Last time we spoke about the collective German delusions on the eastern front. The German spear aimed at Tikhvin and Moscow, driven by hunger for a swift conquest, while the Soviets gathered courage from ruined cities and stubborn civilians who walked beside soldiers. Rasputitsa, a living mire, swallowed tanks and hope, turning advances into cautious skirmishes as fuel ran low and supply lines sagged. Stalin shuffled commanders like chessmen, swapping Khozin for Fedyuninsky to place a frontline fighter where danger burned hottest. Yet even as the 54th Army strained, the red line held at Sitomlia and along the Volkhov, a stubborn fortress against encroaching winter. The German center faltered first, then the wings, as the 259th and 288th fought to pin back armored columns near the Malaia Vishera. Finland’s cautious patience and Finland’s own war fatigue complicated a broader push, while Moscow worried about fuel, frost, and a gnawing sense that victory would depend as much on weather as on steel.

This episode is the Tikvin at Last!

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

A major Soviet counterattack hit the German vanguard on the Tikhvin front, with the objective of seizing Budogosh and then Gruzino. The northern shock group opened its assault on the 2nd, followed by the southern group on the 4th. In response, the 8th Panzer, moved up from its failed push toward Malaia Vishera, was shifted into the northern sector to meet the threat, while the 20th Motorized prepared to oppose the southern advance. Both Soviet offensives endured heavy artillery fire and Luftwaffe air strikes, and after a punishing bombardment, German mobile divisions mounted counterattacks that repulsed the attacks and drove the Soviets back.

By November 6, both offensives were halted, and temperatures had plummeted to the point that rivers and streams across the region were freezing solid. The day before, Schmidt drew the 18th Motorised, the 12th Panzer, and the 8th Panzer into a concentrated push toward Tikhvin. This combined assault overwhelmed the 191st Rifle Division and brought German forces into Tikhvin on November 8. The German command claimed the offensive had yielded about 20,000 prisoners of war, along with the destruction or capture of 96 tanks and 179 artillery pieces. The Moscow–Ladoga railroad was severed, amplifying the pressure on Leningrad’s defenders and civilians. Yet Schmidt’s formations were worn down from their long advance and increasingly beset by winter. Temperatures ranged from -27 °C to -40 °C, taking a severe toll on soldiers and vehicles alike.

Soldiers faced frostbite in mounting numbers, and some even froze to death, as the Wehrmacht’s meager winter uniforms sat in depots in Poland. Ammunition and fuel remained top priorities for train shipments, yet deliveries were still far short of demand. Cold-related casualties began to surpass combat losses for Army Group North. Weapons and vehicles suffered random failures from the freezing conditions, and the oil and lubricants the Germans relied on often froze solid. Theoretically the Germans had access to freeze proof petroleum, oil, and lubrication but either it was not issued or it did not work at the temperatures reached by the winter. Many vehicles became stuck in mud when the ground froze; while the frost hardened the earth and aided movement, extracting those that were trapped required extraordinary effort, and many were irreparably damaged in the process. German locomotives were especially hard hit, as water in unprotected pipes froze and expanded. An estimated 70 to 80 percent of German-built trains sustained serious damage from burst pipes. The railway network, already unreliable, deteriorated further. For now, this problem mainly affected those in the North, as winter spread slowly southward. By November, German logistics increasingly depended on the Grosstransporttraum trucks to move supplies over long distances.

Schmidt could not advance any further. The 8th Panzer and 20th Motorised divisions were defending a 100-kilometer front along with the 126th Infantry Division, organized into a chain of small strongpoints. The 126th faced increasingly heavy attacks around Malaia Vishera. The 12th Panzer and 18th Motorised were pinned, defending Tikhvin from three sides as the Soviets tried to retake the town. Neither side was able to mount a new offensive, and morale among their troops showed little appetite for renewed assault. Leeb’s hope of linking with the Finns depended on a Finnish offensive, which remained uncertain. The northern sector also faltered. The 11th Infantry Division, reinforced by elements of the 21st Infantry, was halted again by week’s end, 14 kilometers south of Volkhov. After nearly two weeks of fighting, they had driven back the 285th, 311th, 319th and portions of the 282 rifle divisions, creating a wedge between the 4th Army and the 54th Army but not forcing the 54th Army to retreat or encircle it. Consequently, the offensive could not be halted. The 254th Infantry Division was ordered to reinforce Group Boeckmann, which was tasked with taking Volkhov and then Novaia Ladoga to complete the encirclement of the 54th Army. Elements of the 8th Panzer were also sent north to bolster Group Boeckmann. However, their attempt to outflank Volkhov’s defenses was stopped by the 310th Rifle Division at Zelenets Station.

The 61st Infantry Division was sent east to reinforce the now besieged 39th Motorised Corps at Tikhvin. In addition, the arriving 223rd Infantry Division was ordered to cover the gap between the 39th Motorised and the infantry forces around Malaia Vishera. The previously impassable swampland there was starting to freeze solid enough to allow for military movement. While Leeb remained confident in the offensive’s prospects, Hitler’s concerns loomed, and Leeb grew increasingly worried about his southern flank. The 9th Army’s difficulties in Army Group Center forced it onto the defensive, a shift that freed Soviet formations to press Leeb’s extended southern flank, giving the Soviets the initiative to renew their attacks.

Back on the 3rd, the Neva Operational Group had its headquarters reinforced by staff from the 8th Army and was ordered to attack toward Sinyavino alongside the 55th Army. Even with six rifle divisions and two additional divisions in reserve, the breakthrough at the bridgehead was immediately halted. Soviet artillery ammunition around Leningrad was insufficient to suppress the German guns, which faced a dense, target-rich Red Army force. The same was true for the seven rifle divisions and one tank division comprising the 55th Army. These offensives gained little ground and inflicted heavy casualties on the Red Army. Yet Stalin attributed the failures to a lack of will and, on the 8th, ordered Khozin to form volunteer regiments for another attempt.

Winter was beginning to bite Army Group Center as well, though not as badly as further north. Ground froze overnight but thawed by morning, leaving the terrain swollen, waterlogged, and persistently muddy. Army Group Center’s divisions were operating near subsistence levels, with deliveries far short of what would be needed to stockpile for a new offensive. Even the Panzer forces and SS formations, which enjoyed priority, did not receive enough supplies to build reserves. The supply situation was at its worst for the Kalinin front. There was only a single supply road, and it was dominated by Soviet forces occupying nearby high ground, making supply runs highly vulnerable to interdiction and attrition. The 41st Panzer Corps reported ammunition stocks sufficient for only about two days of defensive fighting. The OKH Quartermaster estimated that it would take until the end of November for Bock’s forces to be capable of launching another offensive.

Germany and Romania had exhausted their fuel stockpiles, so consumption was now constrained by refinery production rates. The only potential relief came from 190 fuel trains that had been earmarked for use in the USSR but had not yet reached the front. As a result, Panzer Group 3’s main fuel stockpile at Smolensk ran dry, forcing them to dispatch trucks all the way back to Orsha to fetch additional supplies. The only possible advantage lay in the shortage of operational vehicles, which themselves required fuel to run. For example, the 41st Panzer Corps’ 1st Panzer Division could muster only 48 functional tanks remaining.

The Panzer Group’s other Panzer Corps continued pushing toward Kalinin, but the mud and cold took a heavy toll. They were rapidly losing towing vehicles due to the constant need to recover damaged ones. The ground, oscillating between freezing and thawing, intensified wear on the 56th Panzer Corps’ vehicles. Many areas that had seen heavy fighting were cratered, with some holes up to 2 meters deep, rendering them impassable. Even the traversable roads were clogged with mud up to 75 centimeters deep. At this depth vehicles sunk up to their chassis. This rendered them immune to all attempts to free the vehicles. The depth of mud frequently caused massive damage to towed vehicles, which could only be repaired in dedicated facilities behind the lines, assuming spare parts and the ability to bring the vehicles in for repairs. The 4th Panzer Corps was also suffering under these conditions. The 46th Panzer Corps reported its troops were down to one-third rations, an unsustainable level, because heavy rains had rendered its main supply route impassable to towing vehicles as well. Despite these grave logistical problems, Hoepner remained adamant that the Corps would be ready for an offensive as soon as the ground properly froze.

Similarly, the Second Panzer Army faced logistical difficulties. Guderian noted that, given current conditions, the only viable route to supply his army was to expand the rail line from Oryol to Tula. At present, its Panzer divisions were being sustained by supplies airlifted to a forward airbase and then ferried the remaining distance by prime movers drawn from the divisional artillery. These prime movers were failing at a rapid rate due to mechanical issues, threatening the future mobility of the artillery. Guderian’s Army Corps received lower supply priority than the Panzer Corps and was thus forced to rely on “living off the land,” which contributed to the starvation of the local peasantry.

However, Nazi Germany’s military doctrine held that material constraints such as logistics should never restrict operational aims. The Army embraced the supremacy of the Will, believing that any problem could be overcome with enough motivation and that failure merely indicated a lack of willpower. For example, planned offensives against the Red Army, which would disrupt the Kalinin supply route, were affected by this mindset. Kirchner’s 41st Panzer Corps was initially slated for a minor role due to fuel shortages, but Bock overruled the plan and insisted the Panzer Corps take a larger part in the offensive, even if they had to attack on foot. Bock’ diary entry about the event.  “a letter from the panzer group which arrived today held forth in great detail and in generally negative terms about the use of motorized troops as foot soldiers. In my reply I made reference to Panzer Army Guderian, which is providing daily proof that motorized forces fighting on foot are capable of outstanding feats – they just have to want to!” This optimism, often blind permeated both OKH and OKW, with neither questioning the reliability of the logistical system. In parallel, OKH proudly displayed its new winter uniform designs to Hitler that week. Wagner pledged that sufficient numbers would be produced to supply all frontline soldiers, yet this ignored the reality that several hundred additional train deliveries would be required at a moment when the railway capacity to deliver food, ammunition, and fuel was already inadequate.

By November, German forces in the East had been reduced to 2.7 million personnel after absorbing 686,000 casualties. An OKH assessment on November 6 reported that the 136 Infantry Division on the Eastern Front possessed only the fighting power of about 83 fresh divisions. The 17 Panzer divisions had the strength of roughly 6 full-strength Panzer divisions, while the 13 motorized infantry divisions had the combined strength of about 8 full divisions. Only about one-third of the Wehrmacht’s motor vehicles remained operable. Even as German forces in the USSR were pared down, Military Intelligence assessments suggested the Red Army was in worse shape: estimates placed the Red Army at 160 divisions and 40 brigades, with most units operating at less than half strength. By contrast, in the West of the USSR there were 269 divisions and 65 brigades, totaling around 2.2 million men as of November 1, with numbers rapidly increasing as new formations formed or were moved from the Far East. The Germans fervently believed the Soviet war effort was on the verge of collapse and that the Red Army would continue to retreat on all fronts except Moscow and the Caucasus. The German assessment held that the Red Army would trade space for time, aiming to rebuild its forces for late 1942. Moscow was believed to be defended mainly because of its strategic value as a railway hub for the Soviet rail network. The Caucasus, in turn, was thought to be defended not only by terrain that favored defense but also with support from the British and potentially the Americans. Yet, once again, the German High Command disastrously underestimated its foe.

On this basis, Halder submitted a plan on the 7th. In his approach, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups were to take Yaroslavl and Rybinsk. In his maximum plan, the Germans would advance to the Vologda, Gorki, Stalingrad, and Maikop lines. His minimum plan targeted reaching 50 km east of Lake Ladoga, about 275 km east of Moscow, and Rostov. For the sake of comparison, Army Group Center had managed only about 220 km of advance eastward during Operation Typhoon. Now they faced demands to push farther, despite being weaker, with even thinner supply lines, and under far worse weather conditions. The objective across these schemes was to seize as many rail hubs and industrial centers as possible to deny the Red Army the ability to rebuild. The enormous distances involved and the challenges of controlling such a vast expanse were not seriously considered by Halder and his staff. Halder pressed for these objectives to be achieved even as winter began, while Hitler treated them as operational targets for spring 1942. To Halder, the Red Army had allegedly ceased to exist, and in his perception he even claimed on the 4th that Moscow would be abandoned as it held little strategic or industrial value.Blumentritt, the chief-of-staff of the Fourth Army, during a post war recollection. “With amazement and disappointment we discovered in late October and early November that the beaten Russians seemed quite unaware that as a military force they had almost ceased to exist.” A meeting was arranged at Orsha on the 13th to discuss plans for a renewed offensive on Moscow with the staff of all three Army Groups and their Armies.

The OKH’s objectives were viewed by some commanders as insane. Bock argued that, given the depleted strength of his Army Group, only near-term, close-range goals were attainable, since a strategic encirclement of Moscow was no longer feasible. Bock on the 11th November to Halder.  “In my opinion, the objectives you marked on the recently-delivered map as worthwhile surely cannot be reached before winter, because we no longer have the required forces and because it is impossible to supply these forces after reaching these objectives on account of the inadequate potential for supply by rail. Furthermore, I no longer consider the objectives designated ‘worthwhile’ by me in the army group order for the encirclement of Moscow, specifically the line Ryazan [185 km southeast of Moscow] – Vladimir [180 km east of Moscow] – Kalyazin [165 km north of Moscow], to be attainable. All that remains, therefore, is to strive for a screening front in the general line Kolomna [100 km southeast of Moscow] – Orekhovo [85 km east of Moscow] – Zagorsk [70 km northeast of Moscow] – Dmitrov [70 km north of Moscow], which is absolutely vital to the encirclement of Moscow. I will be happy if our forces are sufficient to obtain this line” 

He began advocating for objectives more in line with Hitler’s original Typhoon concept—small, deliberate offensives designed to destroy Soviet forces in front of them before attempting to seize Moscow itself. Even some corps-level leaders, such as Vietinghoff, submitted carefully worded reports questioning the feasibility of their orders. “The following conclusions can be drawn: The success of an operation in the present season, where at any time serious traffic problems can arise from frosts, heavy snowfalls or snow drifts, is only guaranteed if”:

(a) the organisation of the mot[orised] division is eased and for each panzer division one viable road is available. 

(b) full replenishment of these divisions with fuel, special provisions and food prior to commencement (5 daily rations) is achieved.

After careful evaluation of all experiences of the past weeks I am forced to conclude – although painful for the corps – that no benefits are to be expected from the deployment of the panzer corps under present and expected weather and road conditions. The wear on the troops, equipment and fuel bears no relationship to the possible success. The massing of mot[orised] troops is only a hindrance and not of any use. 

Vietinghoff’s assessment, however, was dismissed by his Army commander, Hoepner, who scornfully labeled it overly pessimistic and an exaggeration of the likely problems. One reason for this stance was that Hoepner commanded the strongest panzer concentration in the east and yearned for the autonomy enjoyed by Guderian and Kleist, hoping to shed what he saw as the infantry general’s conservatism. It is unknown what Kluge’s reaction was to Vietinghoff’s report.

Despite the prior halt order, fighting continued across Army Group Center. The 7th Army Corps conducted local offensives in an effort to improve its position after Zhukov’s late October offensive. Yet these assaults stalled under sustained Soviet resistance, even with panzer support. By the 4th, the divisions of the Corps had been reduced to roughly one-third to one-half of their full strength. In early November, the 5th Panzer Division launched a local attack on the 3rd, but the operation quickly turned disastrous as infantry sheltered in their bunkers and refused to advance. The panzers pressed ahead, becoming isolated and subsequently overwhelmed by anti-tank forces. In the ensuing chaos, 21 tanks were damaged or destroyed before the force managed to withdraw back to German lines. Many formations used this period to consolidate depleted units and promote new junior officers and NCOs in an effort to recover from the attrition suffered by Army Group Center.

Soviet offensives also appeared along the front line with surprising frequency. Many of these assaults produced more casualties than their modest gains warranted, though they did deny German formations the rest they desperately needed. One Soviet offensive even temporarily cut the only road supplying Kalinin on the 3rd, before a counterattack forced them back. The effectiveness of Soviet attacks varied dramatically with the officers leading them: some persisted in Civil War-era tactics and resisted innovative approaches, while others were more receptive to modern battlefield methods. Some officers seemed unable to accept responsibility for failure, preferring to press on with the same inadequate tactics rather than reassessing. A stark example was the loss of 2,000 men from the 44th Mongolian Cavalry Division, who repeatedly charged the 106th Infantry Division in parade-ground assaults. Overall, the Red Army officer corps was gradually improving. It would take time to weed out the incompetent but politically connected officers, and for new officers to develop their skills. The effectiveness of the late-war Red Army came at the cost of blood shed and learning from earlier mistakes.

Guderian was growing increasingly concerned about a potential large Soviet offensive from both the east and west of Tula, targeting his overstretched forces. Reconnaissance assets had detected a substantial influx of Soviet reinforcements in the area, while his flanks remained thinly guarded. Guderian was not able to bring his entire 2nd Panzer Army to bear at Tula. For example, the 47th Panzer Corps remained trapped around Oryol due to fuel shortages and the need for infantry from the Second Army to reach and protect this vital supply hub. Other units were still bogged down on the long road between Oryol and Tula. Four depleted rifle battalions from the 4th Panzer Division were holding a line about 32 kilometers long to maintain contact between the 3rd Panzer Division and the infantry of the 53rd Army Corps. This feared assault was anticipated to begin on the 8th against the 53rd Army Corps’ 112th and 167th Infantry Divisions, and was expected to develop over the following week.

To the south, the Battle of Kursk commenced on November 1. The 9th Panzer Division had only nine tanks available for the attack and was stretched across 260 kilometers of advance. It was accompanied by the 95th Infantry, likewise dispersed, and the force could not bring any artillery to bear due to a lack of horses. Nevertheless, the assault would succeed against a weak Soviet defense, though it took until the 4th for the last resistance to be cleared. The German reports claimed that although the Red Army had abandoned much of the city and evacuated about a quarter of its population, many of the remaining civilians had been armed. This assertion was widely used to justify the perceived lack of concern for civilian casualties during the attack. Although Voronezh did not have a large Jewish population, numerous atrocities were committed in its wake, including mass executions. Clearing the city of hidden explosives, however, would take longer. Even before Voronezh could be secured, the Second Army was ordered to seize Voronezh, despite Weiss’s reports that a rest period was desperately needed. Weiss’s plea for a winter halt was denied by Heusinger, who argued that troops should not gain the impression of a winter base, or they might fail to understand the order to set out again. Halder would admit these orders were largely theoretical because the mud currently prevented the movement but still did not allow the Army to stop for the Winter and insisted they be carried out. OKH believed the Soviets in this sector were completely shattered so it was just a matter of marching there. 

Von Rundstedt’s reluctance to undertake a major offensive the previous week prompted a visit from Halder on the 3rd. Halder noted down in his Diary the purpose of the visit to Army Group South on the 3rd: “some energetic ‘persuading’ would be in order to knock the lead out of them”. Hitler was also getting frustrated about the pessimism of Rundstedt. During the discussion, Rundstedt reiterated his view that the lower Don River and the Donets region represented the limit for his Army Group, arguing for a long halt thereafter. Representatives from OKH demanded more optimistic propaganda in the Army Group’s logistical forecasts and pressed for the capture of Stalingrad and Maykop before year’s end. After Rundstedt refused, Brauchitsch inquired about Rundstedt’s health, a detail Halder recorded. In a follow-up report, Rundstedt also cited poor troop morale driven by cold weather, ammunition and food shortages, and growing irritation among soldiers who felt they were being “preached at” in orders about the importance of objectives. He warned that any large winter offensive would paralyze the Army Group come spring as they recovered, making a winter halt preferable. This assessment was, unsurprisingly, rejected outright, and OKH bypassed Rundstedt to issue offensive orders directly to the First Panzer Army and the 17th Army to seize Maykop and Stalingrad, respectively.

Kleist’s Rostov offensive began on the 5th. The 14th Panzer Corps crossed the Mius River at Golodayevka and advanced about 30 kilometers eastward. The Soviet 9th Army had anticipated a direct assault along the coastline toward Rostov and was caught off guard by the northern offensive. The 14th Panzer Corps then swung south to secure a bridgehead across the Krepkaya River. Heavy rain again stalled further movement on the 7th, allowing the defenders time to establish new defensive positions along the Tuzlov River.

Manstein’s 11th Army continued its pursuit of the routing Red Army in Crimea, despite terrible road conditions and gradually returning resistance. The 54th Corps took a direct route to Sevastopol, but was halted in the steep mountains and ravines around the port fortress on the 2nd, with the 8th Marine Brigade playing a significant role in the battle. The 54th Corps would press offensives until the 8th, when mounting casualties, shortages of supplies, and exhaustion forced a pause. The 30th Corps was taking a longer route through the partisan-infested Yalta mountains and lagged behind. Any attempt to seize the fortress from its 52,000 defenders would have to await improved logistics, reinforcements, and the arrival of siege artillery. Manstein hoped to renew the offensive on Sevastopol by the end of November. However, the already chaotic logistical situation in Crimea was worsened by a prolonged rainstorm across the region. He bitterly complained that with even a single motorized division, they could have raced to the fortress and captured it before the Soviets organized a defense. "By granting this to us, we would have been spared a great deal of blood, difficult winter battles, and a future assault of the fortress; we would have also soon had available an additional army for the other operations on the Eastern Front.” Although this assessment is doubtful given the number of troops still present there from the Odessa evacuation. The 62nd Corps, which was supposed to be the weaker secondary effort, managed to bypass a hastily formed defensive line and captured Feodosia on November 3, triggering a new race to Kerch, the last major port available to the fleeing 51st Army.

Meanwhile, the Romanian Mountain Corps was tied down fighting numerous partisan bands across the peninsula. The Yalta Mountains would become a stronghold for these partisans, while at the same time they were intended to secure the southern coastline of Crimea in case of a Soviet naval attack. The 6th and 17th Armies remained largely static due to supply shortages and casualties sustained. A substantial 160-kilometer gap persisted between the 29th Army Corps at Belgorod and the nearest formations from Army Group Center, which had just conquered Kursk. The Hungarian Mobile Corps was ordered to take positions alongside the 17th Army to free up German infantry divisions for a new offensive into the Donbas.

The USSR marked the anniversary of the October Revolution on November 7. Stalin had delivered a speech the night before, broadcast across the country. Military parades had traditionally celebrated the occasion, but in 1941 they were largely abandoned due to the invasion. Stalin nevertheless insisted that a parade be held, despite widespread objections. Zhukov’s 1st November report. “It is unlikely that the opponent in the next 2–3 days will be able to advance on Moscow. To build up operational reserves, provide food and ammunition as well as tanks and other equipment, the enemy will need at least half a month, to provide everything needed for a new offensive prepared in advance in the area of Smolensk– Viaz’ma” The objections faded when Zhukov argued that the Germans were unlikely to mount a major offensive toward Moscow for several weeks, making the parade seem safe. He did, however, recommend improving Moscow’s air defenses for the event. Planning was conducted in complete secrecy to prevent any German interference. The soldiers participating in the parade only learned of it on the day itself, though many were puzzled by the sudden inclusion of marching drills and likely suspected the real purpose. More than 28,000 soldiers took part, with many proceeding directly to front-line duties outside the city afterward. In the speech held the day before and the speech after the parade, Stalin would claim the Germans had lost 4.5 million men whilst the USSR had lost only 1.7 million. He also pointed out that the USSR was supported by Britain and the USA. Stalin would also refer back to past military heroes of Russia from Aleksandr Nevskiy to Mikhail Kutuzov. Similar parades were held in Kuybyshev and Voronezh. The morale boost from the display appears to have been significant, reaffirming leadership resolve to defend Moscow and enhancing perceptions of the USSR’s strength.

Similarly, Hitler would participate in the anniversary of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch on the 8th. There he sought to bridge the growing credibility gap between the harsh realities of the war in the east and the constant propaganda announcements claiming the war had already been decided. “Right now, we have over fifteen thousand planes, over twenty-two thousand tanks, twenty-seven thousand guns. It is truly an enormous amount of material. The entire industry of the world, including German industry, could only replace such amounts slowly …. With all due respect to lightning warfare – you still have to march! . . . If you walk all the way from the German border to Rostov or the Crimea, or Leningrad, then we are talking real distances, especially considering the roads in the ‘paradise of workers and peasants ” 

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the bleak hush before winter, a stubborn battle raged from Tikhvin to Moscow. German spearheads plowed toward Budogosh and Gruzino, while Soviet defenses clung to Sitomlia and the Volkhov line, stubborn as ice. Rasputitsa turned roads to mire, tanks to statues, and fuel into a fevered memory. Commanders shuffled like chess pieces; Stalin swapped Khozin for Fedyuninsky as frost tightened its grip. German logistics buckled under -40°C, trains bursting, engines sighing. Yet both sides pressed on: Soviets probing with fresh grit, Germans chasing Marathons of supply and bravado. 

Last time we spoke about the Wehrmachts' struggle during the Rasputitsa. In the autumn of 1941, a rain-soaked road stitched Moscow to Leningrad as two colossal armies walked a fever-dream toward a grim deadline. On one side, German steel pressed for a swift clinch at Tikhvin and along the Smolensk-Moscow spine; on the other, Soviet resolve rebuilt from ruin, civilians shoulder-to-shoulder with soldiers, refuse-to-quit etched in every hand. Mud and Rasputitsa swallowed tanks and trucks, turning battlefields into quagmires where progress slowed to a wary crawl. The German lines stretched, with Beowulf’s Baltic gambit collapsing under determined Soviet resistance, while Soviet counteroffensives stitched defensive curtains around critical hubs like Tikhvin and the Volkhov corridor. Supplies faltered; airfields clogged; fuel ran low as winter loomed. Beowulf’s island ambitions dissolved into hard lessons about logistics and distance. In Kyiv and Kharkiv, the front’s pressure persisted as Hitler’s strategic visions collided with grim realities: fuel, rail, and morale frayed, and German armor ground toward exhaustion. 

This episode is the Wehrmacht Struggled in October Mud

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

On Monday, the 26th, a notable leadership shuffle occurred in the Soviet ranks: Stalin swapped the positions of Fedyuninsky and Khozin. Technically, Khozin outranked Fedyuninsky, and that hierarchy was cited as the official reason for appointing Khozin as the commander of the Leningrad Front. But many historians suspect there was more under the surface. Some argue Stalin wanted a frontline fighter, someone with proven mettle in combat, leading the 54th Army, which was coming under increasing threat. Fedyuninsky had earned a reputation as a capable and aggressive commander on the battlefield, a reputation that could be leveraged by placing him where his forward-facing leadership would be most effective. This swap, then, might reflect a strategic alignment of personalities to match the demands of the moment rather than a simple matter of official rank. Two days after the swap, the call to proceed with the second Sinyavino Offensive was withdrawn. The German threat at Tikhvin and in the surrounding approaches was draining vast portions of the 54th Army’s strength, and the Soviet offensive effort was not making meaningful progress. With the 54th Army’s lines stretched and the enemy pressing from multiple directions, the risk of encirclement grew, shifting the priority toward holding the line and preventing a collapse that could threaten the entire operational area around Leningrad and its supply routes. Despite that recalibration, Khozin was ordered to begin planning a fresh offensive at Sinyavino once the immediate German push was repelled. In other words, even as the frontline risk loomed, the strategic clock kept ticking toward a renewed push in the Sinyavino sector, where the geometry of terrain and the timing of German withdrawals would shape the next phase of the battle.

In addition to the leadership reshuffle, Stalin also reprimanded the commander of the 52nd Army on the 26th for a pattern of failures that kept undermining progress. With the German push toward Moscow blunted for the moment, STAVKA could reallocate reinforcements to other sectors of the theatre where needed most. The 92nd Rifle Division and the 60th Tank Division were pulled from STAVKA reserves and sent to bolster defenses around Tikhvin. It would take until the 30th for both formations to arrive in the front lines and become fully operational. But even as those reinforcements moved in, the early elements of the 60th Tank Division took part in an offensive on the 27th, alongside the 191st Rifle Division and elements of the 4th Guards Rifle Division. Their target was the vanguard of the German 12th Panzer Division near Sitomlia. Despite a clear numerical advantage, the attack failed to push the Germans back. In fact, the German force held firm long enough to halt and even begin regrouping. The broader picture remained the same: the 52nd and 4th Armies were advancing in fits and starts, their counterattacks hampered by coordination problems and incomplete preparation, which limited their impact on the battlefield.

