This week, seventy years ago, Army Group Center, under the command of Field Marshal Fodor von Bock, launched the final assault on Moscow.
    Opposing the German advance, the Soviets marshaled one and a quarter million men, 1,000 tanks, 7,600 guns and 936 aircraft divided amongst the Western Front, commanded by General Ivan Konev, and the Bryansk Front, commanded by General Andrei Yeremenko. The Western Front included the 16th, 19th, 20th, 22nd, 29th and 30th Armies commanded by Generals Konstantin K. Rokossovskii, Mikhail F. Lukin,  Filipp A. Ershakov, V. A. Yushkevich, Ivan I. Maslennikov and Vasilii A. Chomenko, respectively. The Bryansk Front contained the 24th, 31st, 32nd, 33rd, 43rd, 49th Armies, commanded by Konstantin I. Rakutin, Valmidog, Sergei V. Vishnevskii, Dimitrii P. Onuprienko, Petr Petrovich Sobennikov, and Ivan G. Sakharkin, respectively. The Reserve Front commanded by Marshal Semyon Budenny, contained the 3rd, 13th and 50th Armies, commanded by Generals Iakov G. Kreizer, Avksentii M. Gorodnianskii and Mikhail P. Petrov, respectively.
    Army Group Center counted more than one million men, 1,700 tanks, 14,000 guns and 549 aircraft, divided among: Second Panzerarmee, commanded by Heinz Guderian; Third and Fourth Panzergruppes, commanded by Hermann Hoth and Erich Hoepner, respectively; the Second, Fourth and Ninth Armies, commanded by General Baron Maximilian von Weichs zu Glon, Field Marshal Günther von Kluge and General Adolf Strauß; and the Second Air Fleet commanded by Field Marshal Albert Kesselring. However, just as the offensive began, General Hoth was given command of 17th Army in Army Group South. He was replaced by Georg-Hans Reinhardt, and the command re designated Third Panzerarmee.
    The Offensive was launched, on September 30, 1941. Three days later, Adolph Hitler declared, “... today, and I declare it without any reservation, that the enemy in the East has been struck down and will never rise again.” At first it looked as if he was correct. By this time the Panzers had, once more, sliced deep behind Soviet lines. On October 3, General Guderian’s Second Panzerarmee captured Orel, 130 miles behind Red Army lines, and 224 miles south-southwest of Moscow, on the Oka River. Today it has a population of 317,000. The streetcars were still operating as the tanks of Fourth Panzer Division rolled into the city.  Simultaneously, General Ivan V. Boldin, General Konev’s deputy, led 300 tanks and two infantry divisions in an unsuccessful counterattack.
    By October 5th Second Army had crossed the Dezna River. Bryansk was captured on October 6 by Second Panzerarmee. Bryansk is located 235 miles southwest of Moscow and today the 850-year-old city has a population of 415,000. During the battle, a Soviet sergeant from the 24th Tank Regiment, 12th Tank Division was seriously wounded and taken to a Soviet military hospital for treatment and recovery. While in the hospital, he overheard some of the soldiers complaining about their rifles. From this came the storied AK-47. The sergeant’s name was, of course, Mikhail T. Kalashnikov.
    On October 7th the Third Panzergruppe’s 57th Corps and the Fourth Panzergruppe’s 41st Corps met west of Vyazma, trapping all or large parts of the Soviet 19th, 20th, 24th, 30th and 43rd Armies. The first snow fell on General Guderian’s sector that day. The next day, German Army Chief-of-staff, Franz Halder, wrote in his diary, “To save Moscow the enemy will try to bring up reinforcements, especially from the North.  But any such miscellaneous force, scraped together in an emergency, will not suffice against our superior strength, and provided our strategy is any good at all (provided the weather is not too bad), we shall succeed in divesting Moscow.”
    The Second Panzerarmee was linking with Second Army and  trapping the Soviet 13th Army near Bryansk, on October 9. But by then the Russian mud appeared and German mobility ceased.
    Vyazma is located west of Moscow, between Smolensk and the capital. In 1941, the 800-year-old city had a population of about 60,000. After the war, its population totaled 716. Three buildings remained. In the two camps which the Germans constructed there, 80,000 Soviet citizens died.
    General Georgi Zhukov was recalled from Leningrad to command the defense of the Soviet capital on October 10. He was given command of Western Front. After convincing Stalin not to have General Konev shot, Konev was made Zhukov’s deputy.
    On October 13, Stalin ordered Party officials and civil government to evacuate the Soviet capital. The Russians dubbed it “The Big Skeedadle.” Only the announcement, on October 16, that Stalin wasn’t leaving quelled the panic.
    The “Vyazma Pocket” was eliminated on October 14 and the “Bryansk Pocket” on the 20th. In between, Kalinin (Tver) and Kaluga were captured. The 800-year-old city of Tver currently has a population of 400,000 and is located north of Moscow. During the Stalinist era, it was renamed for Mikhail Kalinin. The 500-year-old city of Kaluga, with a current population of 325,000 is located 93 miles southwest of Moscow and was the hometown of General Zhukov.
    Although time had been purchased, the cost was staggering. The debacles at Bryansk and Vyazma had cost the Red Army more than 673,000 Soviet soldiers captured, and the capture or destruction of 1242 tanks and 5412 guns. But the trains continued to roll west, along the Trans- Siberian Railway, with fresh divisions from the Far East, for the defense of the Soviet capital.
    And the mud continued to wreak havoc with German timetables and machinery. Fuel was consumed at three times the normal rate. General Guderian recalled that,
    “. . . the roads rapidly became nothing but canals of bottomless mud, along which our vehicles could advance only at snail’s pace, and with great wear to the engines.  The next few weeks were dominated by the mud. Wheeled vehicles could advance only with the help of tracked vehicles. These latter, having to perform tasks for which they were not intended, rapidly wore out.”
    The advance on Moscow ground to a halt with the objective only 50 miles away. A conference of the German field generals and General Halder was held on November 13, in the 900-year-old Belorussian city of  Orsha, located midway between Minsk and Smolensk. Over the objections of Field Marshals von Kluge and von Bock, General Guderian and others, the order was given to make one final effort and to resume the advance on Moscow. Field Marshal von Bock said that, “...the last battalion will decide the issue.”
    Two days later, with the ground frozen, the order to resume the advance was given. But the Wehrmacht had yet to receive any winter clothing. There was no room on the trains that were shipping more important commodities, such as ammunition, fuel and food.
    During the occupation of Bryansk, which lasted until September 17, 1943, the forests around the city were occupied by some 60,000 partisans who killed 100,000 German troops, derailed almost a 1000 trains and destroyed hundreds of bridges and miles of track.
    Orel, Bryansk and Vyazma have been designated “Cities of Military Glory” by the Russian President.

NEXT WEEK: I SPY - THE CREATION OF THE OSS

Mr. Wimbrow writes from Ocean City, Maryland, where he practices law representing those persons accused of criminal and traffic offenses, and those persons who have suffered a personal injury through no fault of their own.
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