 and 23 November. When the latter arrived, its contents could not be distributed because waiting lorries were also out of petrol. Despite awesome difficulties, it was these lorry columns that kept units intermittently resupplied. Von Bock complained as early as 11 November that the number of trains reaching his army group was down to 23 per day. If the 30 originally promised could not be maintained, he assessed that stockpiling ‘even for an attack with limited objectives, cannot be contemplated before 11 December; that means in my opinion the attack will not take place!’ At the end of November only an average of 16 trains per day were reaching the army group.

During the Orscha conference, Major Otto Eckstein, the staff officer responsible for the organisation of Army Group Centre’s logistic resupply, briefed a totally pessimistic logistic picture, along with the senior army group quartermaster arguing against the resumption of the proposed offensive. Von Bock chose not to support him. The prospect of going forward with even an outside chance of seizing Moscow was preferable to a freezing halt just before it. The supreme irony was von Bock’s protest at this particularly difficult moment over several logistic trains which had been held to the rear of the army group to give priority to an equal number transporting Jews from Germany to the same area. Vernichtungskrieg knew no conventional bounds.⁽¹⁸⁾

‘The eleventh hour’

The final phase of Operation ‘Taifun’ was launched on 16 November with both wings of the army group making surprisingly good progress. Panzergruppen 3 and 4 moved on Klin to the north of Moscow and Second Panzer Army to the south bypassed Tula, where it had been blocked for weeks, and moved north-eastward. Even as Guderian’s much reduced force of 150 Panzers moved off (it had numbered 400 at the end of September),⁽¹⁾ a Soviet attack crashed into Fourth Army immediately to its left, cutting contact and exposing his flank. A double envelopment of the Moscow defences was soon under way. Zhukov’s last line of defence, the Mozhaisk position, barred the way, stretching between the ‘Sea of Moscow’ reservoir in the north to the River Oka in the south. At first the Russians were unable to stop the German thrust on any broad front. Nevertheless, the pressure of Soviet attacks on the German Fourth Army forced elements of it to come to a standstill and go over to the defensive, forming a ‘sack’ in between the two enveloping Panzer prongs. Pressure on their flanks correspondingly increased as these advanced.

General Halder remarked on 19 November that ‘this has been a good day again’, and ‘heartening progress’ was being made the following day. Reports about the poor condition of the German troops were not taken too seriously. Optimism clouded objective reasoning once again. ‘Guderian had someone call up in the afternoon to report that his troops are on their last legs,’ Halder recorded on 21 November, but with the strategic objective in sight the Chief of Staff did not take the concern seriously. He reasoned:

^{This German balance sheet, released at the end of 1941, accounted for the impractical optimism that sustained the risk accepted in pushing on to Moscow at that time. Motivating this reckless imperative was a belief that the Russians were infinitely worse off than the German attackers.}

On the northern flank of the advance, the Russians struggled to consolidate a defensive line along the Volga canal and the Sea of Moscow. Klin fell to Panzergruppe 3 on 23 November as Panzer-gruppe 4 entered Solnechnogorsk. The former now began to pick up a Blitzkrieg momentum as Russian forces steadily retreated before its advance. Ninth Army in support penetrated as far as the canal line and Panzergruppe 3 reached it just south of Dimitrov.

The reality of the advance did not, however, correspond to the symbols that General Halder’s staff moved on maps. One of the regimental commanders with the 98th Infantry Division supporting Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4 submitted a confidential personal report to Generalmajor Schrodeck, his division commander, outlining his concerns. ‘Without a meaningful replacement of fallen officers, NCOs and weapon specialists,’ it read, ‘and a reorganisation and issue of clothing, equipment, weapons, vehicles and horses, and unless urgent measures are taken to restore the fighting power of his troops, his command would have no combat value.’ A battalion commander in the same division questioned whether all the other units were ‘as pathetically battered as ours? And still we are optimistic!’ Company Feldwebel Schiff, in one of the infantry regiments, gave his pessimistic overview on 2 November from the soldier’s perspective.