As the German center offense was checked, trouble also brewed on the wings. On the southern flank, the Soviet 259th Rifle Division anchored the defensive line along the Malaia Vishera River, a boundary reinforced by the 288th and 267th Rifle Divisions. Together, these three divisions mounted a disciplined defense that blunted the advance of the German armored and mechanized spearheads—the 18th Motorised, the 8th Panzer, and the 126th Infantry Divisions. By the 27th, the southern prong of the offensive had to be abandoned, and the two mobile divisions received orders to pull north toward Sitomlia. The 126th Infantry Division remained behind, holding the front line. Up north, the drive of the 11th Infantry Division north along the Volkhov River ground to a halt north of Kirishi by the 28th. To bolster that sector, portions of the 21st Infantry Division were reassigned to strengthen the 11th. Those were the only reinforcements available, reflecting Leeb’s shortage of extra reserves. The relieved unit then received marching orders to move northeast along the Volkhov river line, a maneuver designed to shield the flank of the push toward Tikhvin and to keep the German advance from turning the northern front.

Scared by the slowing pace of the offensive even on the 26th, Field Marshal von Leeb sought permission from Hitler to cancel the planned assault on the Oranienbaum Bridgehead. That order would free up three more infantry divisions, allowing them to be redeployed to refresh the Tikhvin offensive. But moving those divisions into their new positions would take time, and the timing mattered. If Tikhvin finally fell, the implications for Leningrad and its surrounding pockets were stark: Soviet forces in Leningrad proper and at Oranienbaum would be cut off from vital supplies and would face rapid starvation, effectively undermining the need for further costly assaults. There was also the hope that Finland might be drawn into the pressure, offering a distraction that could slow Soviet mobilization and complicate their logistics.

In the build-up to the Tikhvin offensive, German diplomacy with Finland had nudged Helsinki toward its own push toward the same objective. Yet Finnish Generalissimo Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim kept a tight rein on timing, offering no firm start date. For the moment, Finland’s army was consumed with its wider Karelia campaign. Medvezhyegorsk stood as the main objective of two separate pushes from the south and east, a sign of how the front was being pressed from multiple directions. By the 19th, Finnish forces had crossed the Suna River line and were creeping forward, albeit slowly. The two powers, Finns and Germans, were also talking about a joint operation toward Belomorsk, but Finland insisted that any such strike would hinge on a larger development: the fall of Leningrad. The reasoning behind this was straightforward: if Leningrad fell, it would remove a major pressure on Finnish forces and free them to shift northward. Mannerheim estimated that he could dispatch eight or nine Finnish brigades once the city was secured. In their eagerness to renew efforts to sever the Murmansk railway, the OKW and Hitler leadership appeared to overlook this Finnish requirement, namely that Finland needed time and capacity to reassign its units before any joint action could be effective. The Continuation War was exacting a harsh toll on Finland: recruitment of half its industrial workforce and a staggering 70% of its agricultural labor was strained to the limit. The year 1941 would end with roughly 75,000 Finnish casualties, and to keep resources flowing, Finnish divisions were condensed into brigades, with surplus manpower shifted back to civilian industry. Amid this strain, Finland pressed for grain: 175,000 tons were sought to bridge the gap until harvests in 1942. A strategic glimmer appeared when the Soviet leadership announced the start of plans to abandon the port of Hanko, announced on October 23rd—an action that would alter naval and land considerations in the region. In a related redeployment move, the USSR began shifting garrison forces away from vulnerable posts toward Oranienbaum, with the first transfer scheduled for October 27th.

STAVKA had been tracking the faltering pace of the German offensive, and by the 29th they pushed for a bold corrective move. They ordered the 4th Army to form two shock groups, setting the stage for a major counteroffensive to begin the following week. One shock group was formed at Sitomlia from the 191st Rifle Division, a regiment drawn from the 44th Rifle Division, and a regiment pulled from the 60th Tank Division. The second shock group consisted of the 4th Guards Rifle Division, augmented by two regiments taken from the 60th Tank Division, and was assembled about 25 kilometers south of Sitomlia. In support, the 92nd Rifle Division would be operating in the same area to lend additional manpower and firepower to the shock groups. The aim was clear: smash the German formations driving toward Tikhvin and restore the Soviets to a secure defensive line along the Volkhov River.

At Moscow, Zhukhov’s offensive pressed on against the southern flank of the 4th Army and the 4th Panzer Group. Kleist pressed for the Army Group reserve to be released, a request that by the 27th Bock was seriously weighing. The 23rd and 268th Infantry Divisions stood as the only formations still uncommitted within Army Group Center, while Guderian’s Panzer Army remained too distant to offer timely support. Even as segments of the German line teetered toward collapse, the rest of Army Group Center stayed in motion. On the northern front, the 5th Army Corps seized Volokolamsk on the 27th. Consistent with Wehrmacht practice, once a goal was reached, planners reset their sights to an even more ambitious target: Klin, about 80 kilometers northeast. Yet rather than pressing immediately, the 4th Army was allowed to begin preparations to mount this offensive as soon as the ground froze enough for movement. The catch was fuel and ammunition, stockpiles that simply did not exist for any unit facing Moscow. An estimate suggested it would take at least six days for supplies to reach the 4th Panzer Group after frost set in, delaying any offensive action.

Back in Germany, a fresh round of infighting erupted.On one side, Hitler clung to the belief that Guderian lacked the bridging equipment needed to cross the many watercourses between his forces and Tula. On the other side, Hitler insisted that the 4th Army could take over the Tula operation in addition to its existing objectives. He also wanted infantry from the 9th Army to replace the 3rd Panzer Group at Kalinin and shift to a defensive posture. Panzer Groups 3 and 4 would then merge to push on Rybinsk, Yaroslavl, and finally Vologda. This stance clashed with the reality that the 4th Army was on the defensive and running low on reserves. Kalinin itself was besieged by Soviet forces, and the Germans could barely supply their own forces there, not to mention troops 250 kilometers further northeast. Hitler therefore pressed Guderian to abandon the drive on Tula and join the Voronezh offensive. Bock protested to Halder immediately. “I have no idea what the objective of the Second Panzer Army’s departure for Voronezh is. It is essential at Tula and farther north- east. The situation is such that the southern half of Fourth Army between the Oka [River] and the highway has been forced onto the defensive by the increasingly strong enemy … Relief for the Fourth Army and a possible resumption of the attack can only come through a continuation of the panzer army’s advance through Tula to the north-east. Turning this army is unjustifiable.” Halder appeared to side with Bock, but the very next day sent orders to halt Guderian anyway. When Bock tried to pass the orders on, Halder refused the transmission, forcing Bock to brief Heusinger. After reiterating his objections, Bock flatly refused to relay the order to Guderian. Bock wrote in his diary that day “If the army command wants to do it, it will have to tell the [panzer] army itself. The advance by the panzer army, including its infantry corps, has been started through unspeakable effort and after overcoming great difficulties. If I now order it to halt, they will think me mad.” Throughout the night of the 27th, telegrams moved between Bock’s HQ and OKW/OKH—each time Bock refusing transmission. On the 28th, OKW and OKH finally conceded defeat and ordered Guderian to continue toward Tula, but with an additional instruction: cross the Oka River with a small detachment near Serpukhov.

Following the incident, Kluge was ordered to fly to Hitler’s Headquarters to brief him directly on the front’s conditions. It is theorised that Hitler believed the OKW was deceiving him once more for its own strategic ends. Although there are no surviving meeting minutes, Kluge later told Bock that Hitler had requested detailed battlefield accounts, including weather, mud, and road conditions. Kluge spent three nights and two days at Hitler’s headquarters. A key outcome of the meeting was Hitler’s acceptance that Army Group Center’s forces should wait for frost or dry conditions before resuming any major offensive, while still permitting local attacks and opportunistic advances, but not large-scale operations. “Kluge spoke once again about the possibilities of attacking. He said that if he drove his forces forward now there might be a gain of a few kilometres then that would be it again because artillery and motorized weapons became stuck. I told him that we would gain nothing by that. Naturally we must stay alert to any weakening of the enemy and strike there immediately. But in general the army had to, as per orders, make thorough preparations for an attack as soon as the cold sets in. This time benefits the enemy but unfortunately there is no other solution. The situation is enough to drive one to despair and filled with envy I look to the Crimea, where we are advancing vigorously in the sunshine over the dry ground of the steppe and the Russians are scattering to the four winds. It could be the same here if we weren’t stuck up to our knees in the mud.”

Plavsk fell on the 27th after a 36-kilometer sprint in two days, achieved despite heavy mud and scarce fuel, with German forces advancing faster than Soviet lines could realistically form defenses. By the 29th, the vanguard approached within about 5 kilometers of Tula, and on the following day the leading battlegroup—comprising two infantry battalions and two tank battalions, attempted to seize Tula. Soviet defenses were stout, reinforced in the days prior, and included anti-aircraft guns wired for direct fire alongside entrenched anti-tank batteries, which inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers. This particular battlegroup at Tula depended entirely on airdrops for supplies, an arrangement unsustainable for any further buildup. The eventual capture of Tula remained contingent on ground frosts hardening the soil and on near-term railhead repositioning to bring supplies closer to the front.

The fighting around Kalinin continued through the week as Soviet forces pressed to complete the encirclement of the Panzer Corps defending the city, while German logistics deteriorated under mud and fuel shortages, limiting reinforcement efforts and keeping ammunition scarce, which in turn drove higher German casualties; the airfield near Kalinin had been closed due to excessive aircraft losses, further constraining airlift and resupply. The 1st Panzer Division was demanding withdrawal for a full organizational overhaul after heavy losses, the 6th Panzer Division was cannibalizing tanks to keep some in service as it pushed toward the city, and casualty figures in the Kalinin vicinity rose with the 161st Infantry Division suffering around 2,000 losses, the 36th Motorised Division about 960, and the 129th Infantry Division around 550, all of which underscored the strain on German combat power and complicated efforts to break the encirclement or relieve besieged units.

The conditions surrounding the Kalinin sector prompted Strauss, commander of the 9th Army, to oppose Hitler’s plan to capture Yaroslavl, arguing that Kalinin itself was not a secure base of operations. Reinhardt, commander of the Third Panzer Army, disagreed with Strauss and pressed for an offensive start on November 4, a timetable that would not have allowed time for the 56th Panzer Corps or the 3rd Panzer Corps to arrive, leaving the already battered 41st Panzer Corps to advance roughly 250 km in cold, muddy conditions largely on its own. Yet the 3rd Panzer Group was technically subordinate to the 9th Army, and Strauss promptly countermanded this reckless order, forbidding any of his infantry divisions from taking part in such an offensive. Even as Strauss worked to keep his forces from being drawn off to the northeast while trying to hold the Army Group’s northern flank, Bock issued new directives that the north should be treated as a secondary theatre, focusing instead on the 70 km gap between Yaropolets and Kalinin where no German units were stationed and where neither Strauss nor Kluge had stretched to cover the sector. Nevertheless, Reinhardt refused to participate in any operation unless it was directed toward Yaroslavl, even in the face of Bock’s intervention.

On the 30th, a new set of orders for Army Group Centre clarified the operational focus: Yaroslavl and Tihkivin would remain targets for both Army Group North and Centre, while the 9th Army was reduced to securing supply lines for the Panzer Group's push toward Yaroslavl and no longer tasked with conducting an encirclement alongside Army Group North. The 4th Army was instructed to await an improvement in weather and logistics, then attack Moscow without delay. The 2nd Panzer Army received approval to cross the Oka and was assigned to seize the industrial areas of Stalinogorsk and Kashira. It was determined that the encirclement of Moscow would require eliminating Soviet forces between Kalinin and the Moskva River. Operation Typhoon was declared at an end, with German losses in October amounting to 41,099 men. Total losses by the 6th of November was 686,108. 1 in 5 soldiers who had entered the USSR in July was now a casualty. Like Operation Barbarossa, Typhoon was successful in many tactical and operational respects, but failed to achieve its overarching strategic objective of winning the war.

After Kyiv, Hitler imposed a drastic shift in German policy toward Soviet cities, forbidding assaults on the cities themselves or accepting their surrender, including Moscow. The 12th October order from OKH  "The Führer has once again decided that a surrender from Moscow is not to be accepted. … Just as the most serious dangers to the troops in Kyiv were caused by time-detonated bombs, the same must be expected to an even greater extent in Moscow and Leningrad. Soviet Russian radio itself announced that Leningrad is mined and would be defended to the last man. … Therefore, no German soldier is to enter these cities. Anyone attempting to leave the city against our lines is to be repelled by fire. Smaller, unblocked gaps that allow the population to flow out into central Russia are therefore only to be welcomed. The same applies to all other cities: before they are captured, they must be worn down by artillery fire and air raids, and their populations must be forced to flee. It is irresponsible to risk the lives of German soldiers to save Russian cities from fire or to feed their populations at the expense of the German homeland. The more the population of Soviet Russian cities flees into the interior of Russia, the greater the chaos in Russia, and the easier it will be for us to administer and exploit the occupied eastern territories. This will of the Führer must be brought to the attention of all commanders”. 

Instead, the population was to be driven out or exterminated through artillery, air bombardment, or starvation, justified publicly by concerns over time bombs left by Soviets and the supposed waste of German lives in taking cities. Civilians attempting to flee were to be shot unless they could reach special corridors eastward, and no food or firefighting assistance was to be provided to those inside the cities. The aim was to starve the 3.1 million Moscow population to death, reflecting a broader Nazi view that urban populations were largely unwanted except for those who could work in factories. The prewar population had been 4.1 million. Refugees flowing into the city had outpaced the ability to evacuate civilians from the city until October. Only after October did the population start to decrease down to 2.1 million by 1941. The Nazis saw the urban population as a drain on food resources intended to ease long-term shortages, while rural populations were valued mainly for producing food or supplying raw materials. These plans reportedly remained unknown to the Soviets.  Hilter on 17th October with Reich minister Dr. Todt and Gauleiter Sauckel “We shan’t settle in the Russian towns, and we’ll let them fall to pieces without intervening. And, above all, no remorse on this subject! We’re not going to play at children’s nurses; we’re absolutely without obligations as far as these people are concerned. To struggle against the hovels, chase away the fleas, provide German teachers, bring out newspapers – very little of that for us! We’ll confine ourselves, perhaps, to setting up a radio transmitter, under our control. For the rest, let them know just enough to understand our highway signs, so that they won’t get themselves run over by our vehicles! For them the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash on feast days … There’s only one duty: to germanise this country by the immigration of Germans, and to look upon the natives as Redskins”.

Eight thousand kilometers of trenches and anti-tank ditches were dug to defend Moscow, complemented by 300 kilometers of barbed wire, while a semicircular main defensive line with a radius of 16 kilometers was established, followed by three progressively smaller urban rings. In a parallel to Kyiv, civilian factories were repurposed to produce rudimentary weapons for local volunteer formations and to manufacture pillboxes and other defensive works. Many buildings were mined in anticipation of a German entry, and special stay-behind teams were organized to sabotage what remained or to assassinate prominent German figures. The city’s airfields remained well supplied and enabled near-total Luftwaffe superiority in the Moscow airspace, yet forward German positions often lacked adequate flak coverage, and the Luftwaffe struggled to deploy enough aircraft to contest the Soviet air forces around Moscow. Casualties mounted steadily, with the 2nd Panzer Division recording around 100 casualties in just a few days.

Zhukov had ordered a summary execution policy as early as the 13th to punish “cowards and panic-mongers that leave the battlefield and retreat from their positions without permission.” This hard line continued into late October and early November, with Colonel Kozlov of the 17th Rifle Division executed on the 22nd for retreating without orders on multiple occasions, together with the political commissar. Political commissars were tasked with assisting their commanders and chiefs of staff to reach appropriate decisions, and also with ensuring that those decisions were indeed appropriate. They were intended to share full responsibility alongside their attached command for the condition and combat activities of that command, establishing a joint accountability framework. Under this arrangement, a commissar was considered responsible for allowing their attached unit to retreat without authorization in the face of a no-retreat order, reflecting both the unit’s operational stance and the political oversight guiding it. Likewise, Lt. Colonel Gerasimov was executed on the 2nd of November, alongside his commissar, for the same alleged offenses.

STAVKA had ordered the formation of ten armies to be stationed inside the USSR, and by November the unseen structure was taking shape: 59 rifle divisions, 13 cavalry divisions, 75 rifle brigades, and 20 tank brigades. These formations were not rushed to the frontlines out of desperation; unlike earlier waves, each division was intended to be fully trained and equipped before deployment. The prolonged resistance around the Bryansk and Vyazma pockets, the stubborn Mozhaisk defensive line, and the counterattacks led by Konev and Zhukov bought the Red Army precious time to assemble a brand-new force capable of taking revenge on the Wehrmacht in the depths of winter. German military intelligence completely failed to detect this buildup, highlighting the strategic patience and evolving mobilization that characterized Soviet preparations during this period. German military intelligence in the USSR was notoriously limited and often disastrously ineffective. The only reliable strands tended to come from local tactical information about forces directly opposing German divisions, or from sources such as prisoners of war and defectors. Outside of these narrow channels, German intelligence struggles manifested as broad misreads of Soviet mobilization, unit formations, and strategic intentions, contributing to missed warnings and delayed reactions during critical phases of the conflict.

On the 28th, the First Panzer Army sent a memorandum to OKH stating that it was not in a condition to undertake further operations without improved access to supplies, and it requested withdrawal to Germany so its tanks and equipment could be restored, since only minor field repairs were feasible and major repairs required factories or major repair centers. After 11,600 km the pure mechanical strain from normal operation was starting to ruin many tanks and trucks beyond the capabilities of normal field maintenance. They needed a complete overhaul to restore them back to normal capabilities and reliability. OKH, however, insisted on achieving the Maykop–Stalingrad–Voronezh line but permitted a pause after the Don River line was captured. The Army was then ordered to renew its offensive toward Rostov in early November, but Hitler opposed even this concession, fearing the loss of offensive momentum and soldiers’ reluctance to resume after a pause. Ultimately, a four-week pause was agreed, though Hitler pressed that any snow-free period or frost should be exploited at all costs, with both Hitler and Halder aiming to secure the Don River line before the year’s end. Many staff officers opposed this approach due to the crisis across multiple divisions, ongoing supply shortages, and high attrition rates; the Army group had expected 724 trains in October but received only 195, and the 6th and 17th Armies found themselves operating at the end of barely sufficient logistical chains after securing their sections of the Don line. All priority shifted to sustaining the offensive of the 11th Army and preparing a renewed push by the 1st Panzer Army, illustrating a persistent tension between aggressive strategic aims and the harsh realities of supply and maintenance under political-military pressure. 

The conference of Chiefs of Staff on October 31st focused on the state of the First Panzer Army and the practicalities of reconstituting its equipment. The consensus was that as much equipment as possible should be returned to Germany for restoration, and that it would be wiser to halt Army Group South in its current positions, preserving strength for renewed spring offensives with fresh formations rather than pressing on toward distant objectives with divisions depleted to unusable levels. The chief of staff of the 17th Army warned that the Soviets might be attempting to lure them into a scenario where the German supply situation was so overstretched that a counterattack could be crushed, but this concern was dismissed by the others. Halder noted that day “The Army High Command no longer expects the greatly weakened enemy to take active measures. He will try only to withdraw and reorganize his forces undisturbed.”  Despite these internal cautions, OKH and OKW pressed for the Army Group to reach the Don River by year’s end, even though the staff officers argued they lacked the resources to adequately secure the flanks if the front extended along the river. They also asserted that any advance would have to be conducted with small infantry groups supported only by Panzer wagons, with no motorization beyond those towings for anti-aircraft guns, reflecting the severely constrained logistical reality and the preference for conserving forces until more favorable conditions could allow a more robust, sustained operation. 

Hausen’s 54th Corps had been ground down by a brutal assault on the Crimean defenses, leaving them combat ineffective as the week opened. Kuznetsov’s 51st Army defensive efforts began to falter, and by the 28th the Soviet defenders were pushed from their prepared positions, triggering a rapid retreat. This retreat fractured into two segments, with the 51st Army pulling back to Kerch and the long-standing defenders around Odesa streaming toward Sevastopol to brace for another siege. Mainstein again faced a stark shortage of mobility, lacking motorised formations to exploit the Soviet rout, and he reiterated the need for a mobile division, arguing that if the attack stalled, a corps comprising two panzer divisions and a motorised unit would be required to restart it. That demand, however, was denied once more, forcing his infantry to pursue the fleeing Soviets at best, as they proceeded to follow the retreat until a new decision point emerged. Consequently, the 54th and 30th Corps advanced toward Sevastopol, while the newly reassigned 62nd Corps moved toward the Parpach Isthmus. The Romanian Mountain Corps took up the crucial task of securing the gap between these German formations against potential partisan activity and any anticipated naval landings. Just as the USSR’s northern and central sectors appeared to stabilize, a fresh crisis began to loom in the south. 

The Romanian armed forces bore a heavy toll from the Crimea campaign, suffering an additional roughly 10,000 casualties by the start of November on top of the already steep losses incurred during the Odesa fighting. This brutal toll pushed Romania toward a more passive posture, as its military apparatus and strategic position were strained beyond endurance and its broader role in the war appeared effectively exhausted. Disturbingly, in the wake of Odesa’s capture, Romanian forces participated in acts aligned with the Nazi regime’s antisemitic policies, reportedly shooting about 19,000 Jewish civilians in the city. One estimate was that 250,000 Jews and 12,000 Roma died in the aftermath of Romania's occupation of Bessarabia. Antonescu fully shared Hitler’s mania about Jews and Bolshevism. On the Italian side, Mussolini’s reaction to Odesa’s fall was to elevate the sense of urgency and prestige by ordering the expansion of Italy’s contribution: on October 22 he decreed that 15 Italian divisions should be raised and dispatched to the Eastern front. These were to be on top of the 92 divisions that the Chief of Italian Supreme Command General Ugo Cavallero proclaimed he would have raised and ready for use in Spring 1942. This is the same genius who, when faced with the lack of motorisation in the Italian army, ordered the daily marching distance of Italian soldiers from 18km to 40km… To say that Cavallero was delusional would be an understatement. This directive came despite the notable contributions already made by the modest Italian CSIR, which, though small, had played a significant role in the invasion, including assisting in the capture of Stalino as part of its responsibility for screening the inland flank of the 1st Panzer Army. 

Hungary, by contrast, was already exploring ways to withdraw from frontline operations while remaining useful to Germany in a rear-security role. The Hungarian Mobile Corps remained a valued asset for the 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army even after intense losses, which helped explain why the Germans repeatedly refused to return the formation to Hungary until early November. When the corps finally withdrew, it had suffered about 4,500 casualties and had lost roughly 90% of its tanks and 30% of its aircraft, a brutal toll that limited its battlefield utility. In exchange for its continued cooperation, Hungary sent two brigades to take on rear-area security duties. Slovakia followed a somewhat similar trajectory: initially deploying about 41,000 men to the Eastern Front, but by the end of October that force had been reduced by roughly two-thirds, with many units sent home. The remaining force was limited to a small mobile division, and even that formation was not regarded as an equal to a heavily depleted German division, underscoring the shrinking combat viability of Slovakia’s contribution as the campaign wore on. 

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The Wehrmacht’s longing for a quick triumph near Tikhvin and Moscow collided with a stubborn Soviet resistance, civilians marching beside soldiers and turning Rasputitsa into a tidal trap. Stalin shuffled generals, shipping help to threatened frontiers while STAVKA plotted bold countermoves from Sitomlia to the Volkhov. Germans fretted over fuel, frost, and frail supply lines, while Moscow’s defenders fortified with torches and resolve. As frost finally loomed, both sides weighed limits and tactics, imagining victory, yet understanding the campaign’s brutal truth: logistics, weather, and will define war’s end.

Last time we spoke about the beginning of the Tikhvin offensive. In the autumn of 1941, a thin road from Leningrad to Moscow braided with mud and grit as two colossal armies pressed toward a grim deadline. On one side, German steel sought a swift triumph; on the other, Soviet resolve rebuilt from ruined lines, shoulder to shoulder with civilians who refused to surrender their city. Cities along the corridor buckled under pressure, Bryansk, Vyazma, Kalinin, yet the Red Army held, taught newcomers, and refused to yield Moscow to the encroaching winter. The Tikhvin Offensive blossomed as a dire race against Rasputitsa and frost. German panzers clawed forward through swamps and forests, sometimes breaking the front and exposing vulnerable flanks. Soviet countermeasures, though hampered by stretched reserves, stitched together new fronts and defensive corridors, buying time for the capital. Civilians endured hunger, cold, and the fear of occupation as fronts shifted like winter winds: planes thundered above, trains groaned along damaged rails, and soldiers traded warmth for survival. The Tikhvin Offensive began, but the war’s winter symphony had only just begun.

This episode is the Wehrmacht Struggled in October Mud

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

The German offensive toward Tikhvin fanned out after the 21st. The 12th Panzer Division and the 20th Motorised Division were directed at Tikhvin and made slow but steady progress, with Budogosh falling on the 23rd. Mud and snow created ongoing difficulties, and tanks and trucks were repeatedly lost to the terrain. The level of attrition reached a point that prompted consideration from Hitler about suspending the attack. Leeb and Halder persuaded Hitler to allow the operation to continue. Leeb was granted authorisation to halt the attack at his discretion, provided a bridgehead across the Volkhov River remained intact. To the southeast, the 8th Panzer Division and the 18th Motorised Division were redirected toward Bologoye, with the objective of connecting with Panzer Group 3 from Kalinin. Leeb requested control over Panzer Group 3 and the northern wing of the 9th Army to create a unified command structure for this operation. The request was refused. The offensive proceeded despite the failure of the 3rd Panzer Group to break out of Kalinin. The 18th Motorised Division and the 126th Infantry Division managed to capture Bolshaya Vishera. In response, the 288th Rifle Division and the 267th Rifle Division delayed the German advance long enough to establish a defensive line along the Malaya Vishera River. Supporting offensives by the 2nd and 10th Army Corps toward Vyshniy Volochek and Valday were halted by strong Soviet tank-led counteroffensives.

The 11th and 21st Infantry Divisions were dispatched north along both sides of the Volkhov to cover the German offensive’s flanks and threaten the rear of the 54th Army. North of Kirishi, the 11th Infantry Division was halted by the 285th and 311th Rifle Divisions on the 24th. Recognizing the growing German threat, STAVKA ordered a reshaping of the Soviet force: the 310th Rifle Division and the 4th Guards Division were transferred from the 54th Army to the 4th Army; the 191st Rifle Division moved to Sitomlia; and the 44th Rifle Division was assigned to defend Tikhvin itself. This created a layered defense around the critical railway hub at Tikhvin. The 259th Rifle Division was reassigned to the 52nd Army. The Soviet offensive at Siniavino continued without significant progress, with the objective of drawing German reinforcements away from the Tikhvin front. 

Beowulf referred to two German plans to occupy the islands of Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhu, and Vormsi  off the eastern coast of Estonia, at the mouth of the Gulf of Riga in the southeastern Baltic region, as part of the broader Barbarossa invasion of the USSR. The proximate trigger for Beowulf planning and execution had been the Soviet Berlin Bombing Offensive. Soviet aircraft staged through an airfield on Ösel, and although the operation had been small and largely ineffective, it prompted German concern. Hitler ordered a reduction of activity on these islands. Their strategic importance had been limited; the northern drive of Barbarossa toward Leningrad had already moved to the north, leaving the islands and their Soviet garrisons largely isolated and vulnerable to smaller craft.

Both Beowulf I and Beowulf II shared the same objective but were based on different starting assumptions. Beowulf I had imagined a rapid German victory in the Baltic states, particularly the seizure of the Courland (Kurland) peninsula as Heeresgruppe Nord advanced toward Leningrad. This would have been a reworking of Operation Albion from World War I, launched from the Courland region of Latvia. In practice, German forces had faced delays crossing into Estonian territory. Beowulf II was the operation actually undertaken, an attack launched from the western coast of Estonia. Diversionary attacks were employed to confuse Soviet defenders Südwind, Westwind, and Nordwind with sub-plans Lel, Nau, and Stimmung designed to mislead. The islands were garrisoned by about 23,700 Soviet troops of the 3rd Rifle Brigade. The German force assigned to the operation consisted of the 61st Infantry Division, reinforced with assault pioneers and artillery. The force was transported from the Estonian coast by about 100 barges and ferries plus roughly 150 smaller assault boats. A joint German–Finnish naval task force covered the landings, including light cruisers Emden, Köln, and Leipzig. During diversionary naval bombardments, the Finnish coastal defense ship Ilmarinen struck a mine off Hanko and sank.

Vormsi was secured on 9 September. The main assault on Muhu began on 14 September; Muhu was connected to Saaremaa Ösel in German by a causeway. Muhu was secured by 16 September, and a bridgehead across the causeway was established the following day. By 23 September, Soviet forces had been pushed back to the Sorve Peninsula, from which they were gradually forced off with assault pioneers and naval gunfire support; the last Soviet troops surrendered on 5 October. The assault on Hiiumaa (Dagö) began on 12 September; defenders retreated to the Takhuna Peninsula, with survivors surrendering on 21 October 1941. Due to Axis naval and air superiority, Soviet forces could not escape; Soviet losses were about 4,700 killed and 19,000 captured. German casualties totaled about 2,850. Afterwards the 61st Infantry Division was redirected to support the offensive toward Tikhvin, while the 217th Infantry Division was reassigned to strengthen the Oranienbaum pocket.

