The temperature, which had dropped to -40 degrees Centigrade ( - 40 degrees Farenheit ), froze guns, engines and men. The Germans could not bring forward enough winter clothing and other supplies because of shortage of rail transport and because Luftwaffe was grounded.
Meanwhile, the Russians were preparing for a counter-attack. The top Soviet agent in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, had told the Soviet High Command that the Japanese were preparing to attack the United States and had no intention of attacking the Soviet Union. Stalin, this time trusting his spy, ordered that 30 well-equipped, winter-trained divisions be moved from eastern Siberia to Moscow front. 30 divisions were trasported west along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
By early December, General Zhukov had 578,000 men in position near Moscow. The Soviet General Staff planned to attack the two German salients which were jutting into the Soviet line north and south of the city. Following that a general encirclement of German Army Group Centre would be launched.
On December 5th and 6th, the Russian Army attacked along a 600 mile front and within days were pushing the Germans back. On December 8th, Hitler called of the German offensive against Moscow, and a few days later agreed to straighten the front by way of tactical withdraws.
German Command Changes
But when General Heinz Guderian, commander of 2nd Panzer Army facing the southern part of Russian attack, went to East Prussia to ask for further withdrawal, Hitler became angry and ordered that his troops must dig in. Guderian was fired from his job on December 24th. Hitler also dismissed his overall commander-in-chief, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, and Hitler himself assumed direct command of the German Army.
Field Marshal Fedor von Bock (Army Group Centre) was relieved because of
ill-health.
Bock image from: German Army 1933-1945.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt (Army Group South) was transferred to the west and Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb (Commander of Army Group North) was relieved. A total of 35 other corps and division commanders were removed in five days.
General Zhukov had not only saved Moscow, but had pushed the Germans 50 miles back shattering the myth of German invincibility. Following his initial successes, Stalin ordered on all out offensive along a 1000 mile front from the North to the South. Zhukov protested that this offensive would spread Soviet forces too thinly along the front, but Stalin would not listen. Already the Russian Army had suffered heavy losses during their December attacks. General Ivan Koniev's Kalinin Front, which had some five armies in the sector north of Zhukov's Front, was down to 35 tanks and its rifle divisions were down to about 3000 men each rather then their full strength of 8000. Zhukov's armoured brigades had only 20 tanks each and few artillery regiments had more that a dozen guns.
On the other side, by making tactical withdraws, the Germans had regrouped near their established bases. The Germans had turned major towns and cities - Orel, Kursk, Bryansk, Vyazma, Demyansk and Rzhev - into fortress-towns with well planned fortifications. When the next Russian attack began on January 7th, 1942, not one of these major towns fell.
In the north, at Demyansk, the Russian army managed to close around German II Corps, which was part of the Sixteenth Army, almost trapping its 96,000 men. The Russian attacks faltered, however, when the Luftwaffe began an airlift which enabled the II Corps to hold out. The Luftwaffe, over a period of ten weeks, flew up to 150 flights a day, airlifting 34,500 wounded, as well as providing 65,000 tonnes of supplies. In the last week of April, Demyansk pocket was relieved.
The Russian Army made an attack west of Moscow, the area around Vyazma. This area, was of importance for it controlled the main road and railway links from Moscow to Smolensk and Minsk. German Army Group Centre held this region.
Stalin planned a pincer movement to encircle the whole German Army Group Centre. General Mikhail Yefremov's Thirty-Third Army drove west towards Vyazma, while Thirty-Ninth and Twenty-Ninth Armies attacked from the north to trap the German 4th Panzer and Ninth Armies. On the extreme flanks, in the north and south, similar movements were carried out by the Russians. The Russian 29th Army made a strong advance and by January 27th had reached the Minsk-Smolensk-Moscow road, trapping General Walther Model's 9th Army. Model immediately counter-attacked and threw the 29th Army back by killing 27,000 of its men.
By early February, Russian 33rd Army reached the outskirts of Vyazma. Then between February 18th-22nd, some 7000 Russian paratroops were dropped behind German lines south of Vyazma. The paratroop drop was a disaster for the Russians. The German Army killed most of the 7000 paratroops.
It was obvious that Russian offensive was running out of steam, but still Stalin would not stop. He switched the First Shock Army and Sixteenth Army to the northern and southern flanks thus seriously weakening Major-General Andrei Vlasov's 20th Army's thrust north of Vyazma.
The result was that Russian thrust petered out almost everywhere and the German Army was able to establish itself in a firm defensive line from Rzhev in the north, through Vyazma to Orel in the south. General Mikhail Yefremov's 33rd Army never managed to capture Vyazma, and in March, being severely wounded and facing capture, Yefremov shot himself.
Although the Russian offensive was not able to trap Army Group Centre, it was a success. The Russian Army had pushed the Germans back 90 and 180 miles along the front and had saved Moscow.
But what exactly had saved Moscow?
Hitler could had captured Moscow perhaps before the end of October 1941, had he not switched his panzers south to capture Kiev. By the time, the battle of Kiev was over and the Panzers once again switched north to capture Moscow, a crucial month had passed and the winter weather was only a few weeks away.
Also, the Russian road network was quite primitive compared to the French, otherwise, Russia would had surrendered almost as quickly as the Western Allies did. What exactly beat the German Army from capturing Moscow was a combination of that terrible winter, the backwardness of the Russian road network, the almost endless pool of Russian manpower and the courage and sacrifice of the Russian soldier, and on the German side, lost time.
Bibliography
Cooper, Matthew. The German Army 1933-1945: Scarborough House, 1990: USA.
Reader's Digest. Illustrated History Of WW2: Readers Digest Limited, 1989:
London.
Clark, Alan. Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45: Morrow and
Company, 1965: New York.
More Operation Typhoon: Battle of Moscow
Back to Table of Contents -- World War Two Newsletter May 2002
Back to World War Two Newsletter List of Issues
Back to MagWeb Magazine List
© Copyright 2002 by Shahram Khan.
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com