Where indeed? The regiment had lost 50 officers and 1,673 NCOs and men – two-thirds of its officers and over half its men – since the beginning of the campaign. Overall, 98th Infantry Division had lost 5,881 men, one-third of its total strength but more than half of its actual fighting men.⁽³⁾

The consequence of massively costly victories was all-apparent at front level. Operation ‘Taifun’ alone had cost the army groups 114,865 casualties. This represented a further 6.8 division equivalents completely removed from the order of battle. The significance can be measured against the fact there was only one division left available for the Army Group Centre reserve. Officer casualties in October were 3,606, enough to man seven division equivalents; the 22,973 NCOs who perished or were wounded amounted to the same comparable ratio.⁽⁴⁾

The physical impact of these losses seriously eroded fighting power at the front. An assessment of a typical German infantry division structure⁽⁵⁾ reveals that from an average strength of 16,860 men about 64% – some 10,840 – could be classified as ‘fighters’. The remaining 36% was the logistic support ‘tail’ that sustained the ‘teeth’ or combat elements forward. This provides the explanation for the small numbers of soldiers infantry companies were actually committing to battle. Morale and instinctive self-preservation continued, remarkably, to hold these much reduced bands of men together. An Oberfeldwebel in a 260th Division infantry regiment remarked, ‘we have 49 dead and 91 wounded in the company’ which would have had a theoretical combat strength of 176 men. Only 36 men who had started the campaign would still be serving in its ranks. Despite this he claimed ‘our heads are always held high, even when the going is rough’. They had penetrated to within 80km south of Moscow and still believed ‘eventually we will definitely destroy the Russians’.⁽⁶⁾

Panzer regiments were even worse off. Prior to the second phase of ‘Taifun’ they had been assessed as being at 35% of their normal strength. This meant an overall average of 50–70 Panzers per division, normally 180–200 strong (with about 350 armoured vehicles altogether).⁽⁷⁾ Helmut von Harnack, serving with a Panzer regiment, wrote at the end of October:

He was an officer and amazed at the ‘zest for life’ displayed by his 19-year-old crews, commenting on ‘the flush of victory in their eyes’.⁽⁸⁾ But it was a truism that the highest losses were among units who had fought the most successful actions, and they were losing their best men. Second Panzer Army had been reduced from 248 tanks on 16 October to 38 by 23 November. Panzergruppe 3 likewise dropped from 259 to 77 over the same period.⁽⁹⁾ These losses at the ‘teeth’ end of Panzer divisions were more significant than the infantry because just under half of the 13,000–14,000 armoured troops deployed were actually ‘fighters’. Most casualties would be forward, far exceeding losses among considerable specialist and logistic units forming the ‘tail’ to the rear.

Artillery Leutnant Hubert Becker graphically illustrated this gap between front and rear, describing a return journey from leave.

The offensive fighting power of the infantry and Panzer divisions in the attack was, in reality, reduced to the level of heavy raiding battle groups. The combat ‘teeth’ ratio to logistic and specialist ‘tail’ structures of both infantry and Panzer divisions was breaking down. The development could not necessarily be remedied by drafting ‘specialists’ forward to join the fighting troops. Results when this was attempted were generally catastrophic. General von Mellenthin, a Russian front veteran, remarked after the war that there ‘is a difference between “infantry minded” officers on the one hand and “armour minded” officers on the other’. This applied also to soldiers. ‘Either capability acting alone,’ he said, ‘has a value significantly less than 50% of their combined effectiveness.’⁽¹¹⁾ General Balck, referring to combat attrition in front of Moscow, said, ‘we wound up with valuable tank crews fighting in black uniforms in the snow as infantrymen – and being totally wasted.’⁽¹²⁾ A tank soldier with the 20th Panzer Division admitted:

Tank crews performed as best they could fighting as infantry, but, as their division history commented, ‘they lacked the training basis required to fulfil their task’. By the beginning of January 1942 only 18 soldiers from one company had survived from the 160 men that had formed up in the middle of November. They quickly realised that ‘employment as infantry required totally different needs from those of Panzer combat’. Living and digging foxholes in ice and snow was not comparable to crewing a Panzer. 70% of the losses were from frostbite.⁽¹³⁾ General Balck conceded:

Combing the rear area was not a solution because, Balck explained, ‘the division organisation must be maintained, because it is the basis for the training and the feeding and the command and control of the unit.’⁽¹⁴⁾ Luftwaffe personnel from Flak, signals and other grand units were employed as infantry as the crisis worsened. Even pilots whose aircraft were out of action and highly trained specialists were put into the line on the orders of Generalleutnant Baron von Richthofen, the commander of VIIIth Fliegerkorps. A diary entry revealed his total ignorance of the implications of his directive. ‘People will enjoy the opportunity to have a go again at the enemy,’ he said, ‘from 150m with a rifle.’⁽¹⁵⁾ Many infantry veterans would not have relished the prospect, never mind totally untrained Luftwaffe ground crews.

These draconian measures, employing unprepared specialists, began to break up the infrastructure of some divisions, further reducing their effectiveness in the line. General Balck explained the penalty of committing artillerymen, tank crews and resupply troops forward as infantry. ‘Where you simply have to insert these people,’ he said, ‘the losses among them are terrible if they are not trained.’ Because, he explained, ‘the “hero” of the communications zone is rarely a front-line hero.’ It was an impractical measure. ‘People who could do their maintenance or supply tasks perfectly in the midst of the heaviest bombing or artillery attacks failed miserably.’ In short, Balck pointed out, ‘the results were quite shocking.’⁽¹⁶⁾ Problems already apparent in September were getting worse. As the Ostheer ‘victored itself to death’, the very fabric of its Blitzkrieg structure, the synergy and coherence of the specialist organisations that had previously given it a battlefield edge, were coming apart.

As the final advance gathered momentum in the middle of November, units became increasingly aware of an intangible yet icily apparent foe, the Russian winter. ‘We hadn’t been deployed as regiments or companies for quite a while,’ revealed Panzer commander Karl Rupp with Hoepner’s Panzergruppe 4:

Snow and ice conditions changed the nature of the fighting on the Eastern Front. Both sides were subjected to the same conditions but the Ostheer was disadvantaged by the unfamiliar environment. Paradoxically the intensity of fighting, and as a consequence casualties, diminished, due to the physical difficulties of manoeuvring and fighting in adverse weather. Formations on both sides had, in any case, been much reduced by attrition. Flexible and mobile operations were no longer achievable, further blunting the Auftragstaktik-based leadership edge the Ostheer enjoyed relative to its more inflexibly led foe in the summer months. The Ostheer was neither trained, equipped nor psychologically prepared for winter operations. These, by physical necessity, were degraded to man-against-man frontal attacks, as conditions denied flanking options, favouring the Russian defender more conditioned to the climate in which he lived. German tactical expertise could no longer compensate for the technological superiority of heavy Russian tank types. German casualties, likewise, meant fewer experienced officers and NCOs available to exploit rapid-moving situations, leading to an imperative to control and centralise assets in the hands of the few who could.

By the end of October von Bock was complaining about serious officer shortfalls in the army group. ‘More than 20 battalions are under command of lieutenants,’ he lamented. Battalions, traditionally led by majors and lieutenant-colonels, were being led by lieutenant platoon commanders. Despite their combat experience, these men were trained to lead a few score men, not hundreds, and operate in close co-operation with tanks, artillery and aircraft – a demanding task. On 16 November von Bock informed his commanders he was down to a single division reserve and as a consequence ‘they would have to get by with their own forces’. Freedom of action, in particular taking operational ‘risks’, was reduced. Units would have to fight their own way out of difficulties individually. ‘I further reminded them,’ von Bock emphasised, ‘that the forces were to be held together and not jumbled up – as is the case with Fourth Army, which admittedly is fighting under very tough conditions.’⁽¹⁸⁾ These were not fertile conditions to practice Auftragstaktik, which depended upon personal initiative in order to flourish.

In summary, these German raiding formations had limited physical options as they sought to grasp Moscow in a double envelopment. The former tactical and technological superiority conferred by Blitzkrieg was constrained, having to deal with superior and heavier Soviet tanks, often frontally without the benefit of Luftwaffe air support, much degraded by the weather. By contrast, the Soviet air force, served by permanent air bases in and around Moscow, was increasing its activity.