As mud became a larger problem, on 21 October, Beowulf-committed orders had been drafted that all motorised formations abandon their vehicles and temporarily convert to foot infantry with limited artillery. However, this proposal was outright refused by Brauchitsch, who did not believe conditions at the front were so bad that the symbols of modern warfare needed to be abandoned. Yet, senior commanders had already begun implementing similar measures: several formations ordered their advanced battlegroups to abandon vehicles and proceed on foot. Other formations had already been forced to do so due to the practical reality that all their vehicles were stuck, broken down, or out of fuel. The 41st Panzer Corps had been virtually encircled at Kalinin and was subjected to constant attacks from Konev’s Kalinin Front. By 21 October, it had been in continuous combat for 18 days without relief. The remaining elements of the 3rd Panzer Group and supporting infantry corps from the 9th Army had been tied down longer than expected at Vyazma and then slowed to a crawl by mud as they advanced northward. After its aborted attack toward Torzhok, the 1st Panzer Division was stuck on the wrong bank of the Volga and was retreating toward Kalinin. In the span of two weeks, it had lost 63 tanks and had been reduced to 16 operational tanks by 23 October. It had suffered over 800 casualties between 13 and 20 October.

Even with the arrival of elements from the 129th Infantry Division and the 6th Panzer Division, the 9th Army reported that the situation around Kalinin could not be held indefinitely and that the Soviet forces to the south of the city needed to be forced back. The supply situation for the Luftwaffe was so precarious that pilots were throwing bread out of their cockpits as they passed by to provide food. Hitler proposed that the 41st Panzer Corps seize Bezhetsk, over 110 km from Kalinin, shortly after it had failed to take Torzhok, 60 km away. Hitler keenly watched Goebbel’s weekly newsreels and so it is likely his view of the war was highly influenced by his own propaganda output. Furthermore, Bock demanded that another attempt to take Torzhok be planned by the 9th Army. He did not specify whether the Infantry Corps or the 3rd Panzer Group would conduct the operation. Much of the original Mozhaisk Defensive Line had fallen to the Germans, but the Red Army had only been pushed back to a new layer of defensive lines. The Germans remained 80 to 100 km from Moscow. As German formations grew weaker, new formations flowed in to reinforce the defenders. By the end of October, 13 rifle divisions and five tank brigades had arrived, along with several formations raised directly in Moscow. Moreover, the 33rd Army had been inserted into the line between the 5th and 43rd Armies.

The 46th Panzer Corps, positioned at the northern end of the German lines against Moscow, had lacked sufficient fuel to maneuver freely and conduct offensives. They remained on the receiving end of constant Soviet tank and air attacks. Previously, raids were carried out by groups of two bombers with fighter cover; by this time, the VVS had begun launching squadron-strength raids against ground targets as its strength had returned. Additionally, German airfields in the area had become so clogged with mud that planes struggled to reach takeoff speed. To the south, the 40th Panzer Corps pressed headlong down the Smolensk–Moscow highway in largely predictable assaults. Although they were winning battles due to better training, their casualties were becoming prohibitively high and unsustainable. The 2nd Panzer Division assaulted Volokolamsk alongside the 35th Infantry Division. They had managed to capture the rail station just south of the town by the 25th, but Volokolamsk itself remained stubbornly in Soviet hands. The 10th Panzer Division was engaged around Istra but had not managed to seize it. The 57th Panzer Corps had been immobilized outside Kamenskoye all week. Mud deep enough to trap tractors and tanks prevented maneuver, and supply shortages denied them the strength to undertake offensives. The 20th Panzer Division had been left in the rear of the corps due to its severe depletion.

The 4th Panzer Group had been consuming between 1,000 and 1,500 tons of supplies each day, yet it had received only about 200 tons. This forced the Panzer Group to slowly wind down its offensives, as it was unable to sustain them. Similarly, the 4th Army had managed to grind its way toward the Naro-Fominsk area, but was halted by stiffened resistance and ongoing supply shortages. Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner wrote on the 12 of October. ‘The whole front is moving! Unbelievable this theatre of war. Every day I am asked: How far will you get? I always say: So far I have not left anyone in the lurch!’ On the 25th, Soviet counterattacks had slammed into the 4th Army and managed to push German infantry back several kilometers. The 12th Army Corps bore the brunt of the assault and was ordered to go on the defensive. The next day, the counterattack expanded against the 13th and 20th Army Corps. Kluge was forced to commit his two reserve divisions but was unable to stem the Soviet attack and was compelled to request that the Army Group reserve be released. The 19th Panzer Division repositioned itself to save the neighboring infantry divisions from a concentrated attack by Soviet tanks.

Despite some defensive successes, a state of siege had been declared in Moscow on the 20th to ensure the priority flow of resources and reinforcements. There had been a temporary panic in the previous two weeks. Wild rumours and gossip had circulated about the collapse of the Red Army at Bryansk and Vyazma. Some rumours included that Stalin had been removed by a coup d’état or that German paratroopers were in the Red Square or that German troops in Soviet uniforms were already in the city. The population felt betrayed by this apparent retreat of the elite after so much had been demanded of them, which caused a temporary hysteria. Stalin’s declaration that he would remain in the city helped stabilize morale, alongside measures to ensure that shops and the metro system functioned. He also unleashed the NKVD on the city to deal with those who did not accept this metaphorical carrot. However, this unrest had been dealt with by the 20th, so it was unlikely to be related to the declaration of a state of siege.

The Luftwaffe had attempted to bomb Moscow, but by 25 October it had managed to drop only about 1,000 tons of bombs. As a comparison, on a single day in 1944, the RAF dropped approximately 10,050 tons of bombs on the cities of Cologne, Braunschweig , and Duisburg. This occurred as part of Operation Hurricane over the 14th and 15th of October 1944. It represented the largest weight of bombs dropped in a single 24-hour period during World War II. That same month in 1944, the Western Allies dropped a total of 109,975 tons of bombs. For the Moscow bombing, the damage done was utterly negligible, even if the raids proved a hostile and unpleasant experience for the city’s inhabitants. The airframes of the Luftwaffe were ill-suited to such operations, even before the need to substitute payload for additional fuel. Furthermore, the vast majority of raids on Moscow involved only three to ten planes. This campaign likely harmed the Germans more than the Soviets. Large quantities of supplies were required to sustain these raids, and the attrition rate remained high. German planes had an operability rate of only about 40% due to extensive issues caused by the cold, even before the onset of winter.

The aircraft used for these raids were the same ones typically employed for ground-support operations. The pilots who participated in the raids observed the extremely heavy and effective anti-air defences around Moscow. Pilots who had also taken part in the Blitz noted that Moscow’s air defences were far more intense than the London defences during the Blitz in 1940. British Hurricanes and American P-40 Warhawks, known as Tomahawks in Commonwealth and Soviet usage, were flown in the defense of Moscow. While the Hurricane was already approaching obsolescence as a frontline fighter, it was still capable. The Tomahawk was the preferred design among Soviet pilots. Across the entire Eastern Front, the Luftwaffe was losing an average of 268 bombers per month. Production was nowhere near replacement rates, and airframe stockpiles were rapidly depleting. A study by the Inspector General of Fighters, Werner Mölders, into the potentially highly negative effects of winter on the Luftwaffe, was dismissed as alarmist by Göring.

To the south, the 26th Army and NKVD formations defended Tula. The 50th Army had been attempting to withdraw toward Tula but was severely depleted and lacking all heavy equipment. By the 22nd, the 4th Panzer Army had been reinforced by the 3rd Panzer Army, and both were prepared for a new offensive. On the 23rd, the 3rd Panzer Division attacked and gained ground slowly. The 4th Panzer Army was initially ordered to wait until a bridgehead across the Zusha River had been secured before it began its attack. However, the 3rd Panzer was so delayed by conditions and Soviet resistance that by midday the 4th Panzer Army was committed early. By the end of the day, the 3rd Panzer Army had managed to cross the Susha and expand the bridgehead by 6 km. The 4th Panzer Army remained within 3 km of Mtsensk, pinned by entrenched Soviet tanks on nearby high ground. Guderian blamed the lack of success on the 4th Panzer Army not being used as he had intended, while Schweppenburg pointed to the well-concealed Soviet positions that ambushed any German advance.

The offensive was renewed on the 24th with reinforcements from the Großdeutschland regiment. Nevertheless, the 24th Panzer Corps managed only a 3 km advance that day after multiple attacks were repulsed. The ammunition of the 24th Panzer Corps was nearly exhausted, and the 4th Panzer Division had completely run out of fuel. Some formations in Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Army required airlifts of food because their access to supplies had deteriorated to a terrible level. One example was the 43rd Army Corps, which had received no supplies between the 20th and 29th. It was out of rations and nearly out of fodder for the horses, and its area of operations had already been picked clean. The fuel issue was alleviated through an airlift. The mud forced the 4th Panzer to use its tanks as supply vehicles, and all of its wheeled transport was immobilized. However, the Soviet defenders fell back during the night of October 24. This allowed the 24th Panzer Corps to capture Chern, 30 km north of Mtsensk. In their wake, the Soviets had destroyed every bridge possible and laid random minefields. The Germans used Panzer I tanks as sacrificial mine clearers which the other tanks carefully followed behind. A slow pursuit of the retreating Soviet forces toward Tula commenced as rear-area troops desperately attempted to repair roads and bridges. Due to a shortage of trucks to move infantry, the leading battlegroup adopted the Soviet method, with infantry from the Großdeutschland regiment riding on the backs of advancing tanks.

Elsewhere, the 48th Panzer Corps, alongside the 34th and 35th Army Corps, were transferred to the Second Army, which was designated as responsible for the Kursk-Voronezh area. The 48th possessed only one Panzer division. It had been reduced to 11 tanks by the 24th and was stalled 85 km from Kursk, with Voronezh another 200 km distant. The Second Panzer Army was then to be responsible solely for the capture of Tula. Only General Bock opposed such dispersion of his Army Group’s strength, as it was now attacking to the north and south in addition to Moscow. Bock’s War Diary 25th October stated “The splitting apart of the army group together with the frightful weather has caused us to be bogged down. As a result the Russians are gaining time to bring their shattered divisions back up to strength and bolster their defence, especially since they have most of the rail lines and roads around Moscow. That is very bad!’” All the other generals at OKH and OKW either meekly submitted to Hitler’s desire in this case or were so entangled by the lure of victory that they had long disregarded reality. This situation would only worsen in the coming days. Guderian’s Second Panzer Army would also lose the 1st Cavalry Division as it was ordered to be returned to Germany and converted into the 24th Panzer Division. This process would take months to complete and would return to service in Russia in the summer of 1942.  

At the same time, four infantry divisions and Corps Headquarters were withdrawn to the west. Many horses had been so weakened and overexerted by the campaign that their health had irreversibly collapsed. During the return train journeys, they often had to halt to unload the horse corpses. The mud, alongside the broken supply network, had deprived the German Army of its primary advantage: mobility. In his war diary, von Bock complained that “the Russians are impeding us far less than the wet and the mud.” Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner wrote on the 20th ‘It can no longer be concealed’ ‘we are hung up in the muck, in the purest sense.’ The rainfall in October 1941 was below average, and the temperature was only 1°C below the long-term average. These conditions were not a surprise to anyone, and any competent staff could have foreseen and mitigated many of the issues caused by the predictable weather.

General Heinrici of the 43rd Army Corps reported taking 36 hours to drive only 35 km, while the 137th Division reported it took 53 hours for three trucks to travel 40 km. Fun fact this was significantly slower than Napoleon’s forces were able to travel during the same period in 1812. It was now taking up to 24 draft horses to move a single artillery gun. Sometimes the mud was so deep that horses could fall up to their necks into the quagmire and become irrecoverably stuck. But mud was not the only problem. The 2,093 trains that reached the eastern front in September had not been nearly adequate to meet demand; in October, only 1,860 trains arrived. Compounding the issue, those trains were further behind the front lines. Many formations were now 300–400 km from their supplying railhead. Even the most fortunate formations attacking Moscow were still about 115 km from their supply hub at Vyazma. This distance would attrit supply vehicles quickly.

Alone, this would have been a logistical catastrophe. The mud severely exacerbated these problems, and no precautions had been taken beforehand to address the conditions. Many formations found that the effort to tow supply vehicles forward through the mud consumed nearly as much fuel as it brought forward. The German logistical machine, numbering over 600,000 supply vehicles in the East, had been reduced to about 75,000 by mid-November. At any one time, roughly half were in repair stations. The Wehrmacht was being demotorised. The Germans were forced to learn how to scrounge from the land, to capture and reconfigure all Soviet vehicles they encountered simply to survive. Most divisions were now reliant on columns of horse-drawn Panje wagons, Luftwaffe air drops, or river barges to move supplies.

The Germans faced an increasing deployment of T-34 and KV-1 tanks by the Soviets, which were also employed with growing competence. German complaints consistently centered on their tank cannons and anti-tank guns’ inability to reliably defeat Soviet tanks at range. By contrast, Soviet tank guns proved highly effective against the armor of even the heaviest German tanks in service. The Germans were forced to rely on heavy artillery or the temporarily attached 88 mm Flak guns in a direct-fire role. This culminated in a Hitler decree ordering that all formations on the Eastern Front be equipped with Flak 88 guns. The T-34 was one of the few pieces of equipment that the Germans feared in 1941, though it appears likely that KV-1 tanks were often misidentified as T-34s in German reports. Soviet artillery would become feared by the Germans; however, in 1941, Soviet ranging and coordination of its fire were poor, heavily restricting the effectiveness of Soviet artillery at this point. 

In Ukraine, the first battle of Kharkiv began on the 22nd, as the forward defenses of the city were attacked by the 57th Infantry and the 101st Jäger divisions. The attack occurred despite Hitler’s prohibition against directly assaulting Soviet cities. The Germans were so close to Kharkiv and desperately sought the shelter it provided, in addition to the rail links flowing through the city. Several German formations would make random attacks just to capture a nearby village. They hoped this would afford them shelter from the cold and night but often Soviet forces ensured to destroy as much shelter as possible before retreating. The assault on the city itself commenced the following day. Its start was delayed by mud that slowed the deployment of artillery and anti-tank guns. By the 24th, Kharkiv had fallen into German hands. The city was lightly defended by only the 216th Rifle Division, which was sacrificed to buy time for the 38th Army to fall back. The 216th rifle division had also been recently reformed after being destroyed during the Uman pocket. Therefore, it received no supporting action. The Soviets had no reason to defend the city, its industry, including the large T-34 plant, had already been evacuated.

The 6th Army’s objective had been to reach Kursk and Voronezh, linking up with the Second Army, while the 17th Army was to continue toward Stalingrad. However, on the 22nd this plan was updated. The 6th Army was now tasked with capturing Belgorod to secure rail connections, and the 17th Army with establishing a bridgehead at Izyum. Both armies were then to halt to collect supplies for the winter, an operation estimated to take three weeks. Only after achieving sufficient supplies were they to return to their previous objectives, advancing along rail connections where possible.

The First Panzer Army remained mostly static for the week due to extreme fuel shortages and defending attacks from the 9th Army. The 9th Army was attempting to buy time for the new 56th Army, which fielded six rifle divisions and six cavalry divisions that were still assembling and being transported to Rostov. Manstein received new orders to capture Tuapse and Krasnodar, but first he had to break through the neck of the peninsula. A breach existed in the Soviet defences north of Inshin, but his infantry lacked the speed to truly exploit it before more soviet forces arrived. Mainstein pressed for a mobile division to be allocated to his command, but Kleist refused on the grounds of having sufficient fuel to make the transfer and also make his push to Rostov. He also claimed such a transfer would weaken his forces too much to capture the city. Essentially this forced Hitler to determine if Rostov or Crimea was the priority for forces in the South. Rostov would be chosen as the priority on the 26th. The fighting over the week was so fierce that, on the 25th, Hausen claimed his 54th Army Corps was combat-ineffective; this claim was rejected by Manstein. The arrival of promised Luftwaffe support significantly helped protect ground forces from Soviet air attacks and hinder Soviet defensive efforts. Six fighter groups, three dive-bomber groups, and two Italian fighter groups arrived in Ukraine. These air units were split between the Crimea and Rostov sectors while also providing fighter cover for the 17th and 6th Armies. This week also saw the commander of the Soviet 51st Army, Kuznetsov, replaced by Batov due to poor initial deployment of forces. Vice Admiral Levchenko was placed in overall command of the peninsula to coordinate between the 51st Army and the Independent Coastal Army, which had arrived from Odessa.

German offensives across the Soviet Union had stalled again. If the USSR managed to survive the year, longer-term factors would begin to take effect. An October study by General Georg Thomas, head of the German War Economy Office, suggested that the USSR was not as close to economic collapse as previously thought. Furthermore, American war industry was outstripping German production, which theoretically could be directed to the UK and/or the USSR in its entirety, given the United States’ wartime neutrality-ending stance and eventual Lend-Lease commitments. It was projected that the United States would produce approximately 4,700 combat aircraft, 2,600 armored fighting vehicles, and more than 1,600 artillery pieces in the eight months between October 1941 and May 1942. This output was greater than the entire annual German production at that time. The full details of Allied aid to the USSR were complex enough to warrant a dedicated future analysis. By October, the First Protocol had been signed between the UK, USA, and USSR, promising roughly 400 planes and 500 tanks per month, along with a range of raw materials and other weaponry, though actual deliveries would fall short of these figures. The British had already dispatched two convoys to the USSR prior to the agreement; the second convoy had brought 140 tanks, 100 Hurricane fighters, and 200 universal carriers. These were the Valentine and Matilda models. The Matilda would not be too popular with the Soviets but the Valentine would become loved as a scout tank over time. The Soviets also criticized the low caliber guns on both British models and their relatively poor cross country speed. However these tanks were still capable of matching the fielded German tanks and the Soviets were in desperate need for more tanks. Overall 466 British tanks would be delivered over 1941. Additionally, Britain had begun sharing information from ULTRA intercepts with the Soviet Union. Ultra was the British codename for the signal interception and decryption work done at Bletchley Park  However, suspicions in Moscow that the British were willing to fight to the last drop of Soviet blood had begun to surface. This situation had been fueled by the apparent reluctance of the British to actively engage the Germans on the ground in Europe or to send troops into the USSR, while they were nonetheless willing to replace Soviet garrisons in occupied Iran. The fact that sending aid to the USSR was severely hindering British rearmament after their own disasters in 1940 and 1941 was overlooked.Accusations of such strained the British-Soviet relationship, recalling Soviet support for Nazi Germany against the United Kingdom months earlier. While these tensions and other factors placed strain on the alliance, they were not sufficient to fracture it, as both sides recognized their mutual need.

The USSR held a distinctly stronger industrial position than the Germans. For example, the Soviet Union produced over 500 tanks in October, compared with the German output of 387 tanks. The vast majority of Soviet tank production had already shifted to the KV-1, T-34, and T-60 models, and in the last quarter of 1941 alone these three lines accounted for a surge of output: 441 KV-1s, 765 T-34s, and 1,388 T-60s. This shift occurred despite the upheaval caused by evacuating a significant portion of Soviet industry beyond the Urals. 

German production priorities had already shifted away from the Army, and it would take months or even years to reverse that shift. Worse for Germany, there was growing concern about the onset of hyperinflation once more. Additionally, crude oil shipments from Romania declined from 375,000 tonnes to 253,000 tonnes during October. This drop mattered greatly because the naval and air war against the Western Allies was consuming substantial amounts of fuel oil and aviation gasoline. The USSR was primarily engaged in a land and air war against the European Axis and, in theory, could dedicate all of its war production to this single conflict. Germany, by contrast, found itself fighting on multiple fronts: a land war against the USSR and, to some extent, the Commonwealth in Africa, while also waging an air and naval war against the Commonwealth and contending with broader resource and industrial pressures. This meant Germany faced intensified demands on its industrial base to sustain operations across Europe, North Africa, and the Atlantic, whereas the USSR could, in principle, concentrate its industrial mobilization on the European Axis front. The result was different production and logistics dynamics for each side, with the USSR able to channel more of its output toward armored, infantry, and airpower suitable for the Eastern Front, while Germany had to balance expansion, occupation administration, and long supply lines across multiple theaters. The Germans increasingly desired the Caucasus oil fields to offset their limited access to oil. This economic strain would contribute to discussions about using Soviet POWs as slave labor.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

The October 1941 front near Moscow lay in mud and attrition as Germans pressed toward Tikhvin and Moscow while Soviets patched defenses. The German advance, hampered by flooding, fuel shortages, and relentless Soviet counterattacks, stretched logistics and slowed progress; Beowulf operations in the Baltic fizzled under Soviet resistance. By month’s end, German forces faced supply crises, fuel shortages, and mounting casualties, prompting partial redeployments and even discussions of slowing or halting offensives.

Last time we spoke about the continued drive towards Moscow. In the autumn of 1941, a winter-thin road stretched from Leningrad to Moscow, watched by two vast armies. On one side, shells and steel; on the other, stoic resolve. Mud, Rasputitsa, dragged wheels and tested men as much as enemy fire. The Germans pressed from the Ukrainian plains, chasing a swift triumph, while Zhukov’s Soviets rebuilt lines and held a stubborn defense around the capital. Cities along the road buckled under pressure, yet the Red Army stood shoulder to shoulder with civilians, brick by brick staving off encirclement. Bryansk and Vyazma glowed with brutal fights; yet the Germans found no easy path. The Red Army’s manpower, once underestimated, surged back with veterans teaching newcomers, even as many units forming in the field faced shortages and fatigue. Kalinin became a crucible: tanks clashed with captured bridges and muddy streets, as both sides paid a heavy toll. Stalin’s pressure and Zhukov’s improvisation produced new fronts and counter-strokes, transforming despair into a stubborn, almost defiant, endurance. The Germans, starving for fuel and momentum, slipped into the mud that slowed their advance to a crawl. By month’s end, Moscow loomed but could not be seized in the teeth of relentless Russian resilience.

This episode is the Tikhvin Offensive

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

With Vyazma crushed, Army Group Centre pivots toward Moscow, while Army Group South presses on to seize Ukraine’s industry and fuel. Yet weather grows harsher and resistance thickens as Typhoon and the Rasputitsa grind the advance to a halt; a northern offensive opens up, panzers surging toward Tikhvin and the last supply route to the besieged Leningrad. Between October 16th to the 20th, 1941, finds the Germans racing to win before the Russian winter takes hold. The disaster of Vyazma and Bryansk forces STAVKA to rebuild in front of Moscow, a rebuilding that comes at the expense of other fronts. The 4th Army is reduced to three rifle divisions, one cavalry division, and a lone tank battalion, stretched over fifty kilometers, with its only reserve a single rifle regiment. All of the 4th Army’s formations are seriously understrength. Likewise, the 52nd Army is trimmed to two rifle divisions, exhausted and depleted, supported only by four artillery regiments and an anti‑tank regiment, but with no reserve frontline formations, leaving the 52nd with the daunting task of covering an eighty‑kilometer front with minimal backing.

In nine inches of early-morning snow on the sixteenth, the 21st and 126th Infantry divisions surged across the Volkhov, pressing against the surprised, thinly stretched, undermanned 288th and 267th rifle divisions. Behind them, the 8th and 12th Panzer divisions moved with the 20th Motorised, carving a path through the white. Four days of brutal fighting pushed the 288th and 267th eastward, widening a breach that exposed the southern flank of the 292nd Division and left it to be shattered by a flanking hammer. With reserves nearly non-existent, the assault ripped a massive hole in the Soviet front between the 4th and 52nd Armies. Soviet reconnaissance again failed to warn of the attack. Again, a thinly held frontline buckled at a weak point under a concentrated push. Again, there was no second defensive line to blunt the break, and no reserves able to counter the rush. The attack’s principal aim was Tikhvin and the rail link between Moscow and Lake Ladoga, the last lifeline to Leningrad, a city that required roughly 1,000 tonnes of supplies daily even under rationing. Supplies were transferred over Lake Ladoga by slow moving barges which came under frequent air attack. The same route carried the equipment and materiel produced in the remaining Leningrad factories to the broader Red Army.

The region was dominated by swamps, lakes, and forests, a landscape that dictated every step of the advance. Dirt roads dissolved into the mud of Rasputitsa, rain and thaw turning passable routes into treacherous ribbons, while corduroy roads had to be laid down just to keep some wheels turning. This environmental grip didn’t merely slow movement; it funneled the fighting into the patchwork of settlements and hamlets scattered across these high ground pockets. Elevated and dry, these spots offered strategic vantage points that controlled the surrounding routes, becoming indispensable nodes for maneuver and supply. Night after night, they offered respite from the cold, sheltering troops and equipment from the bitter wind as winter pressed in.

Sleeping in the open had once been a possibility in the brief warmth of summer, but as the temperatures plummet, bivouacs become lethal. Some Germans share the shelter with their regular hosts, yet many push the inhabitants aside with cold indifference, leaving people to face the night alone and exposed. From Wehrmacht soldier Wilhelm Pruller’s diary  “You should see the act the civilians put on when we make it clear to them that we intend to use their sties to sleep in. A weeping and yelling begins, as if their throats were being cut, until we chuck them out. Whether young or old, man or wife, they stand in their rags and tatters on the doorstep and can’t be persuaded to go … When we finally threaten them at pistol point, they disappear.” Franz Frisch recalled: “When the first snows fell in early October, I could only think of the fate of Napoleon.” Likewise, Kurt Meissner noted that “the big drop in temperature affected men and vehicles; we had no warm clothing and suffered accordingly … We began to think of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in the previous century.” Léon Degrelle described the harmful effects of the clinging mud before concluding: “we couldn’t avoid thinking about the hundreds of thousands of men, committed to the depths of Russia, who were going to try what Napoleon had not dared to try: to maintain themselves in spite of everything in the midst of the steppes, with the enemy in front of them, the desert to their backs [and] the snow falling from the sky.” Even Blumentritt, Kluge’s chief of staff, looked on nervously as the difficulties mounted alongside the historical parallels. Writing of October 1941 Blumentritt noted after the war: “And now the ghosts of the Grand Army and the memory of Napoleon’s fate began to haunt our dreams … Comparisons with 1812 multiplied.” 

The civilians’ misery deepens as winter’s chill tightens its grip: soldiers steal winter clothing to fill official gaps or torment occupants for sport, adding cruelty to the daily hardships. For months, the German Army has pressed deeper into the land, living off the land itself, snatching food and village stores with the parabolic efficiency of locusts, while brittle logistics fail to keep troops supplied. In the pale light of dawn and the long black nights, countless Soviet civilians will perish from exposure, random killings, or famine before the season’s end. Captain Hans von Luck, who served as part of the 7th Panzer Division’s command staff noted the army was stealing warm Russian sheepskins to equip their motorcyclists and grenadiers, while the plight of Russian civilians, what they wore, if anything at all, remained unrecorded. Not only were peasant homes looted for winter apparel, but Soviet POW columns also lost boots, coats, and any item of value. One account describes a prisoner transport in which the first thirty to forty men were nearly naked and pressed together for warmth during the march. Max Landowski reported that even a Russian deserter faced no mercy: upon arrival, our soldiers stripped him, hat, boots, coat, until the man stood in his underpants, and he was shot because, as Landowski noted, “The Russian couldn’t have walked like that, he would have frozen to death.” Dead Soviet soldiers became a source of supply as well. Gottlob Bidermann recalled insulating their bunker with overcoats stripped from enemy dead, including thick, brown flannel gloves. Another soldier, Max Kuhnert, dressed almost entirely in Russian clothing, a thick quilted coat and fur cap, that he thought made him look “odd,” yet kept him warm. However, that appearance could be fatal, for a post-war study notes that wearers were often mistaken for the enemy and fired upon by friendly troops.

Privation and brutality extended beyond the civilian population to the Prisoner of War camps themselves. Germany reported that 673,098 Soviet soldiers were captured at Bryansk and Vyazma, compelled to march under brutal conditions toward rear camps along corridors already strewn with the bodies of those who had perished from hunger, exhaustion, or beatings. Stragglers were often shot out of hand, and the rail transports that carried them were packed so densely that many suffocated before reaching their destination. Like civilians, POWs were robbed of their possessions and clothing, leaving them exposed to the cold and the elements. Wearing Soviet uniforms and clothes led to several instances of friendly fire due to misrecognition. The overcrowded camps became incubators of disease, hunger, and cold, killing thousands each week, with more than two million souls doomed to die in these camps by February 1942.

