Muscovites labored in freezing weather to build defensive structures outside the city. Many bureaucrats fled when the government declared a state of siege on October 19.The Luftwaffe executed isolated bombing attacks on the city. Municipal services ground to a halt and bouts of looting erupted. The NKVD intervened to restore order. Party officials prepared to move Lenin’s body to Tumen for safe keeping, but Joseph Stalin stayed in his capital, and he, like the rest of the inhabitants, braced himself for the worst. Residents of metropolitan Moscow had just cause for anxiety. Colonel General Hermann Hoth entered the city of Kalinin on October 14, 1941. He advanced his Panzergruppe farther south and captured the city of Klin on October 23. Klin lies only about fifty miles northwest of Moscow. The Seventh Panzergruppe of General Hans Georg Reinhardt reached Dmitrov. They surprised a Red Army sapper unit at the bridge over the Moscow-Volga canal and made an easy crossing over to the other side. Reinhardt assumed command of Hoth’s 3rd Panzergruppe on October 5, 1941. Thus, by the end of October, Moscow’s northwest flank fell under threat of disintigration. Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge and General Erich Hoepner directed their forces in the center near the city of Mozhaisk, and Colonel General Heinz Guderian moved his 2nd Panzergruppe along the southern approaches to Moscow near the city of Tula. Such a capable array of commanders zoning in on the capital city presented more than just an unfortunate state of affairs for the Stavka. The fall of the city seemed inevitable. The Red Army had installed a defensive ring of infantry positions around their capital. The most auspicious development for the defenders, however, involved the arrival of the Siberian divisions in the area just east of the capital. They arrived in early November as the ranking generals of OKH deliberated over the most prudent course of action. The Eastern Marshals of the Reich knew they had a difficult fight on their hands even though they also believed that the end would come soon. Setbacks began frustrating Operation Typhoon as early as mid-October. Even as Reinhardt made advances in the north, a clash of heavy armor farther south near the city of Mtsensk stymied the invaders’ advance. The 4th Panzer Division under the command of General Geyr von Schweppenburg advanced along a narrow road leading into Mtensk. This unit operated as part of Guderian’s panzer army – the southern prong of the gigantic pincher drive descending on the Soviet capital. Afternoon hours approached on the date of October 11, 1941, and as the 4th Panzer shuffled forward slowly, it became drawn out into a narrow column over twelve miles in length along the single-track road. Freezing temperatures of the evening hours began solidifying the moist ground of the surrounding fields and forests. The Soviet 1st Guards Rifle Corps under the leadership of Major General Dmitri D. Lelyushenko countered the 2nd Panzergruppe. The 4th Armored Brigade, a constituent unit within the 1st Guards Rifle Corps, had Colonel General Mikhail E. Katukov as its commander. The Red Army had recently endowed this brigade with a generous addition of both K V and those dreaded T-34 tanks. This same general had inflicted heavy casualties upon the Panzers on October 6. The conditions now presented a ripe opportunity for attack. Lelyushenko attacked the vanguard position of the panzer division. The 4th Armored Brigade moved in from the forests along the long, vulnerable flanks. The wide tracks of the T-34 tanks maneuvered effectively across the difficult terrain. The Soviets sprung the trap. The 4th Armored Brigade broadsided the panzers, and the quietude of the woods erupted into a cacophony of tank gunfire, metallic clanging and the deep roar of explosions. One of the Panzer soldiers thankfully noted that the thunder of the blasts drowned out the screams of the tank crews trapped in the flaming infernos. The invaders faced two crippling handicaps. Their constricted position on the road prevented them from acquiring mobility in the counterattack, and, even worse, the T-34s outmaneuvered and outgunned the PzKw III and PzKw IV tanks of the Wehrmacht force. When panzer tanks attempted to break out of the column and carry the fight to the woods, the Soviets cut them down. The attack devastated the 4th Panzer Division and delayed the advance on the city of Tula - a town located about one-hundred miles south of Moscow. This outcome afforded the Soviet 50th Army the opportunity to reinforce the city’s defenses. Guderian’s panzers did not attempt a siege. They chose instead to arc around Tula and move up towards the Oka River. Panzer divisions moved in from the northwest and from the south, and mobile armor and infantry also approached from the west. This situation recalled the strategy at Cannae. Reinhardt’s and Guderian’s panzers would unite to the east of Moscow, and once this had been achieved, Kluge would attack at the center. The encirclement would cut off supplies and reinforcements from the east. The terrain made transport difficult. Supply lines faltered because of this and because of the relentless Russian resistance. The situation worsened to the point that top brass at OKH convened a conference of the army Chiefs of Staff at Orsha on November 12. They had to deliberate over the choice of setting up defensive positions in suitable winter quarters or continuing the “final offensive thrust” on Moscow. The decision to continue the offensive into the winter months had probably become a foregone conclusion among the top commanders. Chief of the Army General Staff Colonel General Franz Halder chaired the conference. Though not in attendance, Adolph Hitler, Supreme Commander in Chief of OKW, ordered the southern pincher division to swing wide and circle behind Moscow in the east and capture the city of Gorki. Intelligence reports indicated that reinforcements for Moscow’s defense would arrive there. In reality, the Siberians had already started arriving before the conference started. This objective stirred controversy among some of the Chiefs of Staff, but the decision to renew the offensive became the final determination. Two other earlier conferences held at Novy Borisov addressed strategic goals of Army Group Center. They held one on July 27th and the other on August 4th. Hitler himself attended the later meeting. These conferences and “deliberations” delayed offensive action and gave the Russians a chance to reform their broken forces. They also lead to a contradiction between objectives set down by Hitler and those favored by the leadership of OKH. Hitler demanded that Army Group Center focus upon finishing off residual resistance behind the lines and mandated that Reich forces finish off the persistent threat of the Russian 5th Army. His orders forbad a continued advance on Moscow until Army Group Center had achieved pacification of resistance. Hitler also wanted to neutralize Leningrad, establish contact with the Finns and open supply lines with Sweden. OKH commanders put their own interpretation on the orders and conspired to revive the attack on Moscow. Heinz Guderian became a culprit in this revisionism and obstruction of orders. Leaders in OKW also contributed, however. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel inserted an addendum to Fuhrer Directive 34. It reaffirmed Moscow as priority objective because of the need to disrupt the transportation and administrative hub of the Soviet Union. Alan Clark believes that if the generals of OKH had obeyed rather than revise and obstruct the Fuhrer’s directives, the Third Reich might have defeated the Soviet Union. The Wehrmacht launched the final thrust against the capital on November 15. Delays caused the offensive to occur during the inauspicious winter months. An earlier posting described the harrowing ordeal encountered by the soldiers of the Reich. These guys literally froze their asses off, and their equipment would not function in the nightmarish cold. Heinz Guderian witnessed the conditions and had first-hand knowledge of the superior performance of the Russian tanks. He travelled to Army Group Center headquarters at Orsha on November 24th to vent his frustration on Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, Commander of Army Group Center – head honcho of the Third Reich’s strongest Army Group in the East. The Colonel General demanded that High Command change the orders to continue the attack. He wanted permission to assume a defensive posture until better conditions emerged. His remonstrations became so insistent that von Bock, a Field Marshal holding superior rank to the scrappy Colonel General, agreed to telephone his superior, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the Army. Consider that obedience and compliance represent hallmark characteristics of German military leadership. The angry, disrespectful protests emanating from the regal Heinz Guderian gives us a measure of how bad the situation had become. Walther von Brauchitsch only agreed to reduce the scope of the objectives. High Command cut back the distance Guderian had to penetrate and established the goal of cutting the Ryazan railroad. Within the broader strategic framework of the offensive, a framework that originally endeavored to affect a gigantic modern Cannae maneuver, the southern pincher force now became non-functional. More trouble began brewing for the Reich up north at Dmitrov along the Moscow-Volga Canal. Reinhardt crossed the canal and his panzer division fell into the angry embrace of the tough Siberian divisions. His offensive also began to founder. Hitler intervened directly on December 2 by issuing an order for all forces involved in Operation Typhoon to goi nto a full-fledged offensive. Marshal Georgi Zhukov had to employ effective strategy and timing to orchestrate the counterattack. With the enemy so close to the capital and reserves of manpower becoming dangerously low restricting the Red Army to wasteful defensive maneuvers no longer remained an option. He concentrated his strength on the flanks to the north and south of Moscow. He knew he had to prevent a catastrophic encirclement movement by the enemy. Zhukov placed the 1st Shock Army at Zagorsk in the north and the 10th Army at Ryazan and Kashira in the south. The Siberian divisions stayed out of the front until the forces of the Reich collided with defensive infantry positions and had become weakened. Then, the full force of the Siberians would unleash itself on the attackers. The Red Army began its full-scale counteroffensive on December 5. Conditions for the Wehrmacht deteriorated to such a degree that retreat might have become an option. Alan Clark states that Hitler intervened directly again by ordering all fronts to hold their positions and not give ground. This allegedly prevented a withdrawal from evolving into a massive route in which the Russian forces would grind the Wehrmacht to pieces. Hitler dismissed Hoepner for withdrawing his Panzergruppe and the same fate befell thirty-five corps and divisional commanders. Clark contends that this move emerged as Hitler’s finest hour- an act that gave him “ascendancy” over his army commanders. The deleterious effect it must have had on morale seems less praiseworthy. The blizzards of December descended onto the front. Tank crews of the Wehrmacht abandoned their failing vehicles and either fought on as infantry, or just retreated to save their hides. Hundreds of panzer tanks became abandoned hulks over which the snow drifted. The first panic-stricken retreat by a unit of the Third Reich since the start of the invasion occurred near Venev on November 18. If the Russians had had the equipment and additional manpower, they might have crushed Army Group Center in encirclement maneuvers that would have left the Wehrmacht in an untenable position, and Ostkrieg would have ended sooner. The Reich forces fell back, but they still survived the onslaught. The collapse of Operation Typhoon still constituted a turning point in the war. The swash-buckling élan and confidence of the invaders disappeared into the frozen wastes of Ostland. All across the front, the detritus of war littered the white fields, and the wind howled through the twisted wreckage of tanks and transport vehicles. The mangled, frozen corpses of the fallen often became buried in the snow. Others littered the ground in plain view. The obscene mutilation of the remains silently evidenced the savagery and cruelty of the fighting. The bitter cold froze them as solid as blocks of ice. The Wehrmacht created a special honorary medal for their participants in that first winter campaign of 1941. They aptly named it the Grefrierfleisch Orden, the Order of the Frozen Meat.
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 19:47:19 +0000
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