Karl Rupp, commanding a light PzKpfwII with the 5th Panzer Division with the northern envelopment moving toward Moscow, recalled the most important addition to these small battle groups of five to six tanks was the inclusion of one or two 88mm anti-aircraft guns. ‘These alone could measure up to the Russian T-34 tanks, which were shooting up our tanks like rabbits,’ he said. ‘We were powerless to do anything about it with our light guns.’⁽¹⁹⁾ One PzKpfwIII crew reported striking a T-34 four times at 50m and again at 20m with special upgraded 50mm Panzergranate 40 projectiles which ‘did not penetrate but sprayed off the side’. By contrast, a strike from the 76mm T-34 gun could be devastating. ‘Time and time again our tanks have been split right open by frontal hits,’ complained a Panzer commander. Commanders’ cupolas on both PzKpfwIIIs and PzKpfwIVs ‘have been completely blown off’, read a report, ‘proof that the armour is inadequate and the attachments of the cupolas faulty’.

German tank crews felt increasingly vulnerable. The Panzer officer reflected that the former elan of the Panzer force ‘will evaporate and be replaced with a feeling of inferiority, since the crews know they can be knocked out by enemy tanks while they are still a great distance away’.⁽²⁰⁾ They were reduced to firing carefully aimed shots against the rear drive sprocket, along with chance strikes on the turret ring, rather than a rapid shot into the centre of mass. German tank crews had to light fires beneath their hulls in order to cold-start engines. A T-34 driver had a pair of compressed air bottles at his feet to help turn the diesel engine in particularly cold weather. Continuing German success against these superior tanks, despite the need to confront them head-on, was maintained primarily because of the fifth additional crew man, the radio operator. Every German tank in the division had a radio. ‘As a result,’ concluded one senior Panzer officer, ‘our tanks were able to defeat tanks that were quite superior in firepower and armour.’ A communications system was provided which enabled a German division commander to direct operations from any point on the battlefield within the division – an option not available to their Soviet opponents.

German infantry anti-tank vulnerability was officially recognised at the end of the French campaign, but not resolved. Shortfalls became apparent again in front of Moscow. The previous effective combined arms support, which had compensated for weaknesses during the summer, was annulled by the onset of winter weather. Infantry felt naked when faced with tanks, as one graphic veteran assessment testified:

Leutnant Adolf Stamm, serving with Flak artillery, recalled, ‘the cry from heavily pressured infantrymen, “Bring up the Flak!” happened ever more frequently these days, because we, with our 88mm guns, were practically the only weapon which could still halt the Russians.’ But the 88mm was cumbersome to bring into action. Despite excellent penetration, it was, in the opinion of another Panzer veteran, ‘really large, quite immobile and hard to handle’. It was designed to be set up in the anti-aircraft role from a fixed static position, not engage in the mêlée of mobile meeting engagements. Getting the gun into action at vulnerable points with flexibility restricted by ice and snow, or dragging it into hasty positions among the wooded areas pronounced at this stage in the advance on Moscow, was labour-intensive and cost time. It was not a tank. Yet there were few alternatives. Adolf Stamm pointed out, ‘the other weapons and even the hard-pressed infantry had scant capability to halt the attacks’. As a result, ‘from morning until evening the infantry would repeatedly call “Flak Vorn! Flak Forward! Bring up the Flak!”’⁽²²⁾

Luftwaffe support began to fall away with the onset of bad weather and the effects of the resupply crisis. Generalleutnant Baron von Richthofen assumed command of Army Group Centre’s air support with Luftflotte 7 when Generalfeldmarschall Kesselring was withdrawn, along with all his Luftflotte 2 units, to Italy, to shore up the Axis effort in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Von Richthofen’s command post moved from Smolensk and was eventually established at Jemelyanovo, 125km west of Moscow. Resupply became so critical that long-distance communications cable was flown forward by air transport. Aircraft fuel, bombs and ammunition requirements were not being met. Roads were constantly churned up by trucks, and delays ensued. ‘The entire stretch between Rzhev and Kalinin was precarious,’ von Richthofen explained, ‘because Soviet infantry and even tanks and artillery were always crossing the roads.’ Additional Junkers Ju52 air transports were brought in from Norway to fly air supply sorties in support of the army group.