On the 20th, STAVKA issued an order that the 4th Army and the 52nd Army must seal the breach the new offensive had opened. In practice, the directive struck a discordant note: those two formations were barely clinging to their own survival, stripped of reserves and unable to muster any meaningful offensive action. Nearby, additional Soviet forces stood in the region under a different banner, the 54th Army. Its composition was formidable by scale and scope: six rifle divisions, one tank division, one mountain rifle division, two tank brigades, and two artillery regiments, together accounting for roughly 70 percent of the Soviet strength between Lake Ladoga and Lake Ilmen. Yet rather than pivot to meet the German push toward Tikhvin, these forces were directed to pursue their own plan: preparations for an offensive aimed at Siniavino. The assault began on the morning of the 20th, but it yielded only token gains against dug-in German infantry, their positions bolstered by the stability of shelter and the brutal discipline of the frontline. Despite many elements needing to conduct river crossing none of the Soviet forces were prepared for such operations. They also found it extremely difficult to get the heavy KV-1 tanks across rivers. 

By mid-October, Vyazma’s battle was officially deemed finished, and German forces pressed on toward Moscow. The narrative among the Wehrmacht’s leadership painted a picture of an almost imminent victory, with many senior commanders convinced that the war would be decided soon, indeed, that victory would arrive by October 18. One officer somehow took the rejection of their battalion’s request for winter gear as proof that the war was nearly won.  In that mood, claims circulated that after this point the German Army was instructed not to make further urgent requests for supplies of this kind, extending beyond clothing to winter necessities such as antifreeze and other cold-weather gear. The rising realities of cold, knee-deep mud, and deteriorating conditions were effectively ignored or downplayed in the propaganda and planning. Joseph Goebbels stood apart from the feverish enthusiasm, nearly alone in his misgivings. He lamented how the term “decision of the war” had permeated broadcasts, noting that the public’s interpretation was closer to an “ending of the war” than a decisive turning point. He understood that continued warfare would erode public support and damage the prestige of the Nazi state. Concurrently, an increasing number of Germans began turning to foreign radio broadcasts, seeking perspectives beyond official channels.  In Goebel's 13th October diary entry it stated “‘All that lay between us and the capital was the so-called Moscow Defensive Position. We had no reason to believe that this would prove a particularly difficult nut to crack.”

Free from their duties at Vyazma, the 46th Panzer Corps pressed on toward Moscow, yet contact with the enemy remained elusive and the pace stubbornly slow, at best about 25 kilometers a day. The reasons were practical and harsh: a lack of up-to-date maps, muddy roads, and few suitable bridges to carry tank traffic. Fuel shortages driven by the muddy slog forced the corps to prune its fleet, discarding unnecessary or unreliable vehicles. The 11th Panzer Division faced a similar squeeze, compelled to abandon portions of its Panzer regiment to ensure enough fuel for the leading battlegroup. Fuel constraints would shadow the Moscow advance as well. Then, in an abrupt turn, the weather warmed on the 17th and 18th, only to worsen the situation: mud thickened into a watery quagmire, amplified by heavy rain. Movement ground to a near standstill for days, as even the most straightforward advances became impossible. War diary of 46th Panzer Corp “The corps has serious concerns about the achievement [of its orders] because after careful study of the maps the fact becomes clear that for this operation there is only one single road available. The corps will be forced to advance with three divisions on this one road, which from experience and the time of year will be bad. As a result the corps will not be able to adequately utilise its striking power, but will always only be able to commit weak spearheads. Furthermore, the supply convoys will move only with great difficulty.” One division commander contrasted the typical march discipline of a Panzer Division, normally spreading over 40 kilometers with his own unit’s extraordinary march footprint, extending roughly 300 kilometers.

Advances were made despite the dire conditions. The SS Das Reich, aided by elements of the 40th Panzer Corps, managed to seize Mozhaisk on 18 October in a five-day battle. A report from Obersturmführer Günther Heysing detailed what the soldiers of Das Reich faced: “built-in rows of electrically ignited flamethrowers, all sorts of tank obstacles, boggy streams, minefields, wire-entanglements, bunker systems, steep slopes and concealed forest positions.” He added that the Soviet defense was equally formidable, with “concentrated defensive fire from artillery, flak, anti-tank guns, mortars, rockets and machine guns.” On 14 October, Hausser, commanding Das Reich, was wounded and replaced by Oberführer Wilhelm Bittrich. At that moment, Fischer’s 10th Panzer Division was engaging Soviet positions a few kilometers north on the historic Borodino battlefield—the site where Napoleon faced the Russians on 7 September 1812, in one of the bloodiest confrontations of the era. A Das Reich report to the SS headquarters in Berlin summarized the situation: “a rest of several days, where possible in warm and heated billets, is essential for the success of any new attack.” The 57th Panzer Corps had not been at Vyazma, but its progress had been so throttled that it reached the Mozhaisk line only on the 16th. The 20th Panzer Division, meanwhile, could muster only 34 tanks in operation, awaiting the arrival of the 19th Panzer. Even then, two days of fighting and the loss of another 30 tanks were required to take Maloiaroslavets. The pace of the panzers slowed so much that the regular infantry of the 12th and 13th Corps could finally reach the Mozhaisk defense line on the 10th at Kaluga, though those infantry divisions were already depleted. At Detchino, the 98th Infantry’s battalion had fallen to 190 men in combat strength after suffering 100 casualties and the loss of five company commanders during the town’s capture on the 19th.

Similar to the German advance to Kalinin, the Moscow drive was wasting its strength from within, an outcome of dreadful logistics that forced the panzers to cannibalize themselves just to keep fighting. Vehicles were abandoned due to a lack of spare parts for minor repairs, insufficient fuel to keep them moving, or being stuck in mud that could not be recovered. The Soviets also targeted key arteries to cripple movement. On the Moscow–Minsk highway, one of the few hard-surfaced routes in the area, multiple delay-cratering charges detonated daily, steadily hampering traffic and supplies. The already-depleted 5th Infantry Division could not be retrained into a Jäger division and was instead retasked, on the 19th, to the repair and rebuilding of the highway. Its commander earned the moniker “Motorway Dictator” for his role in this crucial, ongoing effort to restore mobility despite ongoing pressure. The pressures of this deteriorating supply chain reduced spearheads to weaker formations that had to resort to simpler, less sophisticated tactics suited to mud and scarcities. Instead of rapid maneuvers around flanks, the operations devolved into slow, grinding assaults, and even when a breakthrough occurred, it came at the cost of far higher casualties. Compounding the situation, unlike earlier offensives, the Red Army had built multiple layered defenses in front of Moscow. Each frontal assault merely invited another, with no decisive breakthroughs or rapid advances on the horizon.

More infantry were required to press the assault, but it would take time for recruits to march up from the Vyazma battlefield. Even abandoning heavy artillery, the infantry could not cover more than about 20 kilometers per day. Despite this accumulating evidence, OKH still expected Zhukov’s defenders to be rapidly swept away. In contrast, OKW spent its energies debating the scope of the encirclement and the creation of an exclusion zone around Moscow. Meanwhile, Halder at OKH entertained plans for encircling all forces north of Army Group Centre and establishing a line along the Vologda region before winter closed in. The 2nd Airfleet had fallen to about 269 sorties per day, a dramatic drop from the over 1,000 sorties seen at the start of the month as weather worsened. The Luftwaffe was operating from the most basic airfields with scant infrastructure to sustain operations, leaving the VVS with air superiority on many days across wide sections of the front. Air strikes against slow-moving or even static targets became a priority for the Soviet air force, compounding the attrition already inflicted by mud and strained logistics. One segment on the Road to Kalinin had over 1,000 bogged down in the mud. It should be noted that despite later German claims the Raspitisa was not unusually severe but actually below average in terms of rainfall. 

The fighting around Kalinin intensified as the small battlegroups from 1st Panzer, the 36th Motorised, and Lehrbrigade 900 were pressed into heavy house-to-house combat in the city. On the 16th, Bock subordinated Panzer Group 3 to the 9th Army, acknowledging that the Panzer Group was bogged down in a major battle and again reliant on the Infantry Army for support. That same day, Reinhardt ordered the 1st Panzer and Lehrbrigade 900 to seize all available fuel and ammunition and push to Torzhok. The 36th Motorised was tasked with defending the city against continuous assaults. Yet the very next day, the offensive stalled at Mednoye after advancing 30 kilometers. Lehrbrigade 900, whose ammo was nearly spent, could muster only 34 operational tanks. Ahead of them, the formidable Operational Group Vatutin pressed forward, with additional Soviet forces attempting to cut off the division from its route back to Kalinin. The division was forced to retreat to Kalinin, but Halder insisted that the city be held as Soviet forces closed in from the North, East, and Southwest.

Zhukov moved Konev north in response to the German capture of Kalinin. On the 17th, Konev’s command was reorganized into the Kalinin Front and was assigned the new 22nd, 29th, and 30th Armies. In addition, Operational Group Vatutin and the 31st Army were subordinated to his command. The entire Front maneuvered around Kalinin, launching continual assaults against the Germans entrenched there. By the 20th, Kalinin was nearly encircled, leaving only a small corridor to the southwest. Some assaults even penetrated into the city before being repelled. The pressure was intense, with Bock describing Kalinin as a bleeding wound that would require strong infantry to seal. In response, the 56th Panzer Corps and three Infantry Corps were dispatched north to bolster the 41st Panzer Corps in the Kalinin sector.

The logistical situation around Kalinin deteriorated to the point where an improvised airfield was quickly established to fly in supplies, even though it sat on the front line. Hans Rudel, one of the German pilots flying from the Kalinin airfield “The Soviets are attacking the airfield with tanks and infantry, and are less than a mile away. A thin screen of our own infantry protects our perimeter; the steel monsters may be upon us at any moment. We Stukas are a Godsend to the ground troops defending the position … The ground personnel are able to follow every phase of the battle. We are well on the mark, for everybody realizes that unless the tanks are put out of action we have had it.” Still, the airfield could only deliver about 30 to 50 cubic metres of fuel per day, while a single Panzer division typically required about 220 cubic metres daily. The nearest railhead was at Sychevka, more than 150 km away, and it took several days for supply trucks to cover the distance. Panzer Group 3 received only about 200 tons of supplies per day from this railhead—insufficient to meet their daily needs even if all of it reached the front. Supplying lines frequently traversed sectors of the front under constant attack, compounding the shortages. Behind the lines, partisan activity was rampant; the Chief of Staff of the 9th Army was nearly assassinated in one such attack. Convoy protection was tightened around Kalinin, with heavy guards assigned to supply runs. In a desperate move, Panzer Group 3 ordered trucks to divert to Smolensk for extra supplies, but this yielded only a small net gain and caused enormous wear on the vehicle fleet. Trucks need fuel to travel and over such a large distance will consume the majority of their carried fuel supplies themselves. 

The Bryansk front began to unravel as the northern Bryansk pocket was officially eliminated by the 2nd Army on the 17th, and the southern pocket was closed by the 2nd Panzer Army on the 18th. Guderian’s Army had suffered approximately 4,300 losses in the first 20 days of October. This amounted to 45,643 casualties since the start of the invasion. The Bryansk front’s death grip, though draining, tied down the Second Army and the Second Panzer Army for at least 16 days. While Soviet losses were heavy, they bought time for the Soviets to establish new defenses and to bring fresh troops toward Moscow. The 4th Division became bottled up at Mtsensk due to relentless Soviet attacks; by the 20th, it held only 46 tanks and 18% of its ammunition. In several respects, the division’s fighting power resembled that of a regiment more than a division. Nevertheless, OKH and Guderian still expected to seize Tula, around 120 kilometers to the north. The division’s only prospect lay in being reinforced by divisions redirected from the Bryansk encirclement.

The 9th Panzer led the 48th Corps’ push toward Kursk but had stalled at Dmitriev-Lgovskiy. By the 20th, its commander was openly protesting orders to attack, citing unguarded flanks, ruined roads, and the near-total depletion of combat power. Only 7 tanks remained operational, and in one motorised infantry regiment, merely 51 of 287 trucks were functional. In a stark display of risk assessment, OKH contemplated ordering the battered 48th Corps to advance more than 200 kilometers east to seize Voronezh, though such orders were not yet finalized. The four infantry corps of Guderian’s Army were creeping forward at about 1 kilometer per hour as horses and heavy wagons sank into the mud. Infantry casualties of illness surged compared with the mobile divisions, and soldiers trudged through cold, waterlogged ground. Yet the Eastern Army’s policies kept these troops on the front; only severe illness could excuse a soldier from duty. On the 18th of October soldier Harald Henry sent a letter home stating“ Our company … went into the woods until we were over our knees in snow, which filled our boots. Across frozen marshes that broke open so that icy water ran into our boots. My gloves were so wet that I could not bear them any longer. I wound a towel around my ruined hands … My face was contorted from tears, but I was already in a sort of trance. I stamped forward with closed eyes, mumbled senseless words and thought that I was experiencing everything only in a sleep as a dream. It was all like madness … Agony without end … We are all more or less sick.”

These conditions were also killing the German horses. Many horses continued wearing summer shoes, contributing to frequent slips and leg fractures. Others died from sheer exhaustion after months of constant campaigning. Even for the survivors, forage was scarce, and many became emaciated. By November, only about 65% of the horse-drawn transposition remained in the infantry divisions across the Eastern Front, even after replacement horses were sent. Panzer Group 3 was losing about 1,000 horses per day. The 53rd Army Corps had already left half of its horses behind in Bryansk due to illness and exhaustion. Local Panje horses were attempted as replacements, but they were significantly smaller and weaker, unable to move the 105 mm or 150 mm artillery pieces. In the muddy conditions, the requirement for draft horses to move each artillery piece doubled, making it nearly impossible to relocate the heavy 150mm guns. Consequently, many divisions chose to leave their heavier guns behind to be recovered when the weather improved, bringing forward only a small subset of their lighter artillery pieces.They also could not haul the standard steel wagons used to transport ammunition and equipment for the infantry. As a result, lighter, smaller wagons had to be employed, drastically reducing logistical capacity. This served as a temporary stopgap but could not substitute for proper artillery and supply trains.

To worsen the situation, even though the Bryansk pocket had been officially closed, active Red Army groups and partisans remained dispersed, and supply columns came under constant attack, including by Soviet tanks that had been bypassed earlier. The most damaging activity was the destruction of 33 bridges, creating a substantial reconstruction burden. Even by the 20th, several divisions remained tied down dealing with remnants of Red Army forces. On the 18th, OKH assigned new objectives for Army Group South. The 1st Panzer Army was ordered to take Rostov and then push toward the area between Voroshilovgrad and Stalingrad. The 17th Army was tasked with clearing the area west of the Don and securing the northern flank of the 1st Panzer Army by capturing Stalingrad. The 6th Army received orders to advance to a line from Kharkiv to Novaya Kalitva and then toward Voronezh. The ongoing infighting between OKH and Hitler continued. OKH favored enveloping the Kharkiv defenders to the west of the city with minimal forces, while Hitler insisted on a full encirclement and destruction. Regardless of the approach, the retreating Soviet 38th Army outpaced the German units and eluded attempts to annihilate it. By the 21st, the Germans had closed to within 6 kilometers of the city, and the 55th Infantry Corps was tasked with capturing it.

After two months of besieging the city and suffering 98,000 casualties, the Romanians finally occupied Odessa on the 17th October, following the defenders’ evacuation to bolster Crimea’s defenses. The Romanians failed to detect the evacuation in time to impede it effectively. Almost the entire Coastal Army defending Odessa managed to withdraw, though they were forced to abandon much of their heavy equipment due to shipping constraints. In total, about 121,000 troops evacuated, along with roughly 20,000 tonnes of ammunition, 400 artillery pieces, and over a thousand trucks. The 12 divisions that had taken part absorbed an 80% casualty rate. The Soviet withdrawal from Odessa left Crimea defenders with numbers nearly double Manstein’s 11th Army. Nevertheless, the assault began early on the 18th. Three divisions of the 54th Infantry Corps broke through across the Ishun line. The local lakes channelled these assaults into three narrow corridors. Also as the ground was barely above sea level, most rapidly made fighting positions ended up filling up with salt water.

German artillery, supported by Stuka dive-bombers, sought to suppress the significant Soviet artillery assets. Initial gains on the eastern flank soon stalled as Soviet reinforcements arrived, prompting Manstein to shift focus to the western sectors of the defenses. The substantial Soviet air presence forced the Luftwaffe to redeploy many Air Groups from the 4th Air Corps to Crimea, reducing air support for other German forces in Ukraine. By the 19th, German forces had pierced the neck of land north of Inshin. Yet casualties mounted due to sustained frontal assaults against multiple prepared layers of defense. By the 20th, Manstein was begging for reinforcements, specifically panzer formations. He would receive only the German divisions already engaged in the Odessa siege, and they would need time to march to Crimea.

1st Panzer Army remained short of its objectives, but limited fuel supplies prevented any nonessential troop movements. The Panzer Army refused to place the Romanian 3rd Army under its command, citing coastal and rear-security considerations. The decision stemmed from a dire supply situation that could not bear any additional strain on the logistic network. The 3rd Corps even sent a memo on the 23rd warning subordinate units to be prepared to survive on their own for several days. This suspicion of approaching scarcity had been growing since a “catastrophic” assessment of supply flows on the 17th. Conditions deteriorated further over time, culminating in the Panzer Army receiving nothing on the 20th. Rundstedt judged the Army ineffective and in need of recovery time, yet OKH did not share this assessment. Pressed to act, on the 19th it ordered its corps to seize Stalino and Rostov, along with Rostov’s bridges and fuel depots, by a surprise attack. The 49th Mountain Corps would capture Stalino on the 20th, only to find the city a ruin, having been scorched-earth by the retreating Soviets. The SS Liebstandarte had already secured Taganrog on the 17th to establish a bridgehead across the Mius. There, the 3rd Panzer Corps prepared to assault Rostov, while the 14th Panzer Corps stood by in reserve to the north. This cautious arrangement reflected the reality that fuel was sufficient for only one Panzer Corps to operate at a time.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the autumn mud and Rasputitsa turned wheels to bronze, and men pressed on with stubborn grit. The Germans hoped for a swift triumph, but Zhukov’s Soviets rebuilt, brick by brick, holding the capital at a grueling pace. Kalinin burned with fighting; Bryansk and Vyazma bled; civilians shared the cold, their stories etched in frost and fear. Battles raged across forests, swamps, and rail lines destined to feed Leningrad. The Tikhvin Offensive began, and the struggle deepened.

Last time we spoke about the accumulation of mud and continued sieges on the eastern front. In the autumn of 1941, a winter-thin road stretched from Leningrad to Moscow, watched over by two immense armies. On one side, the Germans, Panzer power blazing, hunger for a swift victory, pushed from Ukrainian plains toward a hoped-for triumph. On the other, the Soviets, led by Zhukov, then hastily recalled to defend the capital, laid brick by brick a stubborn defense, rebuilding lines and bracing for the storm. The Rasputitsa arrived like a living obstacle. Mud swallowed wheels, bridges sighed under strain, and supply lines twisted into knots. Yet the air carried more than fuel and fear; it carried a stubborn resolve. Across the front, pockets formed and dissolved in a dance of encirclement. Bryansk and Vyazma blazed with brutal fights; attempts to seal the gaps faltered as weather, logistics, and tenacious Soviet resistance frustrated even the boldest panzers. By October’s end, the battlefield wore a quiet, haunted truth: endurance, unity, and a city’s stubborn heartbeat could hold against a siege. The roads remained muddy, but hope steeled the spine of a defense that would echo through the winter to come.

This episode is Mud and Blood

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

City after city falls on the road to Moscow. Zhukov’s new defensive line has already been breached through by the panzers. From the map tables of the Wolf’s Lair, it is clear that Hitler’s army is only days from capturing the Soviet capital. Yet what the map tables cannot show is the mud. It drags men, machines, and beasts into a sucking morass that cannot be bypassed. The Red Army has endured the worst streak of defeats in military history, but they are far from defeated. Soviet soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder with Soviet civilians, willing to defend their capital with their lives. As the second week of October ended, Operation Typhoon could still be considered a success. Yet it was clear that the Red Army would not yield. Next, we approach the third week. Zhukov and Bock will again face off as time runs out on the German offensive. 

First I want to talk about how the Soviet Union managed to rebuild its field forces in the face of devastating losses during the early months of the campaign. On June 22, the Red Army had 303 divisions on its rolls, of which 81 were cadre formations still in the process of organization. As discussed in previous podcasts, during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa most, if not all, Red Army divisions were under strength. This weakness stemmed largely from a peace-time organizational framework, in which units were kept weaker to conserve manpower and resources. After the invasion began, Stalin mobilized the classes of 1905–1918, producing five million three hundred thousand men by July 1. By the end of the year, 3,544,000 were brought into the active army, forming 291 new divisions. These numbers dwarfed the German high command’s pre-invasion understanding of Soviet manpower capabilities. In Halder’s diary, he estimated roughly 200 divisions in the Red Army, and believed that once these were gone, there would be little left worth fighting. The falsity of this perception was evident to Halder even before August ended. By mid-October, there seemed to be no end in sight for the Wehrmacht. The reality of the Red Army’s manpower in 1941 was not captured by the Wehrmacht’s shifting opinions. They had begun the war underestimating Soviet potential, and by October this had evolved into fantastical notions of endless Red Army hordes. In truth, the Red Army was developing an effective replacement system based on creating new units from veterans and new recruits. This system had both positives and negatives. On the positive side, it allowed rest and refit for veterans and enabled them to pass on knowledge to newcomers. On the negative side, many half-formed units were rushed into battle to meet emergencies requiring immediate action. These cadre forces would be built up in the field, if they survived long enough; often they did not.

The Stavka had planned a large offensive from both sides of the Shisselburg Corridor to begin on October 20. The Germans had also been planning a renewed attack under Hitler’s direction to seize Tikhvin. The city was an important rail junction with significant mineral resources. There were reasonably productive bauxite mines in the area. Sources are unclear whether they were still producing as the Germans approached. The aluminum plants had been relocated earlier in the year as part of the mass industrial migration. The mining equipment had been evacuated at some point, though the timing remains uncertain. The rail head offered a convenient base for the Stavka to build up supplies and units on the exposed flanks of Army Groups North and Center. Army Group North struck first on October 16. Though under-resourced and little more than a diversion from the campaign’s main effort, the direction of this attack drew Hitler’s attention. The impact of Nazi ideology is neatly reflected in this attack. To the regime, any objective could be achieved with enough willpower. The dictator’s personal involvement was meant as both a blessing and a reminder that he embodied the ultimate expression of the Nazi will. He sought to direct the counter-offensive with limited resources, even in the face of his generals’ objections, as a demonstration of that will. The assault was supervised by him directly, though the chain of command remained nominally in place.

Infantrymen from the 21st and 126th Infantry Divisions crossed the Volhkov River early on the morning of the sixteenth. They trudged through several centimeters of snow, but they managed to breach the defending 4th Army in several sectors. However, two of the three divisions involved were able to pull back in good order. The withdrawal opened a substantial gap between the 52nd and 4th Armies. The Germans were prepared to exploit this, and the Red Army did not have the resources to close the gap before the 20th Motorized Infantry and 12th Panzer Divisions pushed through. They were followed by the 21st and 126th Infantry. They struggled through minefields and encountered deserters. Some of these deserters claimed to be Ukrainian. This is notable because it highlights how the Ukrainian people still held hopes of independence from the Soviet Union. Many greeted the Wehrmacht as liberators, but as time would prove, this was a mistake. The Nazi war machine regarded nothing but extermination and deportation for the Ukrainian people.

On the 20th, late in the evening, the 52nd Army attempted a counter-attack. Broadly speaking, this failed to accomplish much, but the next day was still miserable for the advancing Germans. They managed to push through the gap and fan out, creating a large bulge before the end of the day on the twenty-first, but it was clear that there would be no rapid exploitation. They were blocked everywhere by obstinate Red Army infantry units. The fighting for the city of Tikhvin was not easy as the weather continued to alternate between drenching rains, freezing mud, and light snow. The few tanks the Germans possessed were forced to run continuously through the night, or they would freeze up and become hard or impossible to start in the mornings. This aggravated the already short fuel situation even more. The attack began to falter, but Army Group North was not ready to call it off. They would fight well into November attempting to take Tikhvin.

Operation Typhoon continued to expand in a mimic of the reverse funnel the entire campaign was undergoing. During the morning of the 14th, the 1st Panzer Division started probing the suburbs of Kalinin. Helmut Pabst, who took part in the advance to Kalinin, wrote home in a letter: “The going’s good on the frozen roads of this country of hills crowed with villages. But fifty-five kilometres is a lot. It took us from eight in the morning till 2:00 the next day. And then we didn’t find billets. The few houses in our rest area had been allocated long before. But the boys wormed themselves into the overcrowded rooms, determined to get warm even if it meant standing.” The Northwestern Front was responsible for the city’s defense, but there was not much in place when the panzers arrived. Vatutin was still serving as the chief of staff for the Front and promptly organized a force to counterattack. Two rifle and two cavalry divisions were put together in an operational group and marched out. They were spearheaded by the 8th Tank Brigade. Before the end of the day, they had marched over two hundred and fifty kilometers to reach the city. They were too late. 

Early on 13 October, Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division rolled into Kalinin, having carved more than 70 kilometres from Staritsa and about 150 from Sychevka. Like Orel ten days earlier, streetcars clattered on, and the stunned inhabitants watched as German tanks threaded through their streets. The moment of surreal spectacle did not endure; soon brutal street fighting erupted, with civilians joining in. As in Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Leningrad , reaching the city was only the prelude to capture, not the end of the campaign. Only the division’s vanguard confronted the costly urban combat, while the rest stretched along the 150-kilometre route. To complicate matters, Bock had ordered Reinhardt to push on to Torzhok, highlighting Panzer Group 3’s overextension, which had proved costly at Smolensk and was unfolding again.

Colonel Rotmistrov wisely chose not to assault blindly into the city without support. Instead, he parked the brigade with some straggling rifle battalions northwest of the city and waited for the rest of Vatutin’s operational group. Before they arrived, the Germans decided to continue the advance. They blundered into the waiting Soviet tanks sometime around noon on the fifteenth. Rotmistrov managed to ambush the Germans from both sides. His men succeeded in knocking out three tanks and at least eight half-tracks. Overwhelmed by the ambush, the panzers managed to pull back. They regrouped and came back out looking for a fight before the day was over. After some back and forth, Rotmistrov had to hold his tankers in place for lack of fuel. The ad-hoc nature of the Red Army in this stage of the war was understandable, but it continually haunted them. Here, they had achieved a tactical victory and managed to hold back the tip of the spear. Yet, the institutional army was unable to support them, either with fuel or reinforcements. Vatutin was still on the way, but could do nothing for the 8th Tank Brigade. On the 16th, Rotmistrov was outmaneuvered. The Luftwaffe bombed his positions and then a company of German tanks managed to find his command post. He was forced to abandon several of his best tanks for lack of fuel as he retreated. The 1st Panzer was able to send elements twenty kilometers further down the road and seize a crucial bridge over the Tversta.

From Moscow came another attempt to take Kalinin back. The 21st Tank Brigade under Colonel Lesovoi had just arrived in the capital from the east. On the seventeenth, the brigade was about thirty kilometers to the south of the city. The man who ordered the 21st into action was Lieutenant General Fedorenko. The general did not let Vatutin know he was giving him support, and did not attempt to coordinate its actions. They started their advance on Kalinin before dawn on the seventeenth. The brigade was split into two columns, each led by an experienced tank commander. The two commanders were Major Lukin and Major Agribalova, both non-political recipients of the highest award in the country, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Both earned their decorations for combat at Khalkhin Gol in 1939. As they advanced, the first column stumbled into the 36th Infantry Division, which was moving up to support the panzers. Almost immediately the column was wrecked, and its commander was killed in a hectic retreat. The second column made it to the south side of the city before being picked off by an organized counterattack. Before the day was over, almost the entire 21st Tank Brigade was wiped out. The only notable accomplishment from this action was that several fuel trucks from the 1st Panzer Division were knocked out. There were precious few trucks on the eastern front, and even fewer tanker trucks. Losing these was a serious blow to the advance, even if they had not been intentionally targeted.

At this point, the Panzers were being starved for fuel and ammunition. There simply hadn’t been enough supplies stockpiled before the offensive began. Further losses to trucks and the worsening weather only made things worse. A soldier’s diary entry for 7 October reveals the stark contradiction between hopeful expectations for an end to the war and the grim reality if it did not end: “We’ve not much petrol, and none will come for quite a while because our tankers are standing way back and it’ll take them a long time to get through all the mud. Tomorrow we’re to storm the town of Dmitriev, five kilometres in front of us. Everyone is saying that this is to be our last job … It would be the best thing too for all the companies are thoroughly beaten up, and many of the vehicles are already knocked out. If it really does go on though, it would be better to create a battalion out of the regiment; then it could be properly equipped with men and machines and would be ready for battle.”

Rain continued to turn the barely navigable roads into little more than mud trails. Even the Luftwaffe was struggling to provide aerial resupply, due to their own supply issues and the continuing threat from VVS fighters. Aside from the disaster of the 21st Tank Brigade, Zhukov was not going to allow the Germans to walk away with Kalinin. He sent Konev with three new armies and an order to create the Kalinin Front on October 17th. Between these forces and Vatutin, Reinhardt’s 3rd Panzer Army was hard pressed. The 1st Panzer had regrouped and started to advance towards Torzhok. The Red Army was waiting. In a series of bold moves, they managed to outflank the 1st Panzer and cut them off from the city. Simultaneously Soviet forces took Kalinin under attack. Konev was fighting for his life, and maneuvered deftly with the resources he had. Konev had only been saved from the executioner’s pistol in early October by the direct intervention of Zhukov. Stalin had not been happy with the former’s poor showing in the opening moves of Operation Typhoon. Without Zhukov, there is no doubt that Konev would have been executed, as Pavlov and others had been in July. Eventually the 1st Panzer was able to get back to friendly lines, but the cost was steep. 

Kirchner’s 31st Panzer Corps was almost completely encircled as attacks by Konev’s Kalinin Front pressed in from all sides. Reinhardt’s other corps, Schaall’s 56th Panzer Corps, had been delayed much longer at the battle of Viaz’ma and was now struggling north on the bad roads to assist Kirchner with a battle group formed from Landgraf’s 6th Panzer Division. An even smaller advanced detachment had left for Kalinin on about 13 October and arrived in the city on 16 October. Yet the battle group’s progress was hardly much faster than that of the marching infantry. Gerhard vom Bruch, who took part in the march, wrote on 20 October: “More and more time is being lost – and we are suffering endless halts. During the day the snow thaws somewhat; in the night it freezes again, and fresh snow sweeps over the flat countryside. Was it merely an illusion that we would be able to defeat this Russian colossus in just a few months?”

Major-General Erhard Raus, a brigade commander in the 6th Panzer Division, wrote of the autumn conditions: “Motor vehicles broke down with clutch or motor trouble. Horses became exhausted and collapsed. Roads were littered with dead draft animals. Few tanks were serviceable. Trucks and horse-drawn wagons bogged down.” Schaall’s 56th Panzer Corps also commanded Funck’s 7th Panzer Division, which sent at least one of its grenadier regiments north to Kalinin, but the bulk of the division, including the panzer regiment, remained resting and refitting at Vyazma until 25 October. When at last the division did depart for the north it found the roads extremely hard going, and a letter from Karl Fuchs, a tanker in the division’s panzer regiment, indicates just how hard movement was. Writing on 26 October Fuchs explained: “Rain, rain, nothing but rain! The countryside looks like an endless grey swamp. The roads, at least what’s left of them, have become totally impassable. Even walking has become a feat. It is very difficult to stay on your feet – that’s how slippery it is.”

By 27 October an entry in the war diary of Panzer Group 3 stated that no less than 50 percent of the 25th Panzer Regiment belonging to the 7th Panzer Division had already fallen out as a result of the roads and conditions. While Schaall’s panzer corps played almost no role in the fighting at Kalinin until the very end of the month, by 20 October Kirchner’s 41st Panzer Corps had been in uninterrupted battle for seventeen days, and with Soviet pressure increasing there was no sign of relief. On 21 October Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division was still on the northern bank of the Volga some 10 kilometers from Kalinin and was fighting its way back to the city after being cut off during its abortive advance on Torzhok. The divisional war diary noted that the condition of the men gave cause for “serious worries” and that the division was attempting to get back over the Volga “without too many material losses.”

Yet Krüger’s division had been devastated in the fighting. On 14 October the 1st Panzer Division had seventy-nine serviceable tanks, but by 21 October that figure had shrunk to just twenty-four. Two days later it was reported that a further eight tanks had been lost, four to enemy action and four blown up to avoid capture after breaking down. At the same time the division reported having lost 765 men and 45 officers between 13 and 20 October. Losing more than 800 men in just one week was serious enough, but since 22 June 1941 the division had lost 265 officers, from a starting complement of 387 and 4,935 non-commissioned officers and men. Hans Röttiger, the chief of staff of the 41st Panzer Corps, noted: “Due to the heavy Russian pressure against the road Mednoye–Kalinin, the [1st Panzer] Division had to confine its withdrawal to a very narrow strip along the northern bank of the Volga. As a result, a great number of men and particularly materiel was lost.” The defensive perimeter around Kalinin was held by Gollnick’s 36th Motorised Infantry Division, the withdrawn remnants of Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division and Krause’s “Lehrbrigade 900”, which had also taken part in the drive to Torzhok, an advanced detachment from the 6th Panzer Division and a newly arrived advanced detachment from Major-General Stephan Rittau’s 129th Infantry Division.

Helmut Pabst, whose unit reached Kalinin on 23 October, wrote in a letter the following day: “Since last night we have been in Kalinin. It was a tough march, but we made it. We’re the first infantry division here … We marched up the road which stretches into this bridgehead like a long arm, without much covering on either flank. The bridgehead must be held for strategic and propaganda purposes. The road bears the stamp of war: destroyed and abandoned equipment, tattered and burnt-out houses, enormous bomb craters, the pitiful remains of men and animals.” The situation was frequently desperate, as Konev’s Kalinin Front launched relentless assaults and carried them out, according to Hans Röttiger, “without regard to casualties.” One captured Soviet officer claimed Stalin had demanded the retaking of Kalinin by 27 October or else the commanding officer, presumably Konev, would be shot. Earlier in the month Stalin had considered having Konev shot for the debacle at Viaz’ma, making such a threat not beyond the realm of possibility, but Kalinin was not retaken by the stated date and Konev was not shot. However, if true, it says much about Stalin’s method of “motivation.” By 22 October Ninth Army reported to Army Group Centre that, unless Soviet forces to the south and southeast of the city could be pushed back, Kalinin could not be held indefinitely, and certainly no further offensives could be undertaken. This, however, conflicted with Hitler’s latest thinking, which Kesselring had expressed to Bock the day before, 21 October. Not only was Hitler still envisaging an offensive from Kalinin, but rather than the 60-kilometer advance to Torzhok, which had in any case proved beyond Kirchner’s corps, the dictator was now proposing an advance to the northeast town of Bezhetsk some 110 kilometers away. Bock was flabbergasted. “We are pushed back to Kalinin; first we must hold Kalinin! I have always remarked that this will be the bloody wound of the Ninth Army.” On 23 October Bock discussed his orders for the Ninth Army with Halder at the OKH. The army group headquarters had not yet received instructions from Hitler demanding an advance towards Bezhetsk, so Bock insisted his first priority was to eliminate Soviet forces striking across the Volga and secure Kalinin from the south. Bock, however, then reiterated his desire for another offensive towards Torzhok. By 25 October Soviet attacks south of Kalinin, far from abating, were striking with renewed vigor across the Volga from the west. Bock, on the other hand, took some heart from the fact that two corps from Ninth Army, General of Engineers Otto-Wilhelm Förster’s 6th Army Corps and General of Infantry Albrecht Schubert’s 23rd Army Corpswere making some progress towards Torzhok from the south. Yet these were still some 40 kilometers from the town, and Schubert’s corps reported on the following day that even its horse-drawn vehicles were now stuck in mud up to 1 meter deep.

In the center of Operation Typhoon, Bock was starting to realize that he had to concentrate his dwindling combat power if he was going to take Moscow. Zhukov was still desperately scraping together a rebuilt western front, and his lines were not well established. As the battle of Vyazma was more or less concluded on the fourteenth, Vietinghoff’s 46th Panzer Corps was released from the 4th Army and told to march on the new Western Front’s defensive lines. The 11th Panzer Division was the lead element of the advance. They struggled under the triple burdens of poor supply, bad weather and stiff resistance. Still, they advanced. Zhukov had essentially abandoned everything but his main centers of resistance at Mozhaisk, Volokolamsk and Maloyaroslavets. This allowed him to concentrate his fighting strength, but allowed the Germans free rein elsewhere. By October 15th, the 10th Panzer and SS-Division Reich were prepared to launch a set piece battle at Borodino, in front of Mozhaisk. This was the location of the infamous Battle of Borodino between Napoleon and Kutuzov. That battle had been fought almost exactly 129 years prior to 1941 and had lasted a single day, costing 68,000 dead and wounded on both sides.

Lieutenant General Lelyushenko had prepared a defense that included the 32nd Rifle Division and the 121st Anti-Tank Regiment. This regiment was armed with 76.2mm F-22 guns. These proved excellent weapons that destroyed several German panzers in the ensuing back and forth. The 5th Army was the main defensive command, but like many other field armies, it had been severely reduced. Lelyushenko also had the 20th Tank Brigade. On October 16th, the Germans began to break through the prepared defenses of the city proper. However, just as the SS troops started to stream through the lines, the 20th Tank Brigade organized a brilliant counterattack that struck the SS men, many of whom ran in fear at the sight of the T-34’s and KV-1’s. However, on the morning of the seventeenth, the 10th Panzer concentrated all their forces and managed to break through, brushing off the Soviet counterattacks. The SS followed through and started to envelop the remaining defenders. On the 18th, Mozhaisk fell. All across the front, town after town fell to the invaders: Kaluga, Maloyaroslavets, Detschino. But with each town came a fight. Each fight drained the Wehrmacht of men and material it could not afford to lose. Infantry battalions had started Operation Barbarossa with something like 800 men. Yet by the middle of October, some battalions were down to less than two hundred. The Red Army was in worse shape in many places, but they were not trying to carry on an offensive almost two thousand kilometers from their base of operations. Zhukov had been using every minute gained from the defense of the outer positions to build yet another line. This was the true reason the Germans couldn’t win. The Red Army just refused to give up. Behind every defensive line lay another army digging trenches and preparing to fight to the death. The Germans had steamrolled dozens of positions just like this. Now they stood at the gates of Moscow, only 90 kilometers away from the city center. However, the fighting had taken its toll.

In the southern sector of Operation Typhoon, Guderian was struggling to wrap up the destruction of the Bryansk pocket. He had his forces split roughly in half, with one group handling the pocket and the other trying to push east. There was little progress in the push east, but the Bryansk pocket was steadily reduced, bit by bit. As the third week of October came to an end, this task was about complete. Even as this was being done, it was slowly dawning on the professional officers of the Wehrmacht that the offensive could not carry on in the torrential rains. The infantry were averaging only one kilometer per hour under forced-march conditions. One of Army Group Center’s quartermasters estimated that up to one thousand horses were dying every day under the conditions. Most of these animal casualties were from being literally worked to death. The draft horses of western and central Europe were not up to the combination of poor fodder, extremely hard work, and pitiful care. Examples abound of the poor care of the draft animals. Notably, at this time there was an absence of winter shoes for the horses. Because of this, they often lost their traction, resulting in slips and falls and preventable injuries. The situation was growing ever darker for the Wehrmacht in the east. One soldier wrote in his memoir after the war: “Tempers were high because everybody was starving and dead tired besides being soaked to the skin; and the Russian artillery kept pumping shells in our direction, which of course did not help our morale … We not only lost men and materials, even things like trucks, but most of all we lost a great deal of hope of ever getting out of such a darned mess.” Like the soldiers and their horses, Operation Typhoon was dying in the mud of late October.

In Army Group South’s area of operations things were effectively being divided into two distinct areas of operations. The first was the main body of troops in Ukraine. The second was the 11th Army in Crimea under Manstein. Originally, he was to split his army in two and support the 1st Panzer Army in a drive on Rostov while the other half of his troops took Crimea. After the mess of the first weeks of October, this was changed. Kleist would drive on Rostov alone, while Manstein attacked Crimea with the whole of his army. This gave him a free hand to do what he wanted, but it ensured that Manstein was effectively on his own during the Crimean campaign. He would have to make do with what he had plus some reinforcements. After Kleist had taken Melitopol and finished the Battle of the Sea of Azov, Manstein was able to focus entirely on his task. However, the time taken to deal with the distraction around Melitopol had given the Soviets a respite. They used it to their full advantage. The 11th Army had to frontal-ally assault well-prepared positions to make it across the isthmus. They had broken through once, but couldn’t exploit it and had to pull back. Now they were ready for another push. Ishun lay at the bottom of the isthmus connecting Crimea to the mainland. The area around the town is dotted with large lakes and narrow strips of dry land. On august 18th, Manstein attacked. Three divisions formed his front. The 73rd Infantry Division attacked Ishun while the 46th and 22nd Infantry attacked elsewhere along the line. The first Soviet positions were quickly overran, but well-placed artillery slowed the attackers down as they attempted to cross a canal covered in barbed wire and mines.

The defending 51st Army did not have the depth of defenses behind these positions to absorb the penetration. One of their best strong points was a bromide plant that had been fortified by soldiers of the 530th Rifle Regiment.  As the 46th Infantry Division attacked, they came under fire from prepared machine-gun nests. After they were pushed back, the Germans reorganized and tried again; this time they managed to take the plant. The Soviets counterattacked and regained control late in the afternoon of the eighteenth. Tactical battles like the Krasnoperekopsk Bromide Plant demonstrated that on the tactical level, the Red Army was proving its ability to fight the Germans to a standstill, even after months of devastating defeats and crippling loss of organization. This flies in the face of established narratives that the Germans were always better soldiers at the small unit level and could outfight Soviet units in every case. At 06:15 on the morning of the nineteenth, the Germans brought the full force of their combined arms team on the Soviets. The 170th Infantry Regiment, supported by close air support and assault guns, attacked the plant and the adjacent village. By noon, they had driven the defenders back and were converging on Ishun. The 51st Army brought up some men to reinforce the area, but the Germans countered with the 213th Infantry Regiment. By nightfall, Ishun was in German hands. During the remainder of the week, the German infantry conducted cleanup operations and secured a bridgehead across the Chatyrlyk River south of Ishun. Meanwhile, in the mainland of Ukraine, Kleist was continuing his drive toward Rostov. Like everywhere else on the front, he was struggling to supply his men. Still, on the 17th, two SS divisions reached the outskirts of Taganrog. After some street fighting, the city was secured. The Soviet 9th Army was pushed back. Notably, there was no encirclement, and the Soviets retreated in reasonably good order. This was vital to Stavka plans if they were ever to pull off a determined counter-offensive in the south. Everywhere in Ukraine after Melitopol had fallen had amounted to little more than delaying operations, but they had to be carried out.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the autumn wind, mud and steel wrestled for Moscow. On the eastern front, Zhukov’s stubborn lines held fast as German panzer suns blazed toward the capital. Across the map, soldiers rebuilt and endured: divisions reformed from veterans and recruits, while logistics starved and fuel ran thin. Kalinin flickered with flashes of success and failure as encircling moves collapsed under Russian resilience. The wheel turned with each retreat and counterattack, roads turning to rivers of mud. Yet through frost and fear, unity endured: cities defended, civilians stood shoulder to shoulder with soldiers, and the dream of Moscow persisted. Mud and Blood, forever remembered.

Last time we spoke about the beginning of winter. In October 1941, two vast armies stood toe-to-toe on a winter-thin road toward Moscow. On one side, the Wehrmacht, hungry for a swift triumph, reshaped its backbone: Panzer Groups now Panzer Armies, roaring across Ukrainian and Russian plains with tanks as headlines. On the other, the Red army, led by Zhukov who refused to yield, braided defense lines from Leningrad to Moscow and rebuilt the Mozhaisk line with stubborn grit. The air smelled of fuel and fear as Operation Typhoon began. The Germans punched across the Desna and Dnieper, their armor moving like clockwork, yet every bridge they crossed whispered a new limit, fuel shortages, stretched supply lines, and stubborn Soviet countermeasures. In the north, Hitler’s orders clashed with battlefield reality; in the south, stalwart cities like Orel and Vyazma flickered with hard-fought breakthroughs and costly retreats. As October wore on, the myth of easy victory dissolved. Hitler boasted that the end was near, while soldiers on both sides kept their heads above the smoke, counting casualties and praying for more favorable weather. The siege of Moscow loomed, a hinge that could tilt the war’s fate.

This episode is Mud and Sieges

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Rain begins to fall across the Eastern Front as the dreaded Rasputitsa settles in. Autumn arrives just as Operation Typhoon climbs to its zenith. German generals speak of an inexorable victory, their voices carrying over mud-slicked roads and rain-soaked fields. Supply columns bog down in the quagmires, while infantry fight with dwindling ammunition, threadbare equipment, and the iron will to grind the enemy into submission. In Moscow, Stalin, unsettled and wary, recalls Zhukov to the capital to organize the defense as one fortress after another buckles under the German onslaught.

So what do I mean when I say “Rasputitsa”. It  is a term used to describe the annual mud season in parts of Eastern Europe, particularly Russia and Ukraine, when unpaved roads and the countryside become nearly impassable due to heavy rains in spring or the thaw of frozen ground in autumn. The word itself comes from Russian roots meaning “to trample” or “the laying waste,” but in practice it captures the practical impossibility of moving troops, vehicles, and supplies through the soft, waterlogged terrain. In spring, frost rules the ground: the soil switches from solid to glue-like as the thaw sets in, drainage is overwhelmed, and mud swallows wheels and tracks. In autumn, rains saturate the already soft earth after harvest, turning fields and ridges into a churned, sticky mire. Rasputitsa has had significant strategic implications in warfare by delaying or diverting movements, stranding logistics, and forcing commanders to rely on alternative routes, slower tempos, or temporary retreats. Its impact is not only military; it disrupts transportation, agriculture, and daily life, complicating aid delivery and civilian movement for extended periods. Rasputitsa repeatedly hinders warfare by turning military vehicles and artillery into mud-bound impediments. Coupled with winter conditions, this phenomenon is credited with slowing the campaigns of Napoleonic France in 1812, our story of Nazi Germany during Operation Barbarossa, and all belligerents in the recent 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Now last week, Army Group Center advanced rapidly into the Soviet defenses surrounding Moscow, with the Panzers achieving progress reminiscent of the war’s early days. The Red Army did not fare well during the first week of October 1941. We are now entering the second week as Zhukov assumes command of the defense of the Soviet capital. From October 8 to 14, the Soviet Union will strive to hold back the invaders as the situation continues to deteriorate. Operations in the farthest reaches of the Arctic Soviet Union had bogged down by mid-October. Operation Silver Fox aimed to seize Murmansk and its port facilities, placing them out of Communist hands. 

Operation Silver Fox was planned as a two-stage pincer maneuver, executed in three operations. Phase one, Operation Reindeer or “Unternehmen Rentier”, involved the 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions of Mountain Corps Norway under Eduard Dietl. They were to advance east from Kirkenes into the Finnish-held Petsamo area to secure the nickel mines. Phase two envisaged a pincer against the Soviet port of Murmansk, which remained ice-free in winter and, with Arkhangelsk, likely served as a route for Western Allied supplies to the Soviet Union. The first prong, Operation Platinum Fox (Unternehmen Platinfuchs), was a frontal assault from Petsamo toward Murmansk, with the aim of securing the Rybachy Peninsula with Finnish border support. The second prong, Operation Arctic Fox or “Unternehmen Polarfuchs”, would strike farther south to seize Salla, ceded to the Soviet Union after the Winter War and then push east along the railway to capture Kandalaksha, thereby severing the Murmansk Railway linking Murmansk with Central Russia. This operation involved the German 36th Corps under Hans Feige and the Finnish 3rdCorps led by Hjalmar Siilasvuo.

Aerial support for the offensive was to come from Luftflotte 5, based in Norway and the Finnish Air Force. For Silver Fox, Luftwaffe established a new headquarters in Finland. At the outset of hostilities, the Finnish air force fielded about 230 aircraft; Luftflotte 5 assigned 60 aircraft to Silver Fox in Finland, employing the Junkers Ju 87, Ju 88, and Heinkel He 111 for close air support. By late February 1941, German units had moved into Finland, and transit rights through neutral Sweden enabled the movement of the 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions into Kirkenes for Operation Reindeer. For 36th Corps, two sea-transport operations, Blue Fox 1 and Blue Fox 2 or “Blaufuchs I and II”, were arranged. Units embarked at Stettin and Oslo for Oulu, then traveled by train to Rovaniemi, where they linked with Finnish forces for the offensive under border-defense pretenses.

Soviet preparations were tentative; Stalin did not expect a German invasion along the entire border so soon. The primary Soviet opponent was the Northern Front, comprising the 7th and 14th Armies in the Arctic, commanded by Lieutenant-General Markian Popov. On 23 August 1941, the Northern Front was split into the Karelian Front (Valerian Frolov) and the Leningrad Front. Frolov, who had commanded the 14th Army, was succeeded by Roman Panin when he assumed command of the Karelian Front on 1 September. In the early weeks, Axis forces held numerical superiority, the Soviets having roughly 150,000 troops north of Lake Ladoga. Axis air superiority followed, as Soviet Karelia was defended only by the 1st and 55th Mixed Air Divisions, totaling about 273 serviceable aircraft of obsolescent types.

Operation Silver Fox began on 22 June 1941 to coincide with Operation Barbarossa. Mountain Corps Norway, comprised of the 2nd and 3rd Mountain Divisions under Eduard Dietl, moved east from Kirkenes into the Finnish-held Petsamo area to secure the nickel mines. The appearance of a German corps on the Soviet border surprised the Russians, and the operation succeeded in establishing a foothold around Petsamo as Dietl began reorganizing for Platinum Fox. Farther south, Feige’s 36th Corps prepared its attack at Salla. On 29 June, Dietl launched an eastward assault with Finnish border units against two Soviet divisions of the 14th Army, the 14th and 52nd Rifle Divisions. The opening day saw the 2nd Mountain Division secure the neck of the Rybachy Peninsula while the 3rd Mountain Division breached Soviet lines at the Titovka Valley, capturing a bridge over the river. As the element of surprise faded, German momentum slowed under growing Soviet resistance and the harsh Arctic conditions. The rough terrain, lack of detailed maps, and freezing weather impeded progress, and by July the 2nd Mountain Division had halted at the Rybachy peninsula, taking defensive positions at its neck, with several units diverted south to aid the 3rd Mountain Division. With reinforcements scarce, the Germans advanced east to establish a bridgehead over the Litsa River, but a Soviet flanking landing threatened these positions. Dietl pressed for reinforcements, yet the German High Command limited relief, providing only marginal aid from Norway. Supply problems compounded the stalemate as Soviet and British naval activity along the Norwegian coast disrupted German shipments, weakening Mountain Corps Norway further. Renewed offensives failed, the Soviets closed the Litsa bridgehead, and on 21 September the operation halted. Mountain Corps Norway was ordered to defend the front and secure the Petsamo area and its nickel mines, ruling out a renewed offensive; the northern front then remained relatively stable for the remainder of the war, aside from small-scale ski patrol skirmishes. Parallel to Platinum Fox, Arctic Fox began on 1 July. The German main force at Salla consisted of the 169th Division, the SS-Infantry Kampfgruppe Nord, and the Finnish 6th Division, facing three Soviet divisions from the 14th Army, the 122nd Rifle Division, the 104th Rifle Division, and the 1st Tank Division. The Germans launched a frontal assault on Salla, while the Finnish 6th Division attempted a substantial flanking attack behind Soviet lines toward Alakurtti and Kayraly. 

The initial assault faltered due to inadequate Arctic warfare training, and the SS division, composed largely of former police units, struggled against organized Soviet defenses. After repeated failures, 36thCorps redirected its effort and, with the Finnish flanking maneuver by the 6th Division, breached Soviet defenses on 6 July. Salla fell on 8 July, and the Soviets began retreat toward Kayraly; the Germans pursued to Kayraly on 9 July, but heavy resistance and challenging terrain, lakes and fortified positions, prevented further progress, creating a stalemate for the rest of the month. To the south, Finnish III Corps advanced east from Kuusamo to support the Salla effort, aiming to reach Kestenga (Kiestinki) and Ukhta in a two-pronged attack, and then move toward Loukhi and Kem to sever the Murmansk railway. III Corps made rapid progress, crossing the canal between Lake Pyaozero and Lake Topozero within 20 days and reaching Kestenga by 7 August, but Soviet reinforcements, including the 88th Rifle Division, halted the Finnish advance. The German command, impressed by the Finnish pace, moved additional 36th Corps units south to bolster the effort. Despite early gains, Soviet resistance intensified, stalling the Finns’ momentum. In mid-August, 36th Corps renewed its push on Kayraly from the north, and with the Finnish 6th Division from the south, encircled Soviet forces. After clearing the perimeter, 36th Corps advanced east again, capturing Alakurtti and pushing toward the Voyta and Verman Rivers near prewar border fortifications. Exhausted by heavy resistance, Feige’s forces could not sustain the drive, and the German High Command redirected available units to the south, placing 36th Corps on the defensive by late September. Bolstered by new German reinforcements, Finnish  3rd Corps launched a final push on 30 October. Despite stronger Soviet defenses and additional reinforcements, Finnish troops managed to encircle an entire Soviet regiment. However, on 17 November the Finnish command abruptly halted the offensive after diplomatic pressure from the United States, which warned that disrupting U.S. deliveries to the Soviet Union would have serious consequences for Finland. Consequently, Arctic Fox ended in November, and both sides entrenched at their positions.

By October, the Arctic ports were already proving to be a lifeline for the Soviet Union. Murmansk and Arkhangelsk offered the fastest routes for British and American supplies to reach the front. Convoys departing from Iceland or Britain could reach port in under two weeks. By comparison, the Basra route in the Persian Gulf required closer to three months, making the Arctic supply path dramatically swifter. Besides the Basra route, there was also the Vladivostok route for shipping. This path took about twenty days by sea, but the goods were roughly five thousand miles farther from the Soviet industrial heartland. Moreover, these two ports were much closer to the front lines and to existing Soviet infrastructure, enabling materials and resources to be deployed much more quickly. Of the two Arctic ports, Murmansk was the more valuable to the war effort. Despite its latitude, it remained ice-free year-round, while Arkhangelsk did not and was effectively useless during the long, dark winter months.

The Germans recognized the strategic value of the port and decided in the early stages of planning for Barbarossa that its capture was essential. Thus far, this objective had remained out of reach for the combined German and Finnish attackers. The Army of Norway, commanded by Colonel General Falkenhorst, was under-resourced for the task and struggled with coordinating with its nominal Finnish allies. The Finns were dutiful soldiers, but they limited their attacks to align with their nation’s war strategy. The Finns remained cautious about unlimited support for Hitler’s war. They continued to attack the Red Army, but only to the extent that it served their own objectives. Despite German propaganda portraying the invasion of the Soviet Union as a clash of civilizations, few of Hitler’s allies were willing to give their all for the struggle.

Finland was fighting for territory it had lost during the Winter War with the Soviet Union in 1939–1940. For this reason, the Finns preferred to refer to their war as “the Continuation War,” viewing their participation as separate from Germany’s wider European war aims. To the Finns, it was thus a joint war against a common enemy. Accordingly, Finland declined to be seen as a German ally and never joined the Axis, but styled its relationship as that of a “co-belligerent.” With a country of only 3.9 million people, Finland fielded an army of 476,000 men, and by late summer there were roughly 650,000 people working directly for the armed forces, constructing fortifications, roads, and bridges, or serving as nurses, air-raid wardens, and in supply services. The manpower drain imposed a massive burden on the Finnish economy, with industry losing about 50 percent of its workers and agriculture around 70 percent. By October, Finland was forced to appeal to Germany for 175,000 tons of grain to survive until the 1942 harvest.

Meanwhile, the threat of a declaration of war from Britain and the United States grew, as Finland refused to halt its advance even after reoccupying its 1939 frontier established by the Peace of Tartu in 1920. Up to that point, the western powers had tolerated Finland’s co-belligerency despite strenuous Soviet objections, but were not prepared to endanger relations further for a “Greater Finland.” Militarily, the war was proving extraordinarily costly for the Finns, with approximately 75,000 casualties in 1941 alone and, coupled with the worsening economic crisis, seemed unsustainable beyond 1941. The much-anticipated quick victory over the Soviet Union had failed to materialize, necessitating major structural changes and a comprehensive demobilisation of the army. Between the end of 1941 and the spring of 1942, the Finnish army shrank to about 150,000 men occupying defensive positions along a relatively quiet front. This allowed Allied Lend-Lease supplies to flow unhindered from northern ports, eased pressure on Leningrad, and freed Soviet troops for deployment on other, more critical fronts. Thus, in 1941 Germany’s single biggest contributor of foreign troops to the war against the Soviet Union had evolved from an aggressive co-belligerent to a passive advocate. Wavering support from Mannerheim’s government caused serious alarm in the German High Command. This helped explain why Army Group North was being pushed so hard to cover the eastern shores of Lake Ladoga. Meeting the Finns was crucial for two reasons: first, the Finns had made clear they were not interested in further advances themselves; second, officers of the OKH believed that a linkup would restore Finnish confidence in the alliance. Hitler supported these conclusions and was a driving force behind the planning of Army Group North’s next offensive.