Winter weather applied its own peculiar attrition rate through adverse conditions and accidents, which resulted in a decline of the sortie rate. The 2nd Stuka Geschwader reported in November: ‘winter weather; sleet; only dive-bombers fly at 100m altitudes against a Soviet tank counter-attack into the flank of the 110th Infantry Division’. On 7 November the temperature fell below −20° and the Ju87 Stuka engines failed to start. Major Hozzel, the Geschwader commander, wrote in his diary that ‘in spite of the efforts of all personnel, we can only sortie on a few days’. As a result, only one dive-bombing attack was mounted on 13 November, another on 18 November and some others on the 26th and 28th, when four sorties were flown. At the end of the month another sortie was mounted in support of Panzergruppe 4 about 20km north-west of the outskirts of Moscow.⁽²³⁾ Support deteriorated almost completely at the beginning of December when temperatures plummeted to −30°. Oberleutnant Hans Ulrich Rudel, a Stuka pilot, declared ‘a sudden cold snap of below −40° freezes the normal lubricating oil. Every machine gun jams’. He ruefully commented, ‘the battle with the cold is tougher than the battle with the enemy’.⁽²⁴⁾ German airstrips were hardly usable, whereas the Russians used permanent Moscow bases. Russian sources claim a five-fold sortie superiority rate of 15,840 against 3,500 German during the three-week period 15 November–5 December.⁽²⁵⁾

Artillery Leutnant Georg Richter with the 2nd Panzer Division repeatedly referred to Russian air attacks in his diary. They appeared to climax at the end of November, coinciding with the reduction of Luftwaffe support. Richter, routinely commenting on a wide range of issues, pointedly emphasised the significance of the development. On 26 November he observed, ‘there are heaps of Russian aircraft around – our own very seldom!’ The following day, ‘Russian aircraft totally dominate air space’ over Panzergruppe 4, and as the advance got under way he declared, ‘Russian flyers dominate the air and the ground’. Repeated references to Russian air superiority and strafing attacks are made on 29 November and 2 and 3 December. Every attack killed or wounded small numbers of artillerymen and began significantly to disable increasing numbers of artillery-towing vehicles.⁽²⁶⁾ Russian air dominance had a cumulative and negative impact on morale. Attacks were more effective in winter than summer because men and vehicles were unable to get quickly off roads, hemmed in by piled snow from clearance, and funnelled by the wooded terrain through which they advanced.

The advent of winter caused soldiers to take the ‘Mot’ abbreviation used to describe motorised units and substitute it with a sardonic ‘Hot’ label. The Ostheer was becoming increasingly reliant on horse power for transport and infantry manpower to maintain progress. Infantry were shouldering an increased burden of the ‘Flucht nach Vorn’. They were completely unprepared for the conditions they encountered. Temperatures of −10° to −15°C deteriorated even further. Winter on the Western Front in 1940 had also been severe, but then it had been Sitzkrieg (Phoney War). There was no possibility of sitting out the present winter in bunkers, and the weather was becoming progressively worse.

Gefreiter Joachim Kredel with the 9th (Potsdam) Infantry Regiment naïvely felt with the onset of the first snowstorms that ‘now the war will stop, you can’t fight in the snow’.⁽²⁷⁾ He was wrong, but it was a justifiable error of judgement, shared by many others. Winter conditions up to this point were the worst they might have experienced in Germany, in which case they would have ceased training and returned to barracks. Training had not prepared them for such conditions. On 21 October a Flak regiment Unteroffizier wrote home:

Another Unteroffizier in 167th Infantry Division spoke of ‘diverse rumours with varying content’. He explained, ‘one says we will be out of here before Christmas, the other that we are to occupy winter quarters at Riesana, 150km from Tula’. In any event, ‘by Easter we ought to get some home leave’. All this ominously suggested the campaign would last longer than anticipated. A transport battalion NCO wrote with some exasperation in early November:

Logistic decisions taken in good faith by the staff were being unravelled by events and bad weather. Throughout the summer, campaign diaries and official records indicate staffing activity was ongoing to prepare for the approaching winter. Assumptions concerning the predicted outcome of the campaign were to prove massively wrong. It was anticipated that, following a rapid conclusion of the ‘Barbarossa’ invasion phase, an occupation army of 56 divisions would remain in Russia. Two-thirds of the Ostheer would be likely to return to the Reich, leaving the bulk of their matériel for an occupation force, which would almost certainly occupy winter quarters. At the beginning of September it dawned on planners that the number of trains would have to be increased by 50% to clothe 750,000 men and care for 150,000 horses. Not until mid-December did it become ominously apparent that the mass of units would not only stay in Russia but would be engaged on active operations in winter field conditions.