Army Group North had reached a stalemate with the Leningrad and Northwestern Fronts. General Leeb was doing his best to stabilize his front lines and prepare for a renewed offensive. We detailed those plans last week. This localized offensive aimed to push the Soviets back from the shores of Lake Ladoga. Meanwhile, the Germans continued their bombardment of Leningrad. The city’s large urban sprawl and persistent Soviet counter-battery fire complicated these efforts. Counter-battery actions are artillery-on-artillery duels. A battery of guns seeks to return fire on the attacker by tracking and plotting the positions of the enemy artillery. Despite the German attempts to saturate the city with artillery and air bombardment, Army Group North lacked the resources to achieve this fully. The Lake Ladoga supply route, however, kept the Leningrad Front well stocked with ammunition. Ration stocks were declining, but the defenders still had fight left in them. Zhukov appointed a trusted officer to command the defense. General Fedyuninsky was supported by a Stavka representative. On the 12th and 14th, the Leningrad Front was ordered to break the German hold on Shisselburg. Fedyuninsky began preparations immediately, but they would not be ready until the middle of the following week.

The first week of Operation Typhoon had gone brilliantly for the invaders. They managed to encircle eight Soviet field armies at Bryansk and Vyazma, and Hitler and his entourage were ecstatic. There was little to complain about as the second week began. However, warning signs were starting to trickle in. It had snowed across much of the front on the seventh. Logistics remained hampered by the poor state of Soviet infrastructure, and many of the rebuilt panzers were already starting to break down. The German encirclement battles in the eastern campaigns had historically proven less than airtight. At Minsk, Smolensk, and Kyiv, tens of thousands of men managed to escape the loosely guarded pockets. Bryansk and Vyazma were no different. It has been estimated that around eighty thousand men escaped from the Vyazma pocket alone. The Germans could ill afford to let numbers like these escape, but there were simply not enough resources to seal the pockets.

To be sure, the losses were devastating to the defending Soviets. Contrary to German propaganda, the Soviet Union did not have unlimited manpower. The Red Army could muster only about 1.2 million men to defend the Moscow sector. The entirety of the Red Army stood at roughly 3.2 million, but the manpower reserves were now very shallow. Many of the recently inducted men had only the barest whiff of training. Compared to their German counterparts, they were little more than rank amateurs in the realm of tactical competence. The surviving veterans of the earlier titanic clashes with the Germans were scattered throughout the army. This prevented the Red Army from forming any set of particularly experienced or talented units. However, it allowed for the experience of one man to trickle outward to many men in his unit. Therefore, the impact of veteran officers, NCOs, and junior soldiers in the Red Army was amplified.

The loss of the eight field armies in the double envelopment of Bryansk and Vyazma appeared as an incredibly dangerous possibility as the second week of October began. As the fighting around these pockets continued, the German High Command decided to press on along a broad front. Rather than throwing their entire effort at the main objective, they ordered Hoth’s 3rd Panzer Army to Kalinin, to operate to the north of Moscow. In the south, Guderian would continue to advance with his Panzer Army split: his 48th Panzer Corps would attempt to capture Kursk, which lay far south of his main effort at Tula, while Schweppenburg’s 24th Panzer Corps was at Tula and directed to push toward Moscow. The 47th Panzer Corps was assigned to reduce the Bryansk pocket. Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Army was kept on a short leash by Kluge, who wanted his men and armor to stay close to the Vyazma pocket. These pockets were far from airtight, and the Soviets continued to fight hard to breakout. Indeed, in small battles scattered around the periphery, groups of Red Army soldiers managed local victories. The Germans were spread too thinly to cover all escape avenues. The vastness of the dual envelopments betrayed their purpose, as they had at Minsk and Smolensk earlier in the war. The German field commanders apparently refused to recognize this and continued to believe that all could be made good with just one more advance.

On the Eighth, tensions around Guderian’s right flank began to rise. The trapped Soviets were attempting to break out, and there was not enough pressure from the diminished Wehrmacht to contain them. By the ninth, the situation evolved into a full-blown crisis centered on the small town of Sizemka. There was a gap of unknown size between two infantry divisions: the 29th Motorized holding the eastern flank of the Bryansk pocket, and to their left the 293rd Infantry Division guarding the southern flank. However, a significant gap in their lines remained. The Soviet 13th Army trapped inside the pocket saw this weakness and threw what they could at it. This breakout attempt caused panic in Guderian’s headquarters. He ordered the 25th Motorized Infantry to fill the gap. They could only get into place after several hours of delay, and the situation continued to develop in the meantime. Guderian halted the advance of Kempf’s 48th Panzer Corps toward Kursk and diverted them northward. The Soviets continued to pressure the German lines, but once the 25th Motorized arrived late in the day the situation stabilized. The division commanders reported that only a small number of Soviets had escaped the pocket. This was an obfuscation at best; thousands of soldiers had indeed slipped from the grasp of the invaders. Postwar Soviet accounts alleged that whole divisions had made it out intact. The situation remained fluid enough that even Bock refused to characterize the event as a true envelopment or pocket by the usual standard. Guderian’s position remained in flux for much of the week, his rapid advance having again left behind infantry needed to secure the pocket before continuing with planned movements.

The confused command situation for the Red Army continued into the second week of October. Indeed, some blamed the Bryansk–Vyazma failure on this arrangement. The Western, Bryansk, and Reserve Fronts had no single point of command and coordination. They reported directly to the Stavka, which was attempting to coordinate the entire war effort. The German speed of attack remained unmatched by the cumbersome Red Army command structure. Even now, as the second week began, some units had been effectively cut off for days and did not realize it, a situation especially true around Vyazma. The command situation only began to improve on October 10. Zhukov was placed in charge of a unified command that incorporated all the remnants of the three front commands. This was a major step in improving the defense of Moscow and demonstrated Stalin’s renewed trust in Zhukov after his dismissal from the Stavka earlier in the year.

The situation around Vyazma looked grim for the defenders. Kluge was working hard to ensure that the encirclement remained tight, aiming to prevent the wholesale escapes that had occurred at Smolensk and Minsk. Yet he faced opposition from other commanders. Hoepner and Bock both wanted to resume the drive east as soon as possible, understanding that any delay would allow the Red Army to regroup on a new defensive line, as they had after every encirclement. Kluge resisted, arguing that reducing the holding forces around the pocket would let significant forces escape, thus enabling the very rebuilding that haunted Bock and the panzer commanders. Both sides presented valid tactical points, and compromise became the guiding principle. Kluge was through and through a classic German infantry officer. He had been arguing with the panzer commanders since the Polish campaign and before. Notably, Guderian had been his primary nemesis in France and the early months of 1940, but Kluge clashed with nearly all of the panzer commanders in due time. He believed in the thorough methods of his forefathers and disdained the reckless advance advocated by Hoepner, Guderian, and others. Bock allowed Kluge to keep the panzers but ordered that he compress the pocket into extinction at the earliest possible moment. Hitler then stepped in and, on the ninth, ordered Hoepner to extend northward to relieve the 3rd Panzer Army from the encirclement.  Hoth was sent south to take over the 17th Army after its commander was relieved. General Stülpnagel faced accusations of timid leadership, stemming from a dispute with the Army Group South commander. Hoth was ultimately relieved by Reichenau, who had previously been one of his corps commanders.

The 3rd Panzer Army was needed to start the drive on Kalinin and threaten the Soviet North Western Front. This stretched Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Army to the breaking point, as he was still ordered to continue advancing on Moscow. It was at this moment that the Soviets managed to begin attacking the Vyazma encirclement from the outside. The forces within the pocket had not given up either, tenaciously defending against infantry assaults from the west. On the 10th, Major General Hellmich’s 23rd Infantry was nearly overrun. The Soviets overwhelmed the infantry’s improvised positions and broke through in several places. Only with the help of a sister division’s reserves could Hellmich restore his lines. The Germans were beginning to crack, even on the north side of the pocket that should have been secure. The 7th Panzer Division’s positions could not be reached by any of Hoepner’s relief forces; they were forced to bunker down and endure the assaults. Men dug fighting positions up to their necks. Even as the Germans were battered to the breaking point, they managed to hold on. The Soviets were steadily squeezed. By October eleventh, the Vyazma pocket had shrunk from over two thousand square kilometers to just four hundred. Major Shabulin, an officer from the 50th Army wrote in his diary on October fifteenth: “I am reeling. Corpses, the horrors of war, uninterrupted shelling. Again, I am hungry and have not slept in a longtime. I have confiscated a bottle of liquor. I went to a forest and reconnoitered. The disaster is complete. The Army is defeated, the baggage train destroyed…. The Army has been turned into shambles”. Major Shabulin stumbled through the forest for a few more days before eventually locating Major General Petrov, the commander of his army. However, both men were killed before they could reach friendly lines.

As the twin pockets were steadily reduced, Red Army soldiers who managed to escape the carnage took one of three paths. Most avoided contact and fled eastward in an attempt to reach Soviet lines again. A few surrendered to the nearest German units, but this was far fewer than earlier in the year. The third path was to take up arms in the rear and attack anything they could. This had been a choice taken by Red Army soldiers trapped behind enemy lines since June. They attacked supply columns, blew up bridges, made contact with partisans, and otherwise proved to be a considerable thorn in the side of German operations. Army Group South was advancing relatively quickly across Ukraine. The first week of October had seen some hiccups, but Mariupol fell on the ninth to the SS Division Adolf Hitler. Halder complained that the Italian Divisions were barely sufficient even for static security positions. Mussolini had sent the Italian Expeditionary Corps despite less than enthusiastic support from Hitler. They were poorly equipped and only semi-motorized. This caused mobility issues trying to keep up with Kleist’s fast-moving panzers, to whom they were attached.

The 17th Army made good progress under their new commander. Hoth was not thrilled to be assigned to the infantry, but it was considered a promotion. The situation he found on arrival was not ideal, but his task was straightforward: push his infantry through to Donetsk. The 17th Army had to break through the slogging match first, facing three Soviet field armies in his path, the 21st Army to the north, the 38th in the center, and the 6th to the south. Little progress was made in the first week of Hoth’s command, though he managed to straighten his lines and eliminate a Soviet bulge on his southern flank. Further to the south, the 11th Army operated in concert with the Romanian 3rd Army to pin the Soviets in place while Kleist drove south. The Italians did their best to hold the northern flank of this movement. The capture of Mariupol signaled the end for the Red Army on the Sea of Azov. By the eleventh, what had become known as the Battle of the Sea of Azov was over, a resounding German victory, but achieved at a heavy cost. The Soviets lost about sixty-five thousand prisoners and well over one hundred tanks. The Germans suffered around twelve thousand casualties, with an unknown number of vehicles lost. The victory allowed the 11th Army to turn toward the Crimea and unleash its full force. The advance had stalled since the turn of the month amid the Romanians’ crisis; it would now be resumed in full. Kleist’s 1st Panzer Army would be responsible for taking Rostov. Yet as he began to resume the assault, the supply situation grew almost catastrophic. The June-to-date strain on the Wehrmacht’s supply system, coupled with deteriorating weather, rendered it essentially non-functional at times. The Southwestern Front seized the momentary pause, throwing another wave of divisions into the Rostov defense.

At Odessa, the Red Army finally pulled its last troops out and evacuated them to Sevastopol. It had taken two months and eight days, but the Germans and their Romanian allies had broken through to the coast. It was not the last siege of the eastern front. Lessons learned on both sides would be applied at Leningrad, Stalingrad, and Sevastopol, among others. The inability of the Germans or any of their allies to prevent the naval evacuation of Odessa was a testament to their fundamental weakness at sea. Even at this stage of the war, they could do little beyond harassing enemy formations outside their core areas. Even in the Mediterranean, the Axis fleets demonstrated an inability to control the sea. This would come back to haunt them as the North African campaign progressed into 1942. The operations there would prove to be a drain on valuable attention and materials from the Eastern Front in the months ahead. There were no significant Axis naval operations in the Black Sea for the remainder of the war.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the cold, mud-slicked dawn of October 1941, two colossal armies faced off along the Moscow road. The Germans, hungry for a quick win, pushed with Panzer power, while the Soviets, guided by Zhukov and a hastily rallied defense, stitched a stubborn line from Leningrad to Moscow. Rasputitsa wove its muddy traps, delaying tanks and sealing bridges, as autumn rain turned roads into glue and hunger into courage. Amid encirclements and bitter retreats, the Red Army honed its resolve. By winter’s edge, the siege loomed, lessons etched in smoke: endurance, rally, and a city’s stubborn heartbeat held the line.

Last time we spoke about the beginning of Operation Typhoon. In September 1941, Leningrad faced a brutal siege. Amidst this chaos, General Zhukov rallied his troops with the grim order, “Not a step back!” While the Axis celebrated victories, soldiers at the front grew skeptical of the Nazi propaganda that inflated confidence. As the Germans prepared for Operation Typhoon, a decisive offensive aimed at seizing Moscow, logistical strains became apparent. The advance stalled, and any hope for quick victory faded. However, both sides braced for a monumental clash. Stalin and Zhukov vowed to defend the capital, with the latter asserting that they would hold Moscow at all costs. With over a million troops and abundant resources, the Germans believed victory was within reach. Yet, the Soviet defenses, fortified and resolute, stood in their way. Both the Axis and the Red Army prepared for battle, knowing the outcome would alter the course of the war. The struggle for Moscow loomed, a pivotal moment that promised a harrowing chapter in history.

This episode is Winter is Coming 

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Massive formations of Panzers advance through the heart of the Soviet Union, sweeping aside all resistance. Hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers find themselves encircled, with little hope of breaking free to fight another day. The siege of Leningrad tightens as the Nazis press their advantage. In the south, the Southwestern Front still bears the scars of the devastating battle of Kyiv, where countless men now lie dead across the steppes. Meanwhile, Crimea faces a new assault, as the invaders prepare to drive towards the Don River. The conflict over Leningrad continues to devolve into a stalemate, and Army Group South grapples with the vastness of Ukraine while contending with its scarce resources. As we move into October, the weather shifts noticeably along the entire front. Snow has already begun to fall in the north, while rainstorms have caused intermittent delays. In summer, such storms typically lasted only days; now, they stretch on for weeks. Fall is firmly upon us, and winter approaches quickly. The weather was beginning to change. As Ned Stark said “Winter is coming”. 

During the first week of October, significant changes were implemented in the organization of the Ostheer by Hitler and the OKH. Most notably, the Panzer Groups were re-designated as Panzer Armies. This change was more than just a new title; it reflected the increasing importance of armored units within the German military strategy. Previously, these groups had been subordinated to field armies, which often resulted in friction between commanders, particularly between Guderian and Kluge during the early phases of operations. This friction created significant challenges throughout the chain of command. It began even before the war and persisted into the campaign in France. Guderian and Kluge’s personal animosity added to the strain. However, they were not alone in their frustrations; other commanders also felt the negative impact of the previous organizational structure. This hierarchy caused confusion within the chain of command and left Panzer leaders feeling constrained, desiring greater independence in their operations. Now, with the new designation as Panzer Armies, they would report directly to Army Group Commanders. This shift was aimed at enhancing the coordination of resources and expanding strategic options across the front. In theory, this new structure would streamline decision-making and improve the effectiveness of armored units in combat.

By October 1, the offensive capabilities of Army Group North had diminished significantly. Leeb informed Hitler that he could not launch any major offensives without additional reinforcements. Given the limited reinforcements received in late September, he had to work with what he had. Leeb still commanded 2 Panzer divisions and 2 motorized infantry divisions within General of Panzer Troops Schmidt’s 39th Corps. He intended to employ these mobile forces in a limited offensive. Leeb considered 2 options for his attack. The first was to break through the Soviet 8th Army at Oranienbaum, a promising choice. However, Leeb ultimately decided to focus on linking up with the Finns. This plan involved launching an attack northeast toward Volkhov, aiming to destroy the Soviet 54th Army in the process.

Hitler intervened and rejected the proposed plan. He insisted that Leeb instead attack toward Tikhvin first, then counter-march northeast to encircle the 54th Army at Volkhov. This plan likely appeared more appealing on the map tables of the dictator’s bunker than Leeb’s modest proposal. However, it overlooked crucial factors. An operation of this scale required more troops than Army Group North could muster, and it disregarded the fragile condition of the forces besieging Leningrad. Nonetheless, in a clear demonstration of Hitler’s growing disconnect from reality, and the weak resolve of the Nazi generals, Leeb accepted the plan. After some back and forth, the dictator ultimately got his way. Schmidt’s Corps was designated as the main effort toward Tikhvin, supported by 4 infantry divisions on the flanks. The 11th, 21st, 254th, and 126th Infantry Divisions were positioned south of the Shisselburg corridor and would need to redeploy to support the Panzers. Due to this requirement and the need to stockpile supplies, the attack was scheduled for October 16. Notably, the distances involved were relatively short, at less than 100 kilometers. When accounting for the delays in redeployment and logistics, the contrast with the early days of Operation Barbarossa becomes stark. The Wehrmacht remained an extremely competent and dangerous adversary, but its period of absolute dominance was clearly fading. Meanwhile, the Stavka was not resting idly. Even while addressing the potential collapse of the Western Front, they had to focus on developments in the Northwest. The Leningrad and Northwestern Fronts were instructed to prepare for another attempt to breach the vital German corridor at Shisselburg. A launch date was set for later in the month, pending the completion of preparations and a reorganization of the command structure.

Further south, Operation Typhoon represented far more than just another offensive; it was the culmination of months of intense fighting and hundreds of thousands of German casualties. The Nazi state had convinced itself, from top to bottom, not only of the inevitability of victory but also of its swiftness. Although the disappointment over the failure of Operation Barbarossa to destroy the Soviet Union was palpable, it was only mentioned obliquely.  On the night of October 1, 1941, just hours before Operation Typhoon was set to begin, Adolf Hitler issued a proclamation that was to be read aloud to the troops on the eastern front “Soldiers! When I called on you to ward off the danger threatening our homeland on 22 June, you faced the greatest military power of all time. In barely three months, thanks to your bravery, my comrades, it has been possible to destroy one tank brigade after another belonging to this opponent, to eliminate countless divisions, to take uncounted prisoners, to occupy endless space … You have taken over 2,400,000 prisoners, you have destroyed or captured 17,500 tanks and over 21,000 guns, you have downed or destroyed on the ground 14,200 planes. The world has never seen anything like this!”.

While Hitler emphasized the unprecedented nature of the Ostheer’s success, his comments also hinted at Operation Barbarossa’s failure to eliminate Soviet resistance. “This time,” he confidently promised, everything would proceed “according to plan” to deliver the long-awaited “deadly blow” to the Soviet Union. With characteristic bravado, Hitler declared: “Today, the last great decisive battle of this year begins.” Yet not everyone was convinced. Wolf Dose, a soldier in the 58th Infantry Division, wrote in his diary “The Führer has told us that the decisive battle in the east is beginning, a battle that will finish off the Russians, but how and where he did not say. I do not believe that the Soviet Union will capitulate.”Others were more outspoken. “The last great decisive battle of the year, my God! And what is the decisive result supposed to be, Moscow, Kharkov, the Volga?” Throughout Germany, morale had been boosted by the recent wave of Sondermeldungen, but for those German soldiers in the forward trenches of Bock’s army group, those who had resisted fierce Soviet attacks for the past 2 months, there were far fewer illusions about the difficulties of ending the war in the east. The new drive on Moscow presented daunting challenges. In the immediate prelude to Operation Typhoon, Heinrich Haape recorded the activity observed on the Soviet side of the line “East of the Mezha, the Russians prepared a strong system of trenches, bunkers, tank-traps and barbed-wire entanglements. They laid minefields, reinforced their front-line troops, brought up supplies and gathered their strength to stand against us once more. We had to sit helplessly … and listen to stories brought back by our patrols of the rapidly developing Russian defensive system, and to read reports from our Luftwaffe spotter aircraft which saw the movement toward the front of fresh troops, guns and supply trains”. Summing up the early October period another German soldier declared “the real hardships were about to start. The experience so far was only a prelude”. Both the Wehrmacht and Hitler managed to delude themselves into believing they could still end the war with one final push. Deceiving the public was dangerous, yet it could be justified if the Communists could be crushed before the year's end. As October 1 dawned and the front lines erupted into violent clashes once again, the fate of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union hung in the balance. Taking Moscow was unlikely to end the war, but it would make victory significantly harder for the Soviet defenders.

At 05:30 on the morning of October 2, Bock’s offensive opened with a massed artillery bombardment followed by air and ground assaults. Heinz Otto Fausten, serving in the 1st Panzer Division, wrote of “a massive barrage of preparatory fire. At around noon, we crossed flattened enemy positions, our river of troops and vehicles flooding eastwards.” Infantryman Helmut Pabst wrote home in a letter: “06:00. I jump on top of a dugout. There are the tanks! Giants rolling slowly towards the enemy. And the planes. One squadron after the other, unloading their bombs across the way. Army Group Centre has launched its attack.” The war diary of Colonel Georg von Bismarck’s 20th Panzer Division labeled October 2 “a historic day.”

Panzer Group 2, however, had been in action since September 30, and by the evening of October 2, Guderian felt his forces had achieved a “full breakthrough.” In less than 3 days, his subordinate 47th Panzer Corps recorded capturing 3,800 POWs, destroying or capturing 17 Panzers, 42 guns, 77 trucks, and 300 horses. To the north, Hoepner’s Panzer Group 4 advanced up to 15 kilometers into Soviet positions on the first day, and although the enemy it encountered was reported to be “surprised,” they nevertheless “resisted bitterly.” Hoth’s Panzer Group 3 drove 20 kilometers into the Soviet lines on the first day and found enemy resistance to be less than expected. The rapid advance was also attributed to the good weather, which, according to Panzer Group 3’s war diary, “benefited all movement on the bad roads and tracks.” Where the roads became problematic, the dry conditions allowed for off-road detours, avoiding serious delays. The weather report for central Russia on October 2 was “clear and sunny,” reminiscent of the conditions during the opening of Operation Barbarossa 103 days earlier. The 5th Panzer Division’s war diary simply labeled it “offensive weather.”

At Army Group Centre, Bock was elated. That night he wrote in his diary: “The army group went to the attack according to plan. We advanced so easily everywhere that doubts arose as to whether the enemy had not in fact decamped.” Yet intelligence gathered from captured Soviet officers soon confirmed that no order for withdrawal had been issued, and the defending armies had been ordered to hold their positions at all costs. German radio intelligence further confirmed the Red Army’s dogged determination to resist and not surrender ground. Soviet intercepts read: “Reinforcement not possible, the crossings are to be held”; “the commander is dead, I have taken over command”; “I cannot hold any longer, destroying the radio.” 

As Helmut Pabst observed, the German superiority at Panzer Group 3’s point of main concentration was overwhelming. “Tanks roll by, close to the gun position. A hundred have gone by already, and they’re still coming on… It looks like chaos, but it works to the minute, like clockwork. Today they want to break into the Dnieper line, tomorrow it will be Moscow. Armoured scout cars are now joining the columns.” After almost 4 hours watching the main grouping of Hoth’s Panzer Group pass by, Pabst concluded: “By now I think we’ve seen the last come by. It’s getting quieter… Any war film would pale by comparison. ‘That was really some show!’ the boys are saying.”

While Typhoon’s opening success seemed complete, there were still some bitterly contested positions, costing many German lives. Lieutenant-General Heinrich Meyer-Bürdorf’s 131st Infantry Division suffered very heavy losses on October 2 while trying to clear Soviet positions opposing its front. The Panzer divisions also encountered the familiar problem of inadequate bridges and, more ominously for the first day of an offensive, fuel shortages. Even before the offensive had begun, fuel reserves were recognized to be worryingly small, and plans were made to bring up more fuel using transport aircraft and towed gliders. Yet there could be no question that Army Group Centre was making significant gains across a wide section of the eastern front, and that was the message Bock relayed to Colonel Rudolf Schmundt, the Führer’s chief military adjutant at the “Wolf’s Lair” , Hitler’s secluded East Prussian headquarters.

The news confirmed for Hitler that the war was nearing its end, and he was in a celebratory mood. On October 3, at the annual opening of the War Winter Relief Organisation (Kriegswinterhilfswerk) in Berlin, Hitler delivered his first national address since the war began in the east. It was an auspicious occasion, allowing Hitler to recast the conflict from a failed blitzkrieg to a seamless military operation on the verge of victory. He stated: “On the morning of June 22, this greatest struggle in the history of the world began. Since then, three and a half months have passed. Today I can state everything has gone according to plan.” Yet even Hitler could not overlook the scale and cost of the fighting in the east, and he admitted that Germany had been caught unawares. “However, something did deceive us,” he told the German people; “we had no idea how gigantic the preparations of this opponent against Germany and Europe had been.” It was a surprisingly frank admission, probably inspired by his confidence in the impending defeat of the Soviet Union, which he now promised in the most direct terms. “I say this here today because I may say today that this opponent has already broken down and will never rise again!”

Not only was Hitler forecasting the end of the war in the east, but he also admitted he had switched industry away from army production. “Today, it is only a question of transport. Today, we have taken care in advance so that, in the midst of this war of materiel, I can order further production in many spheres to cease, because I know there is no opponent whom we would not be able to defeat with the existing amounts of ammunition.” Hitler’s speech may have reassured many of his followers, but it also reflected the depths of delusion inhibiting the German command and the credibility gap that had arisen between war propaganda and the actual situation in the east. Nevertheless, in the short term, soldiers like Wilhelm Prüller rejoiced at Hitler’s address. Writing in his diary, Prüller noted: “What a lift his words give us, as we crowd around the wireless set, not wanting to miss a single word! Is there a finer reward after a day of battle than to hear the Führer? Never!” Erich Hager noted in his diary that after the speech, “all sorts were really enthused. Many were drunk.” Other soldiers, however, were less convinced and seemed confused by the emerging dichotomy between the public representation and personal experience of the war. Hans Jürgen Hartmann expressed: “Perhaps it is only ‘talk’ that our enemy is broken and will never rise again. I cannot help myself, I am totally bewildered. Will the whole war still be over before winter?” Certainly, those with a broader perspective on events were not taken in by Hitler’s confident ruse. The Italian foreign minister, Galeazzo Ciano, wrote in his diary on October 3 “Speech by Hitler in Berlin, which was unexpected, or almost so. First impressions are that he has tried to explain to the German people his reasons for the attack on Russia and to justify his delay in ending the war, about which he had made very definite commitments. There is no doubt that he has lost some of his vigour … As for us, we are given no particular attention; he lumped us with the others, and this will not produce a good impression in Italy, where the wave of anti-German feeling is growing stronger and stronger”.

Reality was, not everything was going perfectly smoothly. Some infantry units were suffering heavy casualties as they attempted to break the Soviet lines. There was no retreat; the Red Army was fighting for every inch of ground. This obstinacy proved to be a double-edged sword. Stiff resistance was slowing the German infantry down, ensuring they paid dearly for their gains. However, it was also setting up the Soviet field armies for encirclement by the fast-moving Panzers. There was still little the field armies could do to effectively counter the penetrating Nazi armor. At Yelna, the 9th Infantry Corps under the 4th Army was hammered by Red Army counterattacks. The Soviet 24th Army refused to sit idly by and attempted to force the Germans onto the defensive.

On October 2, the 17th and 18th Panzer Divisions under General of Panzers Lemelsen’s 47th Corps encountered a counterattack by the 141st Tank Brigade. The Soviets were reasonably well-equipped with heavy tanks. In weeks past, they would have wreaked havoc on the advancing Panzers for hours or even days. Not anymore. The Germans had started to equip each Panzer battalion with an 88mm anti-aircraft gun and a 105mm howitzer to help counter the Soviet heavy tanks. Here, this modification proved its worth when the lead battalions quickly knocked out several KV-1 and KV-2 tanks, breaking up the counterattack almost immediately. By the morning of October 3, Guderian had a battalion of tanks more than 100 kilometers from his starting point. They seized bridges over the River Okta and began advancing on the city of Orel, which was a major population center of over 100,000 people and an important waypoint on the highway to Moscow. Furthermore, it cut Eremenko’s lines of communication with the Stavka and any real hope of reinforcements. After months of slogging across Ukraine, Guderian had finally broken out into the open. This was a real breakthrough that had not been seen since the early fighting around Smolensk.

In a daring move, a single company stormed the city of Orel. They lost three tanks but managed to overwhelm the confused defenders. The company was reinforced later that day, but here the advance stalled. OKH’s failure to properly stockpile supplies came back to haunt the Panzers. On the advance to Orel, some units ran out of fuel on the road. They had taken the city, wiped out two tank brigades, and inflicted over 10,000 casualties on their Red Army opponents. However, there was simply no more fuel. Guderian tried to persuade the Luftwaffe to airdrop fuel at the captured Orel Airfield, but to no avail. The VVS was still active, and there were too many Soviet fighters in the area. The Luftwaffe could not spare an escort for supply planes, and Guderian’s request was denied. This meant that his Corps had to drive their own trucks back to supply depots and gather as much as they could carry. They started out late on the fourth, but it would take four more days before they could return.

Further to the north, Hoth was determined to break the connection between the Western Front’s 19th and 30th Armies.

To accomplish this, he concentrated all of his Panzer Divisions at this point. The Soviets were ill-prepared to fend off the German armor here; they had no armored reserves at either the Army or Front level. There were few anti-tank guns in the rifle divisions, and unit cohesion was lacking. Additionally, many of the units making up these armies were worn down from fighting around Smolensk in August. Hoth had two infantry corps under his command for the operation: the 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions, which were used to launch fixing attacks against the front lines of the 19th and 30th Armies. Just as Hoth hoped, the Soviet Armies waited for Western Front commander Colonel General Konev to release armored reserves that could have been used to prevent the flanks of the field armies from being turned instantly. However, Konev did not have the numbers necessary to defeat the Panzer incursion. What he did have, he threw into the fight. First, Konev ordered three heavy artillery regiments to create a wall of fire on the advancing Panzers. This failed to stop them. Next, he sent his tank brigades to attack. In rapid succession on October 3, the 143rd, 126th, and 128th Tank Brigades were deployed. They were repulsed, losing over 100 tanks in the process. The continued poor performance of the Soviet tank formations is attributed to a complicated and interlocking series of issues. The tank brigades were more manageable than their larger tank corps counterparts had been. However, poor deployment planning and ongoing failures to coordinate operations both horizontally and vertically resulted in piecemeal attacks. These shortcomings would continue to haunt the Red Army well into the war. In the first week, Hoth faced little difficulty from the Soviet defenders. Like his counterpart Guderian, however, he struggled with resupply and fuel reserves. They reached Vyazma before the end of October 7 and managed to secure the northern flank of the city. The Western Front’s mobile reserves under Major General Dovator were forced to retreat. The 19th and 30th Armies were being cut off, leaving little hope for a successful retreat.

Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group was completely transformed for its role in Operation Typhoon. He now commanded three corps, compared to the two he had when the campaign in the east began. Additionally, he received a much greater share of the resources and supplies to ensure his success. His formations would smash the Reserve Front and secure the southern half of the Vyazma encirclement. On the first day, his two lead corps made it across the Desna River. The Reserve Front under Marshal Budyonny had only two tank brigades as its mobile reserve. Budyonny decided to hold these further back, choosing not to contest Hoepner’s crossing of the Desna. This proved to be a mistake, as his two field armies were quickly crushed in rapid movements. By the end of the fourth day, the 33rd and 43rd Armies had been defeated and had to retreat. To make matters worse, the Marshal had been caught in the retreat during a visit to a field headquarters, meaning he was unavailable to direct the battle during much of the critical opening phase.

It was at this moment that Hoepner’s increased strength proved to be decisive. He had kept his 57th Panzer Corps under General Kuntzen in reserve and committed Kuntzen on October 5. The battle quickly devolved into little more than a rout. Early on October 6, the town of Yukhnov fell to elements of the 10th Panzer Division. The Panzers were now just 200 kilometers from the center of Moscow. This was an unmitigated disaster for the Soviet defense of the capital, with the bulk of the Western Front now trapped in the Vyazma pocket. On October 5, Stalin called Zhukov from Leningrad and placed him in charge of the defense of Moscow. The Western and Reserve Fronts were subordinated to him, and Zhukov set his plans into action immediately. On October 6, he sent orders for the rebuilding of the Mozhaisk Defensive Line. This was not a new position; it had been started back in July, but the fighting around Smolensk had depleted much of the manpower reserved for its garrison. Now, it was to be the last line before Moscow itself. The defense would run through four critical towns: Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk, Maloyaroslavets, and Kaluga, forming an approximately 230-kilometer line west of Moscow that needed garrisoning. The capital was mobilized for a struggle unlike any other. Anything that could be considered a military resource was requisitioned and sent to the line. At least three regiments were formed from students of the military schools in Moscow and sent off. The situation was dire, but Zhukov remained confident in the Red Army. By this point, Zhukov had established a strong reputation as a fixer who did not yield to political pressures when he believed he was right. He had not yet lost a battle against the invaders and had proven capable of turning them back at Yelna and Leningrad. Now, he would defend the capital.

As the first week of Operation Typhoon ended, it looked like a repeat of the early victories of the summer. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were again encircled or in imminent danger of being encircled. The front line was collapsing once more. In Ukraine, the invaders were experiencing a mixed bag of results. The push to clear the eastern bank of the Dnieper was mostly successful, as Kleist was able to take Zaporozhye on the first. This was a boon for Manstein’s 11th Army, which had been forced to split his forces to support the collapsing Romanian 3rd Army. Fearing encirclement, the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies decided to pull back. However, this withdrawal was not entirely successful, and large numbers were caught up. This opened the path to Mariupol, and the Germans were prepared to take advantage of the space. Meanwhile, attempts to break through the Perekop Isthmus were stalling without additional support. Halder and the OKH staff had hoped that Manstein would be able to take the entire peninsula in a quick surprise attack and cut across the Kerch Strait to reach the Caucasus. It was becoming clear even now that this would not be easy. The city of Odessa was still holding out against the Romanians and their German allies. The defenders just would not break, but as the first week of October ended, the situation was looking dire. The Stavka was not ready to give up the city yet, but that time seemed to be approaching rapidly.

Sometime during this week, Hitler decided that Army Group South would focus its attacks on securing the Black Sea Coast, Crimea, and the Donets River basin. This meant that the drive on Kharkiv was abandoned in order to free up the forces necessary to secure the line from Mariupol to Donetsk. After this, Kleist would advance to Rostov, and the Don River would be secured. The Donets River Basin was home to many industrial centers and enormous coal reserves. At this point, Germany was suffering from shortages in coal and industrial capacity. Hitler was desperate to secure these resources before the coming winter to alleviate the effects of these shortages on the civilian economy. This plan of attack did not require any major encirclements, but it depended on Stalin being unable to rebuild the Southwestern Front. This was a significant contingency, but Halder and the OKH were convinced that the Soviets were concentrating all their resources in defense of Moscow. They also believed that the Red Army had nothing left in the tank. This was a critical mistake. No German general could claim ignorance of the demonstrated force generation capabilities of the USSR thus far. The only evidence they could muster to support their hypothesis was the number of armies they had destroyed. To their minds, it seemed illogical, if not impossible, that the Red Army would be able to raise more troops and place them in the path of the Wehrmacht. This ignorance was fundamentally rooted in the widespread belief in Nazi racial propaganda. The Soviets were perceived as barbarians, incapable of the effective governance that long-term mass conscription required. While the Nazi leadership would be disabused of this notion before the end of the war, they never relinquished their supposed racial superiority over the Soviet soldier.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

As Operation Typhoon began, the stakes for both the Nazis and Soviets escalated dramatically. General Zhukov urged his troops to hold their ground amidst a crippling siege in Leningrad. Meanwhile, massive German formations advanced, encircling hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers. Despite initial successes, the harsh weather and fierce Soviet resistance posed significant obstacles. With Hitler proclaiming imminent victory, doubts lingered among soldiers about the true state of the conflict. As both sides prepared for a pivotal battle, the looming clash for Moscow promised to alter the war's course.

Last time we spoke about the fall of Kyiv. In September 1941, as the German forces encircled Kyiv under General Guderian's leadership, desperation loomed large for the Soviet Red Army. Despite their valiant efforts to withstand the siege, hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers found themselves trapped, leading to mass surrenders. Amidst the chaos, General Zhukov took command in Leningrad, rallying his troops with the stern order: “Not a step back!”. This grim scene was compounded by the chilling decision by Nazi leaders to execute thousands of Jews at Babi Yar, demonstrating the brutal lengths to which they would go in retaliation for resistance. The battle marked a turning point; while Germany celebrated its victory, deep-rooted issues within its ranks, including dwindling supplies and morale, were beginning to surface. The horror of war had only just begun, marking a tragic chapter in history that echoed far beyond the battlefield.

This episode is the Fall of Kyiv

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Last week, we left off with the destruction of the Southwestern Front and the capture of Kyiv. The job of defending Leningrad was tossed over to Zhukov. Meanwhile a massive reorganization was unfolding for a new operation aimed at Moscow. Yet before we jump into that I wanted to first talk about something else, how was the German propaganda machine telling the folks back home what was going on in the east? Under Hitler’s regime, there was no clear structure for producing and disseminating state propaganda. Officially, Josef Goebbels served as the Minister of Propaganda, but he lacked absolute control over the nation’s various media outlets. Instead, he competed for influence with the Wehrmacht’s Office of Propaganda Troops and other branches of the civilian government.

While the Wehrmacht’s office was primarily supposed to focus on internal messaging, it often released reports to the press. This was a strategic move to amplify the OKW’s preferred narrative on the frontlines and promote a military-friendly storyline. Goebbels himself was less concerned with glorifying the military or its achievements unless it directly benefited the Nazi Party or bolstered his own power. For Goebbels, serving Hitler was the ultimate priority. While many others in the government were driven solely by a hunger for power, Goebbels was a true believer in Hitler's vision, which became evident in his reporting and propagandistic efforts. Despite the growing challenges of the eastern campaign, the German command remained largely convinced that a final major offensive could bring an end to the war against the Soviet Union. Recent successes in the North and South, namely, the encirclement of Leningrad and the capture of Kyiv, had revitalized enthusiasm and heightened expectations that the Soviet state was on the brink of collapse.

A pivotal factor in fostering this belief was Goebbels’s series of Sondermeldungen, or special news bulletins, which publicly proclaimed that the war was nearing its conclusion. However, the soldiers at the front had a different perspective on the accuracy of such claims. While some were buoyed by the optimism, many voiced skepticism. General Wilhelm Groener, who directed the German occupation of Ukraine in 1918, had warned against complacency in campaigning in the East. He stated, “Anyone who wants to grasp the strategic nature of the eastern theatre of war must not overlook historical recollections. Beside the gate of the vast lowland between the Vistula and the Urals, which is the home of one state and one people, stands the warning figure of Napoleon, whose fate should implant in anyone who attacks Russia a sense of horror and foreboding.” On September 26, soldier Heinz Rahe wrote to his wife about the anticipated offensive toward Moscow. He expressed hope that Moscow would be reached within fourteen to twenty days, but then added with a hint of doubt, “—but not by us.” Similarly, a non-commissioned officer with the 79th Infantry Division expressed his reservations on September 24. He noted, “Whether Russia can be defeated this year, I doubt very much. The Soviet military might is indeed broken, but the country is too vast, and capitulation is not an option for the Russians. Because two men can’t agree on their ideas, millions of men have to bleed.” In another poignant letter dated September 28, Alois Scheuer shared his experiences in the East, hinting at the numerous difficulties he faced. He remarked, “What I have experienced and lived through in this quarter of a year in Russia, I cannot put into words. There is so much I wish to forget and never be reminded of again. I always try not to lose hope and courage, but there are hours when the loneliness and desolation are almost unbearable.”

While many soldiers at the front expressed their doubts and yearned for an end to the war, Goebbels's victory propaganda continued to resonate effectively, particularly within Germany. Classified reports from the SD or “Sicherheitsdienst”gauging public opinion revealed that, as of September 25, fears of positional warfare in the East and the likelihood of a winter campaign had largely faded. A follow-up report on September 29 confirmed that more and more people were beginning to believe in a German victory before winter set in. Despite this success, Goebbels was troubled by the extent of the rising optimism. In his diary entry from September 27, he observed, “The depression is now completely gone. At times, the mood of the people goes far beyond the real possibilities. Once again, there’s hope that this winter the war will be over, and we have much to do in the next weeks to temper this extreme optimism to a more realistic level.” This palpable sense of optimism was felt even at the front, where many desperately clung to the belief that victory was near. On September 28, Hans-Albert Giese wrote to his mother, “In the next few days, we will again march somewhat further. We look forward to it because the quicker we advance, the sooner we can return home to Germany. The news from the past few days has been really great. These Bolsheviks won’t last much longer.” Another soldier, Ernst Guicking, shared similar sentiments in a letter to his wife dated September 29. He stated, “Kiev is done. Now it’s the turn of Army Group Centre. The great final chord will soon be played in the East. All our hopes are pinned on the coming four weeks.

As the war progressed, Goebbels struggled to balance the expectations and morale of the civilian population with the harsh realities of the situation. The Wehrmacht was experiencing victories, but things had not unfolded as planned, despite what Hitler proclaimed to the public. While official reports boasted that the Red Army was on its last legs, Goebbels was increasingly anxious about public opinion, especially as the war inevitably stretched into 1942 and beyond. Throughout the conflict, the messaging from the German state regarding the situation in the East was anything but clear. Evidence suggests that this lack of clarity impacted morale both within the armed forces and among civilians. Hitler had never been entirely secure from the threat of an internal coup, and his security situation would continue to deteriorate over the coming months and years. This decline wasn't solely due to waning morale caused by inconsistent and vague propaganda that diverged from the realities of war. Initially, Hitler’s strategic management had helped stave off coup attempts during his reign. However, his forthcoming failures would ignite discontent in the future. Propaganda had been a crucial element of the Nazi state's success in maintaining control over Germany, but the cracks were starting to show in its armor. By the end of September 1941, even ordinary soldiers were beginning to openly question the wisdom of the war. For instance, in the aftermath of the fighting around Kyiv, one soldier reflected on these sentiments in a letter home “Three months ago today the campaign against Russia began. Everybody supposed at the time that the Bolsheviks would be ripe for capitulation within no more than eight to ten weeks. That assumption, however, was based on a widespread ignorance of the Russian war materiel...Just this morning we happened to hear that, for example near Kiev, 600 guns and 150,000 men were captured. What kind of figures are those! Russia is almost inexhaustible”.

Things began to grind to a halt at Leningrad. The German advance, now almost entirely devoid of armored support, was stalling at the Pulkovo Heights. The suburban areas surrounding the city proved to be a tough challenge. In the North, the Finns hesitated to attack, leaving their German allies struggling to push them further. Any hope for a link-up on the eastern shores of Lake Ladoga had to come from Army Group North, but with the 4th Panzer Group reassigned to Army Group Center for the foreseeable future, this prospect was all but impossible. On September 25, the 16th Army was pushed back from the eastern bank of the Neva River. The Soviets continued their assault, but by the 27th, Luftwaffe air support began breaking up their attacks. Throughout the remainder of the month, the Red Army launched small-scale offensives from the Valdai Hills, pressing west into the German lines, yet they gained little ground. Inside Leningrad, Zhukov was not content to simply wait for the Wehrmacht to come to him. He ordered the 54th Army to attack. Although these counterattacks ultimately proved unsuccessful, they troubled General Leeb. The commander of Army Group North recognized that he was stretched too thinly and that the weight of command was eroding his remaining confidence.

As the offensive capabilities of the Army Group waned, Hitler sought alternative methods for the destruction of Leningrad. A notable instance of this shift occurred on September 29, when a directive was issued by the Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine, clearly outlining the invaders' intentions. “The Fuhrer has decided to have St. Petersburg wiped off the face of the map. The further existence of this large town is of no interest once Soviet Russia is overthrown. The intention is to close in on the city and raze it to the ground by bombardments of artillery of all calibers and by continuous air attack. We have no interest in keeping even part of this great city’s population. The consequences arising from the extinction of St. Petersburg will be worked out at Supreme Command”. This directive, among others, made it clear that there was little hope for the city to surrender. In response, the resolve of both soldiers and civilians in Leningrad strengthened. Alongside Zhukov’s earlier order of “Not One Step Back,” Stalin issued his own commands, directing Zhukov to purge the city of potential fifth columnists. Defeatism could not be tolerated if the Soviet Union was to achieve victory. Though no one could foresee the horrors that awaited the city in the years to come, Stalin remained unwavering in his stance against perceived enemies of the state. He called for the eradication of both willing and unwilling collaborators with the invaders. In practice, this meant the murder of innocents and the relentless elimination of dissenters who might assist the Germans in their quest to take Leningrad.

Throughout the last week of September, Army Group Center was abuzz with activity. A new German offensive, codenamed Operation Typhoon, was being formed, aimed to create a massive breach in the center of the Soviet front. The objective was to eliminate the bulk of the Red Army before Moscow, seize control of the Soviet capital, and bring major operations on the Eastern Front to an end before winter set in. To achieve this, the OKH which directed operations on the Eastern Front, ordered a significant reorganization of the Ostheer or “Eastern Army” to provide the necessary forces. Army Group Centre was poised to receive the highest concentration of panzer, motorized, and infantry divisions ever assembled by Nazi Germany. In total, Bock’s army group commanded seventy-five divisions, including approximately forty-seven infantry divisions and fourteen panzer divisions. On October 2, the designated start date for Operation Typhoon, over 1,500 panzers and 1,000 aircraft were set to combine for a blitz-style offensive intended to overwhelm the Soviet front and enable rapid exploitation into the Soviet rear. Engaging more than a million Soviet troops necessitated battles of immense scale, with no guarantees of success. Even a battlefield victory would not necessarily lead to an end to hostilities. As the Germans had learned repeatedly since June 1941, there was a significant gap between operational success and strategic triumph. Operation Typhoon needed to be more than just another extension of the German front claiming more Soviet prisoners; it had to establish the conditions for a definitive victory in the East. Consequently, the OKH concentrated everything it could spare for one vast final offensive. This was a last-ditch effort to break the looming specter of a stalemate and avoid the uncertainty of a winter campaign. Capturing Moscow and ending the war in the East was always going to be a daunting task. Yet, more than at any other time in 1941, the strategic situation in mid-October convinced the German high command that victory against the Soviet Union was within reach. Even the Soviet government was preparing for the loss of Moscow, designating a new capital some 800 kilometers further east. Thus, despite the challenges facing the panzer groups, Hitler’s October offensive seemed to reinvigorate Germany’s war in the East and, in the eyes of the German command, brought the Ostheer closer than ever to outright victory.

Preparations for Operation Typhoon reached their peak as last-minute deliveries of fuel, ammunition, and reinforcements arrived at their jump-off points. Halder recorded in his diary on the 26th that the entire front line of Army Group Center was eerily quiet. This silence lasted until the 28th, when the Red Army began to launch probing attacks along the line. German reconnaissance reported that Soviet divisions were being transferred elsewhere. Halder noted, almost nonchalantly, that this was likely due to the Stavka attempting to organize a defense in depth, a suspicion that would prove to be more than valid in the coming weeks. The plan for the offensive was now fully outlined. In the northern part of the attack, the 9th Army and the 3rd Panzer Group would form the line, serving as the most northern arm of the first encirclement, aimed at closing in on Vyazma. This would create a relatively small pocket, a reflection of two key factors. First, the reduced combat power of the army played a significant role. Second, and perhaps more critically, the small size of the encirclement indicated that Hitler had triumphed in the arguments of July. These discussions had focused on the large-scale operations of Army Group Center's early encirclements. Hitler advocated for scaled-back operations that targeted smaller sections of the Red Army. It was apparent that the dictator was able to impose his will on Field Marshal Bock’s planning for Operation Typhoon, at least in this respect.

In the center of the front, the 4th Army, led by Field Marshal Kluge, would collaborate with Hoth’s 4th Panzer Group to launch an attack on both sides of the major highway connecting Roslavl to Moscow. They would operate in two distinct groups. The northern group would form the second arm of the first encirclement, meeting the 3rd Panzer Group at Vyazma. Meanwhile, the 9th Army would screen the far northeastern flank of the advance. This significant extension of the 9th Army’s lines could have been avoided. However, it required Leeb to push his lines further east, which was unrealistic given his lack of armor since those resources were being concentrated for Operation Typhoon. Consequently, Army Group Center had to dilute their forces, covering positions that could only have been adequately defended if the panzer forces had been permitted to support Army Group North for a longer duration. This circular reasoning reflects the declining state of strategic thought within the Wehrmacht at this juncture. Additionally, it illustrated how the army in the east was being pushed to the absolute breaking point. The other leg of the center advance was tasked with holding the highway and continuing the offensive toward Moscow. This effort was crucial to pushing the front forward and securing the flank of the encircling panzers in the center.

The southern wing of the offensive was composed of Guderian’s 2nd Panzer Group and the 2nd Army under Colonel General Weichs. The infantry held the middle ground, while the panzers formed the tip of the Army Group’s front. Guderian’s objective was to break across the Desna River and then advance in a northeast direction. This maneuver would accomplish the second encirclement through a sweeping hook. Weichs would converge with the panzers around Bryansk, facilitated by the shorter distances the infantry would need to march. Field Marshal Reichenau’s 6th Army was tasked with guarding the southern flank of the entire operation. This army remained under the operational control of Army Group South. Reichenau was required to advance and attempt to keep pace with the center, even as his lines grew increasingly stretched. This risk was likely deemed acceptable due to the devastation at Kyiv, where the Red Army was in dire straits during the last week of September. However, the march alone would present a daunting challenge, just as it would for the soldiers of the 9th Army in the North.

Two key points underpin the entire concept of operations for the impending offensive. First, the logistics situation was dire. The Wehrmacht was attempting one of the largest offensives in military history on a shoestring budget. There simply were not enough trains arriving to fulfill the needs of the operation. Despite ongoing promises from the Army Quartermaster, shortages persisted. General Wagner served as the quartermaster of the Army, grappling with the challenge of securing enough trains to supply the forces as the invasion progressed deeper into Soviet territory. He faced severe difficulties with the Soviet Union's track system; relaying tracks to the appropriate gauge was only part of the battle. German locomotives required fuel and water more frequently than their Soviet counterparts due to their smaller size. This necessitated the allocation of significant resources toward building the necessary facilities for them. Coupled with the capacity limitations of the single-track lines, even when Wagner did manage to acquire trains, they often could not reach their intended destinations. This lack of resources critically affected the staying power of the offensive and would prove vital in the coming weeks. The second key factor in the preparations for Operation Typhoon was the absence of real reserves. It took everything the Heer could assemble just to bolster the first-line units and maintain a continuous front from Leningrad to the Dnepr. Bock was unable to establish a meaningful reserve force. This same issue had plagued the first stage of fighting in June and July, and now it had returned with renewed intensity. The Wehrmacht was not only weaker but also faced a larger front without the element of surprise. Despite these challenges, Army Group Center had been revitalized into an impressive fighting force, becoming the largest single field command in German history. Millions of men were preparing for what many believed would be the climax of the entire war.

To defend against the impending offensive, the Stavka had been preparing since before the Battle of Smolensk. Their defense in depth was impressive in its execution. The Red Army was far from finished. The Stavka had to dispatch significant forces south to Ukraine to reform the Southwestern Front under Timoshenko. Although Kirponos died during the breakout attempt, there was little time for grief. Command of the Western Front passed to Colonel General Konev. The Bryansk Front managed to evade encirclement at Kyiv when Guderian split its lines, with Eremenko still in command. Marshal of the Soviet Union Budyenny had taken charge of the Reserve Front. Together, they mustered around 1.25 million men in fifteen field armies. The entire defense strategy hinged on these forces performing better than they had in previous encounters. They were outnumbered and equipped with fewer tanks, artillery, and aircraft. They had to hold the line; the fall of Moscow was not an option. Stalin had already resolved that if Moscow succumbed, the war would shift further east. A second capital had been designated at Samara, located about a thousand kilometers southeast on the Volga River. From there, the Soviet Union would continue to fight. However, Zhukov remained resolute. He believed the Red Army could surpass even Alexander I in 1812 and successfully defend Moscow against foreign seizure. Zhukov told Stalin so, and it was exactly what Stalin wanted to hear. But Stalin was also visibly agitated and sought the truth in whatever form it might take. Zhukov recounted a moment of questioning from Stalin: “Are you sure that we will hold Moscow? I ask you about this with a pain in my soul. Tell me truthfully, as a communist.” Zhukov’s response was blunt and unequivocal, reflecting his uncompromising nature: “We will, without fail, hold Moscow.” Of course, Zhukov’s assurance was not infallible, and Moscow continued to face a clear and present danger. However, he had a significant advantage: he had already learned from his defense of Leningrad that to defeat the Germans, he did not need to destroy their forces or advance his front to a distant objective. In the autumn of 1941, his goal was simply to prevent the Germans from seizing their prize and thereby secure victory by default. This task was anything but straightforward. With the entire Moscow region rapidly transforming into a fortified military district, Bock was destined to face a bloody battle, and time was not on his side as autumn conditions worsened.

As both sides readied their forces for the impending clash in the center, Army Group South continued its advance through Ukraine. The attack on Crimea commenced on September 24th. Manstein’s 11th Army launched a bold assault across the Perekop isthmus, aiming to capture Crimea. Defending this position was the 51st Army, which had established strong fortifications along the five-kilometer-wide isthmus. However, they were quickly overwhelmed. By the 26th, the invaders had pierced the line of the Tatar Ditch. The Tatar Ditch was part of a line of fortifications that extended across the width of the Isthmus. There have been several ditches or canals dug across the Perekop, but this one was suspected to have been from the 1500’s. It had been fortified by the Red Army in preparation for the attack by the Germans. Manstein was relatively well supplied with engineering equipment and heavy artillery, especially considering the overall state of the Wehrmacht and ongoing operations elsewhere. Just as he prepared to break through into open territory, bad news arrived. Manstein had divided his forces, deploying the 54th Infantry Corps as his assault force on the Perekop. His other forces, the 49th Mountain and 30th Infantry Corps, were tasked with holding the line alongside Romanian brigades between Melitopol and the Dnepr. He was in the process of pulling the 49th Mountain Corps out of the front lines to use it as an exploitation force toward Sevastopol. As the 49th Mountain withdrew, the Soviet 18th Army probed the Romanians and discovered them weakly deployed. Hours later, they broke through the defenses, leading to the crumbling of Romanian lines. Soon, they turned to attack the 30th Infantry from two sides. A sixteen-kilometer-wide gap opened in Manstein’s lines, threatening a serious disaster. In response, he ordered the 49th Mountain Corps to turn around and patch the gap. As the month ended, this effort was still underway. The advance across the Perekop stalled as the Soviets began to strengthen their positions, while Manstein found himself distracted by crises unfolding further north.

On September 24, a major conference was hosted by Bock at Army Group Centre to finalize plans for the long-awaited renewal of the offensive towards Moscow. In attendance were the heads of the OKH, Halder and the commander-in-chief of the army, Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, as well as the commanders of Bock’s three armies: Strauss, Kluge, and Colonel-General Maximilian Freiherr von Weichs. The three panzer group commanders, Hoth, Hoepner, and Guderian, were also present. The assembled commanders were informed of their duties according to the OKH’s plan, which had been formulated over the past month. In the north, Strauss’s Ninth Army, together with Hoth’s Panzer Group 3, was to attack from the area near Dukhovshchina, forming the northern arm of the first major encirclement, closing at Viaz’ma. While Hoth’s panzers would provide the striking power, Strauss’s infantry had to cover the northern wing of the entire offensive, as it had proved impossible to extend Leeb’s army group any further to the east.

Kluge’s Fourth Army and Hoepner’s Panzer Group 4 were tasked with attacking on both sides of the Roslavl–Moscow highway in the center of Bock’s front, also heading for Viaz’ma to close the pocket from the south. Meanwhile, Weichs’s Second Army and Guderian’s Panzer Group 2 were positioned further south to break through the Soviet positions on the Desna River and cooperate in an advance to the northeast, focusing on an encirclement centered on Briansk. Additionally, Reichenau’s Sixth Army, attached to Army Group South, would press forward in the direction of Oboian to protect as much of Bock’s southern flank as possible. At the conclusion of the conference, it was decided that the new offensive would begin on October 2. Hoth advocated for a start date of October 3, but was overruled. However, Guderian requested and received permission for his panzer group to begin two days earlier, on September 30. He claimed his request was motivated by two factors: firstly, the absence of good roads in the area where he would operate, necessitating a full utilization of the short period remaining before the autumn rasputitsa; and secondly, his expectation of additional air support prior to the opening of the rest of Army Group Centre’s offensive. Despite Guderian’s reasoning, it was not these factors that convinced Bock to authorize the early start. He was concerned that Guderian was operating so far to the south that his offensive would have little influence on the main attack for the first four or five days.