Without prior notification, economic production was unable to remedy the shortfall. The Quartermaster-General set up numerous production lines in the Reich and occupied territories to produce – in addition to bathtubs, fire-grates and other equipment – 252,000 towels, 445,789 articles of woollen underwear and 30,000 snow camouflage jackets. An appeal (code-named ‘Bögen’) was set in motion for the German civilian population to provide winter clothes and skis for troops at the front. Trains were loaded with clothing, accommodation materials and winter sports equipment and sent forward, only to become snarled up in sidings at Warsaw as greater priorities were given to fuel and ammunition. The railway logistic network meanwhile ground to a frozen halt as a result of the weather and partisan attacks.⁽²⁹⁾

Results at the front were catastrophic. ‘One started to look for things to use,’ said artillery forward observer Hans Mauermann, outside Leningrad. White sheets were stolen from Russian houses for use as camouflage ‘to produce covers, not so much for warmth, but so one was not so starkly visible in the snow’. Only chalk was available to whiten helmets. ‘That was the practical sum of our winter preparation,’ he said.⁽³⁰⁾ During the heat of the summer campaign most infantry soldiers had cut off the legs of their ‘long johns’, the only type of Wehrmacht underwear issued. As a consequence, soldiers froze with only shorts beneath their trousers, supplemented by a thin issue temperate coat and a poncho, a waterproof sheet that could be joined with others to make a bivouac tent. By the middle of November alternating frost and thaw conditions were replaced by permanent ice and snow.

Temperatures hovered between −8° and −22°C on average, offering little respite. A higher than usual number of logistic trains arrived in the Army Group Centre area on 24 November. This shipment of 24 trains permitted the first winter clothing issue to be distributed. On average one man from five received an overcoat. They were not issued to the men of the rear services. Russian tank driver Benjamin Iwantjer on the Central Front wrote on 17 November, ‘the Germans are still wearing summer clothing’. They had captured a ‘thin, dirty and hungry’ 18-year-old German soldier who told his captors all they wanted to know when questioned with a map. When offered his freedom, Iwantjer said, ‘he would not go for anything in the world’. So far as the German was concerned ‘the war was over’ and ‘he was content to be a prisoner and still alive, because he believed we would shoot him.’⁽³¹⁾

‘The wind was forever howling and blowing in our faces,’ recalled German machine gunner Walter Neustifter, causing ‘ice to crystallise all over our faces, in front, behind, and on the nose’; the cold was all-pervasive. Weapon systems began to malfunction and vehicles did not start. ‘It is freezing again,’ declared Leutnant Georg Richter on 5 November, ‘Will the campaign now go on?’ All the wheels of his artillery towing vehicles had frozen fast, with ‘mud frozen like granite between the wheels and brake drums’. Hard work was required to clear it. They tried to dig bunkers around the artillery positions when a failure of fuel resupply obliged a halt. ‘It’s not so easy to stay outdoors without gloves and head protection,’ Richter commented. He noted the average temperature was −15°C, and the ground had frozen hard to a depth of 20cm.⁽³²⁾ By 16.00 hours – late afternoon – it was dark. General Guderian, speaking with soldiers from 167th Division on 14 November, observed:

He continued on to the 112th Infantry Division, ‘where I heard the same story’. Around him stood soldiers wearing captured Russian overcoats and fur caps. ‘Only the national emblem showed that they were Germans.’ Driving on to a Panzer brigade he saw only 50 tanks were left of the 600 which had originally been available to three divisions. ‘Ice was causing a lot of trouble,’ he remarked, because calk grips needed to prevent tracks skidding had yet to arrive. ‘The cold made the telescopic sights useless’ and the optic salve to remedy this had also not been delivered. Fires were burning beneath the Panzers in preparation for starting them up. ‘Fuel was freezing on occasions,’ he was told, ‘and the oil was becoming viscous… This unit, too, lacked winter clothing and anti-freeze mixture’. Guderian left feeling depressed.⁽³³⁾

Soldiers tackled their problems through self-help. In the 2nd Panzer Division, hides, old furs and felt boots were stolen from Russian cottages. Fur collars were wound around necks and used as gloves and ear protectors, and boots were stuffed with straw and felt. Platoons commandeered up to four coats apiece to enable sentries to use them in turn as they came on duty. General Guderian wrote on 17 November:

Tikhvin, east of Leningrad, fell to von Leeb’s Army Group North on 9 November. A stranglehold had been placed on any Soviet hope of resupplying the city, now condemned to starvation. Repeated Russian attacks were mounted against the Tikhvin salient in order to open the railway north of Lake Ilmen to break the blockade. A German push from the salient toward Lake Ladoga stopped 56km short. Army Group North was now increasingly dependent upon the progress of the Moscow offensive in the centre to stabilise its increasingly vulnerable salient east of Leningrad. Cold weather arrived earlier in the north. ‘Sometimes it was −40° sitting there in a bunker,’ declared Rolf Dahm, a radio operator in an infantry battalion besieging Leningrad. Everything was difficult. ‘There was the problem of washing and going to the toilet in extremis,’ he said, interjecting, ‘You try coming out and dropping your trousers when it’s 40° below zero!’⁽³⁵⁾

The immense breadth of front that had to be secured by the shrinking Ostheer is placed in sharp relief by Generalfeldmarschall von Bock’s comment on contrasting weather conditions between fronts. On 1 November he complained:

‘It could be the same here,’ he exasperatedly declared, ‘if we weren’t stuck up to our knees in the mud!’⁽³⁶⁾ An unseasonably cold period soon set in to the south, which by mid-November was recording lower temperatures than even Army Group Centre.

Army Group South, spearheaded by the 1st SS Division ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ took the city of Rostov on 21 November. Rostov, at the confluence of the River Don and Gulf of Taganrog, was the communications gateway to the Caucasus. Jubilation followed in the German press over this notable but, unbeknown to them, dangerous achievement. The IIIrd Panzer Corps was soon subjected to attacks in and around Rostov from across the frozen River Don in the south and the open steppe to the north. On its left, elements of three Soviet armies battered away at XIVth Panzer Corps. Within 24 hours von Kleist, the commander of First Panzer Army, realising he had insufficient forces to resist this onslaught, ordered the evacuation of the city. The order was countermanded by Generalfeldmarschall von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. Giving it up would have military and ‘far-reaching political consequences’. Hitler had been staging a publicity spectacle for the renewal of the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, the cornerstone of the Rome–Berlin–Tokyo Axis. With Rostov lost, Leningrad isolated and Moscow in imminent danger, the Soviet strategic position looked worse than ever.

By 28 November there were 21 Soviet divisions aligned against IIIrd Panzer Corps at Rostov. The corps commander, General der Kavallerie Eberhard von Mackensen, had reported even 10 weeks earlier that his two divisions, the ‘Leibstandarte’ and 13th Panzer, were worn out and short of everything from socks to anti-freeze. They were down to two-thirds of their normal strength. Fighting power had been reduced in much the same way as the German divisions struggling toward Moscow. The IIIrd Corps reported, ‘any actions which are undertaken are borne by non-commissioned officers and a few die-hards’. Their strength was at an end. ‘The bulk of the men go along only because of their training and the basic decency in their bones.’⁽³⁷⁾ On 28 November the corps evacuated Rostov and pulled back behind the River Mius. It was the first German retreat of the war.

On the Central Front, Panzergruppen 3 and 4 attacks beyond Klin and Solnechnogorsk opened a 45km gap between Dimitrov on the Moscow–Volga canal and the village of Krassnaya Polyana, just 18km north of Moscow. To the south, Second Panzer Army’s 17th Panzer Division pushing toward Kashira had begun to form a deep pocket around Tula, placing their enveloping spearhead 100km short of the southern outskirts of Moscow. These pincer arms, however, did not possess the power they had enjoyed at Smolensk, Kiev and Vyazma. They were weak. Von Bock on 23 November enjoined both von Brauchitsch and his Chief of Staff, Halder, ‘for heaven’s sake’ not to overestimate the strength of his forces. Staffs ‘must be clear,’ he said, ‘that as far as this attack is concerned it is “the eleventh hour”’.⁽³⁸⁾

Army Group Centre was making only slow progress. ‘Are we to be pitied or admired?’ asked a soldier in the 260th Infantry Division. ‘Without winter clothing and with no gloves, and footwear in need of repair, we live in the open, lying if necessary in foxholes.’⁽³⁹⁾ During clear evenings the advancing infantry could see flashes from Flak and ghostly searchlight beams above the city of Moscow. It was within their grasp. The German effort had reached crisis point. Panzergruppe 3 at Krassnaya Polyana was within 20km of the suburbs.

Locomotives puffing sparks and huge clouds of steam into the frozen night air slowed and clattered their way into the sidings and railheads at Yakhroma and Ryazan, north and south of Moscow. Goods wagons and passenger carriage doors were freed of ice and knocked open. Soldiers leaped down onto tracks, raising clouds of condensation; stretching, urinating and slapping themselves for warmth. Quickly rounded up in the normal pandemonium of military activity with shouting, whistle blasts, vehicles drawing up and flashing lights, they were formed up and marched off into the darkness. Unloading vehicles took longer. There was ceaseless activity as trains shunted in, unloaded and puffed out of the railhead again. It was bitterly cold. Deep snow impeded the movement of the troops as they set off to their new assembly areas. Many of the soldiers had endured cramped conditions inside these trains for the nine, to ten-day journeys that had brought them from as far afield as Ulan, Siberia and the border with Mongolia and China.

New armies were being formed and assembled in areas just behind the front. At Yakhroma, north of Moscow, First Shock Army began to coalesce in freezing conditions toward the end of November. In the centre was Twentieth Army, and Tenth Army was around Ryazan to the south. Stalin had closely questioned Zhukov two weeks before on Moscow’s survival prospects. ‘Are you sure we are going to be able to hold Moscow?’ he asked. ‘Tell me honestly, as a member of the Party.’ Zhukov believed ‘there is no question that we will be able to hold Moscow’ but it was dependent upon the arrival of reserves he had requested on being appointed commander of the Moscow Front. ‘Two more armies and two hundred tanks,’ he said. Stalin had answered, ‘They will be ready by the end of November, but we have no tanks for the time being.’⁽⁴⁰⁾ Meanwhile the front was to be held with what there was.

The number of tanks on the Russian West Front increased from 450 to 700 between 1 October and 15 November. In addition the STAVKA had reinforced and covered projected German attack avenues, providing eight rifle and seven cavalry divisions, four rifle brigades, an airborne corps and independent tank and specialist units at the end of November. Further armies were also forming up: the Twenty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fifty-eighth, Fifty-ninth, Sixtieth and Sixty-first armies. In total, 194 divisions and 94 brigades had been newly created since the beginning of the war, which had started with 291 divisions.

Russian intelligence was informed by Richard Sorge that Japan might be verging on an offensive so vast in scale and remote from Russian territory that substantial Russian units could be risked transferring from Siberia to the west. The Sorge spy network was eventually compromised with his capture and execution. Even so, 27 of the new divisions (comparable in size to Army Group North at the outset of ‘Barbarossa’) came from the Far East, Central Asia and the Transcaucasus.⁽⁴¹⁾ This amounted to the creation of a second strategic echelon not yet identified by Luftwaffe reconnaissance. Although the new armies were inexperienced and short of artillery and tanks, they were fresh. They would not hesitate in the attack, unlike the assaulting veteran but weak German divisions, until they, too, knew what it was like to be bloodied. The potential to administer a strategic counter-blow was crystallising in the very Arctic conditions that would make their sudden deployment in the teeth of their exhausted foe quite devastating.