On September 27, Guderian’s five panzer divisions, along with the specialized “panzer flame” detachment, fielded a total of 256 operational tanks,  a significant drop from their combined strength of 904 tanks on June 22, 1941. At the same time, estimates suggested that Hoth’s Panzer Group 3 had diminished to approximately 280 tanks, down from a starting total of 707, while Hoepner’s Panzer Group 4 numbered roughly 250 tanks, a reduction from 626. Even these remaining tanks were often in a highly provisional state of repair. Halder later reflected on this after the war, noting, “When the battle of Kiev ended, after ruthless demands on the already seriously worn motors, Hitler ordered the attack in the direction of Moscow, which first required that strong elements be pulled back out of Ukraine. Now it was too late. The motors were at the end of their strength.” Although his troops were exhausted, they followed the lead of their commander. This was the peak of Guderian’s legend. He had defied orders numerous times and remained undefeated, earning the admiration of the Panzer force as a whole. However, this reputation also garnered him scorn from many of his fellow officers. Guderian’s trademark impetuosity was beginning to prove dangerous for the men under his command. Many tanks, men, and trucks would have benefited from an additional two days of rest, but Guderian was not inclined to grant them that necessary reprieve. The attack commenced before Guderian could fully position his right wing. As the day progressed, he managed to make some advances, but there was nothing to indicate a significant breakout. Halder noted in his diary that reports indicated the initial attack had caught at least some Soviet units by surprise.

On the front lines, the 4th Panzer Division was the lead element of the attack. They broke through the 283rd Rifle Division with ease but soon encountered a company of tanks. Colonel Bakharov’s 150th Tank Brigade was equipped with new production T-50 light tanks, a mix of older models, and a few T-34s. When the lead elements of the 35th Panzer Regiment made contact in the town of Essman, they faced two of these T-34s. The Soviet medium tanks were well positioned, providing excellent coverage of the road. Dug in, they halted the advance of the entire German division for several hours. The Germans attempted a flanking maneuver but were caught in the open, resulting in the loss of a Panzer III. Following this setback, they called in air support, prompting the T-34s to retreat rather than risk being targeted by the Luftwaffe. Once the air support arrived, the first town fell, allowing Guderian to get his division back on schedule. Meanwhile, Eremenko was misled by his field commanders about the size of the attack, and his intelligence picture remained weak. As a result, he concluded that the 4th Panzer Division's assault was merely a diversion. The Bryansk Front failed to act to counter this penetration, a decision that would ultimately prove to be a significant mistake.

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Amidst the chaos of September 1941, the German forces encircled Kyiv, trapping countless Soviet soldiers, leading to mass surrenders. Meanwhile, the Nazi propaganda exaggerated victories, claiming impending German domination. Soldiers, however, expressed doubts and despair in their letters, questioning Russia's capacity for defeat. As logistics strained the German advance and Soviet defenses strengthened, preparations for a new offensive, Operation Typhoon, were unveiled. With a fate hanging in balance, both the Germans and Soviets braced themselves for a brutal struggle over Moscow.

Last time we spoke about the Panzer’s Greatest Victory. Amidst the chaotic landscape of late August 1941, the siege of Kyiv escalated under General Guderian's command against the resilient Soviet Red Army, led by Marshal Timoshenko. September brought relentless rain, complicating the push toward Leningrad, while Finnish forces threatened Soviet defenses. The German army, once poised for a swift victory, grappled with critical supply shortages as they aimed for a massive offensive on Moscow, codenamed Operation Typhoon. Hitler's altered directives and a deteriorating situation on the ground forced the Wehrmacht to cope with dwindling resources. Meanwhile, the Soviets, despite significant losses, began to regroup, bolstered by non-active reserves. They only needed to endure, allowing Germany's offensive strength to exhaust itself as winter approached. As the campaign wore on, deepening battles of attrition transformed the initially swift Blitzkrieg into a grueling war of attrition, marking a significant shift in the conflict. Both sides braced for a war that would last far longer than anyone anticipated.

This episode is the Fall of Kyiv

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

So it's September 17th, and the Commander of the Southwestern Front has finally received permission from Stalin to order a retreat. But it's too late. His armies now find themselves completely surrounded by the German forces. As Kyiv falls, General Zhukov is making preparations in Leningrad, readying for a desperate battle to the last man. Meanwhile, in the center, Field Marshal Bock is poised to launch an offensive aimed at bringing an end to the war once and for all. Now last week we covered the dramatic closing of the Kyiv pocket. The capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, along with a significant portion of the Southwestern Front, has become a giant trap. Generals Guderian and Kleist have fought vehemently for weeks, successfully linking their forces southeast of the city. Many of Stalin's generals fervently urged him to allow a retreat, yet he refused to grant them this option. Now, hundreds of thousands of soldiers are encircled.

The battle for Leningrad was reaching a critical juncture. General Zhukov had been appointed to take command in the second week of fierce fighting. With his usual energy and determination, he set about overhauling the city's entire defensive strategy. Prior to his arrival, the defenses were on the brink of collapse, and Zhukov was not willing to let morale deteriorate further. He made the tough decision to dismiss several officers who had lost their fighting spirit, replacing them with trusted subordinates. This was not merely a matter of favoritism; the men he replaced were demoralized, and Zhukov needed leaders who still had the will to win. This aspect of command is often overlooked: the ability to maintain composure and inspire resilience after weeks of setbacks is crucial in any army. For the Red Army, it was vital to continue fighting after experiencing some of the most significant defeats in military history. On September 17th, Zhukov issued an order to all his subordinate commands "Not a Step Back! Do not give up a single verst of land on the approaches to Leningrad!"

On September 16th, the 8th Army found itself completely surrounded and cutoff from Leningrad. This grim encirclement would come to be known as the Oranienbaum Pocket. The fighting around the city had grown increasingly desperate. During early September, Hitler made the pivotal decision not to directly assault Leningrad. Instead, a strategy was devised to encircle the city and starve its defenders into submission. To achieve this, Army Group North needed to connect with Finnish forces to the east of Lake Ladoga. However, merely cutting off land connections would not suffice. Everyone knew that the Soviets were already supplying Leningrad across the lake. The only way to prevent this was to expel the last remaining Red Army units from the eastern shore, a task that seemed nearly impossible. Leeb's Army Group was on the brink of exhaustion, and the expected transfer of Hoepner's Panzers to Army Group Center proved to be the final straw. By the end of the third week of September, Army Group North was left with little to no offensive power.

Zhukov ordered counterattacks to push back the German forces, but by the 20th, it became clear that these efforts wouldn't yield significant results. Nonetheless, there were three key benefits from Zhukov's initial counterattack. First, it bolstered the morale of the Leningrad Front. Zhukov proved that he would fight to the last man, and his decision to remove incompetent and broken leaders from command was crucial. Second, the counterattack took the German command by surprise. Generals Leeb and Halder had assumed that the Soviets were on the verge of collapse. This misjudgment would not be the first, or the last, time they underestimated the fighting spirit of the Red Army. This unexpected resistance, combined with Hitler's relentless order to transfer panzer units to Army Group Center for a renewed offensive towards Moscow, sent shockwaves through German command. In response, Halder arranged to transfer several infantry units to Leeb’s command to compensate for the loss of the Panzers. Finally, the fierce combat had dulled the strength of Army Group North. Since July, they had suffered losses of around sixty thousand men, with replacements failing to match the quality of those who had fallen. The Heer, as of June 1941, was staffed with experienced non-commissioned officers and junior leaders who served as force multipliers. Non-commissioned officers, along with platoon and company leaders, form the backbone of a any modern industrialized army. They play a crucial role in maintaining discipline and possess vital institutional knowledge about tactics and weapons handling. The losses sustained in the early months of the campaign drained their ranks of many of these capable men, making their absence felt far beyond mere numbers. The battle for Leningrad was far from over; it remained a grueling fight rather than a static siege. The casualties suffered in the latter half of September pushed the conflict towards a siege mentality, with both sides paying dearly for every inch of territory. As the month drew to a close, both the Soviets and Germans focused on reorganizing and redeploying for one last major attempt to seize the city before winter set in.

The commander of Army Group Center finalized his plan for the decisive offensive. After weeks of heated discussion, Field Marshal Bock had secured his objective: Moscow would again be the focal point of the German campaign, and he was to spearhead the effort. As the third week of September began, the plan had been named, Operation Typhoon. Hitler had designated Army Group Center to receive the bulk of the panzer units, even permitting some enhancements to their capabilities. Yet, Bock often voiced his frustrations, claiming he was expected to achieve great things with inadequate resources. While Hitler refused to allocate everything at his disposal, he believed Bock was equipped with everything necessary for success. The reality, however, lay somewhere in between. Army Group Center was far from receiving the full support one would anticipate for such a crucial offensive. Hitler had declined to release sufficient spare parts to fully repair the panzer units, let alone provide additional tanks. Although the panzer divisions received some replacements, it was nowhere near enough to restore them to full strength. August’s losses had been too great, and the limitations of Germany's supply capabilities in September 1941 were evident. As we discussed last week, Hitler released only a small portion of the reserve production of new tanks. 

The logistical buildup was also lackluster. The harsh Russian winter, notorious for decimating Napoleon’s army, loomed on the horizon. Every soldier in the German army understood the challenges winter would bring. Yet, supplies of winter uniforms were grossly insufficient. Even before the end of the third week, some units were informed they could only expect to receive 25% of their required winter clothing. To make matters worse, the 19th Panzer Division was notified they would no longer receive replacement boots due to leather shortages. Leather production had long been a persistent challenge in prewar Germany. The country was never self-sufficient in the textiles industry, with leather particularly dependent on imports. In 1934, as Germany began to recover from the Great Depression, leather and textile goods accounted for 26% of total imports. The demands of the greatly expanded army, combined with intense campaigning in the east, placed significant strain on the German economy.  It wasn't solely production issues that hampered the buildup for Operation Typhoon. The rail supply lines were wholly inadequate. By mid-August, the 9th and 2nd Armies were surviving hand to mouth, unable to allocate any ammunition for future operations. The supply of fuel, oil, and lubricants was equally insufficient, failing to account for the poor condition of the engines, which significantly increased consumption. As they struggled to maintain even these inadequate supply levels, the trucks of the Grosstransportraum were being ruined on long journeys that should have been supported by the railroads. Hopes of a renewed offensive hinged on improvements to the railway system, but General Wagner, in charge of the military rail system, continuously made false assurances. In August, Army Group Center required at least 24 trains per day to meet daily consumption. However, in the first half of the month, barely half that number arrived. Subsequently, Wagner promised to increase the number to 30 and then 35 trains daily to establish adequate stockpiles for the next stage of the advance, but in practice, only about 18 trains a day managed to come through. In early September, it became clear that Army Group Center needed 27 trainloads of supplies each day just to maintain its current supply levels and build a stockpile for the offensive. This level of support would need to continue for at least 19 days. Wagner, assured Halder he could deliver these supplies for at least 13 days. However, by the end of the third week, it was evident that Wagner could not meet this commitment. On many days, less than half of the promised supplies made it through. Trains often arrived half-loaded, incorrectly loaded, or not at all.

Some of these hardships were self-inflicted, while others were unavoidable results of the state of the Wehrmacht and Nazi governance. Nevertheless, they existed and provided support for Bock’s complaints about priorities. However, there is substantial evidence indicating that Army Group Center was receiving the best the Wehrmacht could manage. By the end of the third week of September, Bock commanded the largest field command in military history, with three field armies and three complete panzer groups at his disposal. He oversaw 47 infantry divisions, 14 panzer divisions, 1 cavalry division, 5 security divisions, and 8 motorized divisions. In total, this amounted to around two million men, 1,500 tanks, and over 1,000 artillery batteries. This represented a significant increase in manpower and artillery compared to the Army Group’s starting strength in June. However, there were actually fewer tanks than had been present in just two panzer groups at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. This decline highlighted how far the panzer force had fallen after just twelve weeks of combat. These losses were not entirely unforeseen; the problem was two-fold. First, the panzer divisions lacked the level of spare parts and maintenance necessary to address relatively minor mechanical issues or battle damage. Second, Hitler was actively withholding replacement vehicles. Hitler clung to fantastical dreams of rebuilding the panzer divisions from scratch after defeating the USSR, envisioning a nearly instantaneous revival. He was unwilling to see his limited production trickle away in small numbers as replacements, only to be consumed by the ongoing war in the Soviet Union. A core aspect of Nazi ideology is the belief that anything can be achieved through sheer willpower. Therefore, Hitler convinced himself that although the Heer might be uncomfortable with the temporarily reduced number of panzer divisions, victory was assured by the superior willpower of the Nazi war machine. He envisioned that after the war, he would be able to ramp up production sufficiently to fully restore the divisions with modern equipment for future campaigns. This proved to be a mistake, one that would cost dearly when Army Group Center launched their attack. The kick-off day for Operation Typhoon was set for October 1st.

Guderian’s Panzer group had only just completed the encirclement behind Kyiv when they received orders to march north at the earliest opportunity. Although he had a well-stocked supply depot at Romny, his transport truck fleet was nearly nonfunctional. The Panzers had been stationary for almost a week, and fuel, along with rations, was becoming increasingly scarce. At one point, they were forced to rely on air drops from the Luftwaffe. The diary of the 47th Panzer Corps recorded on September 18th “As a result of the heavy demands over the last weeks on outrageously bad roads the state of the trucks has worsened. Owing to the failure to deliver spare parts innumerable instances of damage, often only relatively minor, cannot be repaired. This in part, therefore, explains the high percentage of … non-serviceable trucks”. Assigned to a Panzer Division Alexander Cohrs wrote in his diary “Some [vehicles] tipped over. Luckily none in our company. After 18 kilometres of marching on foot I sat on an armoured vehicle. It tipped so much that it balanced on two wheels, while the other two temporarily stood in the air; still it did not tip over. Along the way was a moor where the vehicles had to make a big detour . . . one by one vehicles got stuck or even turned over, resulting in breaks and a slow tempo”. They were in urgent need of a rest and refit period, but it was becoming increasingly clear that such a break would not be forthcoming. Instead, Guderian’s men braced themselves for the inevitable breakout attempts, as the Luftwaffe and infantry coordinated efforts to reduce the encirclement. Once that was accomplished, they would have to move north and prepare for Operation Typhoon.

The 5th Air Corps was determined to destroy as much of the Southwestern Front as possible. One officer claimed that the Luftwaffe would do “half the work of the Army.” In just the third week of September, the 5th Air Corps dropped hundreds of thousands of pounds of bombs on the region, conducting sortie levels unprecedented in the war. Simultaneously, the 2nd Air Corps was working tirelessly to hammer the Red Army in the Kyiv pocket. Together, these forces destroyed thousands of vehicles, ranging from trucks and trains to tanks and enemy planes. During this time, the Luftwaffe maintained essentially complete air superiority over the pocket. The VVS, the Soviet Air Force, rarely attempted to strike at the Germans; when they did, they were often easily brushed aside by the Luftwaffe's air cover. The few times they managed to breach it and attack the Panzers on the ground, their efforts proved largely ineffectual. Nonetheless, the losses for the Luftwaffe were mounting. Each plane lost was essentially irreplaceable. When the campaign began on June 22nd, the Luftwaffe had started with 2,995 airframes of all types. By the time the pocket was closed around the Southwestern Front, that number had dwindled to less than 1,000 operable airframes. The Luftwaffe was also suffering because hundreds of serviceable airframes were scattered across the Eastern Front. However, similar to the Panzer units, the repair process was hampered by a lack of spare parts, mechanics, and adequate facilities. Some damage resulted from poor maintenance, while other issues stemmed from battle damage that could not be repaired on site. The commander of the 2nd Air Fleet reported to higher headquarters in September that the Luftwaffe was simply overtaxed and nearing the end of its limits.

Reducing the pocket fell on the shoulders of the German infantry, as it had in every major battle before. The 6th Army, under Field Marshal Reichenau, was ordered to assault Kyiv. While the city was encircled, it remained well defended, housing the highest concentration of Red Army soldiers within the pocket. Reichenau’s 51st Infantry Corps advanced southward to the east of the city. Finally, Kirponos received permission to retreat from his superiors in Moscow and issued a withdrawal order on the seventeenth. This decision quickly devolved into a rout. On September 18th, the 51st Corps successfully linked up with the 34th Infantry Corps, effectively splitting the pocket into two distinct sections. Despite the potential for a strong defense of the city, it was not to be. The fighting concluded on the nineteenth, with the Red Army surrendering in droves after weeks of relentless bombardment. Leadership failures and a lack of resolve contributed to their poor performance. As the Red Army began to collapse within the now-divided pocket, it became inevitable that chaos and carnage would follow. Mixed orders, confused leaders, and a complete breakdown of discipline all added to the turmoil.

As the German infantry moved into the heart of the city, they encountered a horrifying new reality. The NKVD had rigged the city to explode, secretly installing radio-controlled mines in hundreds of buildings. On September 20th, the first detonation occurred, with explosives strategically placed in locations where Germans were likely to take up residence. To complicate matters further, mass looting erupted among the remaining civilians and even some Germans. The city was without power or running water, and food was becoming increasingly scarce. The NKVD had detonated the power plant, a cannery, one of the city's water towers, and all the bridges spanning the Dnieper River. Looting was particularly focused on a large flour warehouse. Additionally, the NKVD ensured that as much food as possible was dumped into the river. By September 24th, the bombs began to detonate regularly. NKVD saboteurs worked to ignite fires caused by these explosions, with a clear intent to destroy the city center. The fires quickly spiraled out of control, and the lack of running water exacerbated the situation as more bombs went off. These explosions resulted in approximately 200 casualties among the soldiers. While this might be considered relatively light, the impact on morale was significant. Furthermore, many of the dead and wounded were staff officers, which adversely affected unit cohesion and amplified the chaos throughout the city.

As a result of the Soviet boobytraps and sabotage efforts, on September 26, Major General Kurt Eberhard, the military governor, and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader, convened at the Rear Headquarters. It was there that they made the horrific decision to exterminate the Jewish population of Kyiv, claiming “it was a retaliatory measure for the recent explosions”. Also in attendance were SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, commander of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, along with his superior, SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Otto Rasch, commander of Einsatzgruppe C. The execution of this order fell to Sonderkommando 4a, led by Blobel, under the overall command of Friedrich Jeckeln. This unit comprised members of the Sicherheitsdienst or “SD”, the Sicherheitspolizei or “SiPo”, the third company of a Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon from the 9th Police Battalion. The massacre was carried out by Sonderkommando 4a, along with Police Battalion 45 under Major Besser, and was supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion.

In stark contrast to the "myth of the clean Wehrmacht," the Sixth Army, led by Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, collaborated with the SS and SD to plan and execute the mass murder of Kyiv’s Jewish community. On 26 September 1941, the following order was posted “All Yids of the city of Kiev and its vicinity must appear on Monday, 29 September, by 8 o'clock in the morning at the corner of Mel'nikova and Dokterivskaya streets. Bring documents, money and valuables, and also warm clothing, linen, etc. Any Yids who do not follow this order and are found elsewhere will be shot. Any civilians who enter the dwellings left by Yids and appropriate the things in them will be shot”. On September 29 and 30, 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 33,771 Jewish civilians at Babi Yar. Babi Yar is a ravine just outside Kyiv. It was first mentioned in historical records in 1401, in relation to its sale by an old woman referred to as "baba," who served as the cantiniere at the Dominican Monastery. The word "yar" is of Turkic origin and translates to "gully" or "ravine."

These units were further reinforced by Police Battalions Nos. 45 and 303, along with units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, all supported by local collaborators. Sonderkommando 4a and the 45th Battalion of the German Order Police carried out the shootings, while servicemen from the 303rd Battalion of the German Order Police guarded the outer perimeter of the execution site. Two days later, the commander of the Einsatzkommando reported “The difficulties resulting from such a large scale action—in particular concerning the seizure—were overcome in Kiev by requesting the Jewish population through wall posters to move. Although only a participation of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Jews had been expected at first, more than 30,000 Jews arrived who, until the very moment of their execution, still believed in their resettlement, thanks to an extremely clever organization”. 

According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted “I watched what happened when the Jews—men, women and children—arrived. The Ukrainians[c] led them past a number of different places where one after the other they had to give up their luggage, then their coats, shoes and over-garments and also underwear. They also had to leave their valuables in a designated place. There was a special pile for each article of clothing. It all happened very quickly and anyone who hesitated was kicked or pushed by the Ukrainians  to keep them moving”. The crowd was so large that most of the victims likely had no idea what was happening until it was too late. By the time they heard the sound of machine gun fire, escape was no longer an option. They were herded down a corridor formed by soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. Hofer continued “Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 metres long and 30 metres wide and a good 15 metres deep ... When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot ... The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun ... I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other ... The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him”.  In the following months, thousands more individuals were seized and taken to Babi Yar, where they were executed. It is estimated that over 100,000 residents of Kyiv from various ethnic backgrounds, mostly civilians, were murdered by the Nazis at this site until their evacuation of Kyiv. On January 10, 1942, about 100 captured Soviet sailors were executed there after being forced to disinter and cremate the remains of previous victims. Furthermore, Babi Yar became a site of execution for residents of five Gypsy camps. Patients from the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then disposed of in the ravine.  

The Wehrmacht tightened its grip around the now-divided pocket from all sides. Despite mass surrenders, there were still determined efforts to break free. The aerial blockade in the region was far from complete, allowing several senior Soviet commanders, including Budyonny, Timoshenko, and Khrushchev, to escape by aircraft. By the evening of September 20, Colonel General Kirponos, along with the forces of the Soviet 5th Army, managed to reach Driukovshchyna, located just 15 kilometers southwest of Lukhovitsa. However, the Red Army column soon came under attack from the 3rd Panzer Division in that area. The Germans successfully captured General Sotensky, the artillery commander of the Soviet 5th Army, pushing the remaining enemy forces into the Shumikovo forests. Kirponos, along with Potapov, commander of the Soviet 5th Army, staff officers, and approximately 2,000 Soviet troops continued to resist for several more hours. While leading his men near the front line, Kirponos was seriously wounded in the left leg and taken deeper into the forest. Shortly thereafter, a mortar shell exploded nearby, claiming his life. With Kirponos killed, the remaining Soviet forces were left with no choice but to surrender. Among those lost in this battle was Mykhailo Burmystenko, the commissar of the Soviet Southwestern Front and a member of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party. His death marked him as the highest-ranking Soviet communist leader killed during World War II.

The Battle of Kyiv was a catastrophic defeat for the Red Army, inflicting greater damage than the earlier battles of Minsk and Smolensk. The Soviet Bryansk Front launched counter-attacks to prevent such a setback but faced failure, leading to the loss of around 100,000 soldiers and 140 tanks out of an initial force of 260,000 soldiers and 260 tanks. Following these defeats, the Bryansk Front was thrown into chaos. Less than three weeks later, as the Wehrmacht's concentrated offensive toward Moscow began, it could muster only 200,000 troops to resist. With the Southwestern Front completely shattered, the Soviets had no choice but to rebuild it from the ground up, transferring forces from the central sector to fill the gaps created in the southern front line.

Victory at Kyiv was a crucial step for the advancement of Army Group Center. Now the OKH and OKW could shift their focus back to the central front and resume their push toward Moscow. German commanders found renewed hope in the success at Kyiv, as the destruction of the Soviet Southwestern Front allowed Army Group South to advance east through Ukraine without encountering much resistance. Additionally, the vast amounts of captured equipment in the Kyiv area enabled the Wehrmacht to continue their advance without waiting for resupply. Over the eight weeks of the Battle of Kyiv, Army Group Center had the opportunity to recover, strengthen its exhausted forces, and improve their supply situation. Their infantry divisions joined the motorized forces on the front lines in a methodical march eastward.

However, the Battle of Kyiv also yielded some positive outcomes for the Soviet Union. The southward advance of Panzer Group 2, aimed at encircling the Soviet Southwestern Front, delayed the German advance toward Moscow by a month. This ultimately extended the Wehrmacht's operations into the winter, which proved costly for them. Nevertheless, the Red Army suffered significant losses that could have been pivotal in defending Moscow. In dominating the vital economic regions of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht also secured the southern flank of Army Group Center, delivering a heavy blow to the Soviet Bryansk Axis forces and smoothing their path toward Moscow. Zhukov remarked on this situation “We can imagine that without operation [in the direction of Ukraine], the situation of the German Army Group Center could have been even worse than it was found to be. Reserve forces of the [Soviet] High Command, which had been used in September to fill the gaps in the southwestern sector, could have been used in an attack on the flank and rear of the central group of the German armies advancing on Moscow”.

While the fighting raged on, plans for the next phase of the campaign were already underway. Guderian initiated a strategic redeployment, positioning forces where they could be supported by infantry. Meanwhile, Kleist prepared to lead his limited forces in a bold maneuver across Ukraine, aiming for Donetsk and beyond. The Lower Dnieper remained unsecured, and the 1st Panzer Group was tasked with this critical mission alongside their advance toward Donetsk. The 11th Army received orders to prepare for an assault on the Perekop Isthmus, a crucial step toward capturing the entire Crimea and advancing into the Caucasus. The 11th Army was now under the command of Colonel General Manstein, following the tragic death of its previous leader, Colonel General Schobert. During combat operations in the southern Soviet Union, Schobert was killed when his Fieseler Storch observation aircraft crashed in a Soviet minefield. As the 6th and 17th Armies continued their eastern push, they would cover the Panzer advance from the north, ensuring a steady progression in the campaign.

The disaster at the Southwestern Front became painfully clear to Stalin as the hours ticked away. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were poised to be captured by the invaders, as the nation braced for what could be its final offensive of the war. Timoshenko was dispatched south to assemble yet another line of defenses, but the situation was dire. The encirclement at Kyiv threatened to result in at least two hundred thousand prisoners, along with hundreds of vehicles and tanks lost. The two armies not trapped in the encirclement were retreating with no end in sight. Only the 21st and 17th Armies remained intact. The 6th Army had been devastated by the breakthrough of Kleist’s Panzers at Kremenchug, and the 38th Army had been split into two fragments. The Bryansk front was nearly wiped out as well. Despite calls for reinforcements and the formation of new units, these soldiers were far from combat-ready. As the week drew to a close, Timoshenko struggled to find a viable position for a proper defensive line. It seemed that Ukraine was on the verge of falling to the invaders.

Some German officers even speculated that they could end the year on the banks of the Don River. While Rostov lay over five hundred kilometers to the east, the prevailing mood made that goal feel reachable in the wake of such victories. This was the greatest triumph in the Wehrmacht’s history and seemed to mark the beginning of the end for the campaign in the East. Yet, as we will see, it was actually the onset of a prolonged decline. Though it wasn’t the last victory for the Wehrmacht in the East, it certainly represented the high water mark of German military prowess. From this point on, unconditional victories would become a thing of the past. Even as generals celebrated their achievements, challenges loomed on the horizon. Halder noted privately, if not publicly, that there was little chance of the Soviets capitulating that year. Moreover, serious issues persisted with production and the availability of replacement soldiers, as the war in the East continued to deplete resources and manpower at an unprecedented rate.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In September 1941, the German forces, led by General Guderian, surrounded Kyiv prompting mass surrender of Soviet forces as others desperately tried to escape. In the aftermath, as the German troops entered the city, they encountered sabotage and desperation among the civilians. Soon after, in a chilling response to resistance, the Nazis executed thousands of Jews at Babi Yar. The horrors of the eastern front were only just beginning.

Last time we spoke about the Drive to Kyiv and Leningrad continues. In late August 1941, the German siege of Kyiv intensified, led by General Guderian amidst a fierce defense from the Soviet Red Army under Marshal Timoshenko. As the Nazis pushed forward, their initial confidence waned under severe logistical strain and significant casualties, while the Soviets showcased resilience and tactical evolution. The month ended in bloodshed, with both sides suffering staggering losses. As September arrived, rain soaked the battlefields, further complicating efforts toward Leningrad, where Finnish troops advanced, threatening Soviet hold on the city. The Germans faced a critical moment as they lost vital supply routes. Fierce combat ensued, with the Soviets and Finnish forces engaged in relentless skirmishes that emphasized the human cost of war. Then in a enormous reversal, Hitler issued directive no. 35 altering the course for Moscow. After fighting tooth and nail against it, Hitler ultimately succumbed to the alure of taking the capital of the USSR.

This episode is the Panzer’s Greatest Victory

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945. 

Leningrad is now encircled. Guderian and Kleist, are on the brink of merging their forces just outside the ancient city of Kyiv. As the war rages on, the Red Army unleashes a relentless assault on German positions in the center. We find ourselves in the 11th week of Operation Barbarossa. The weary German Army is eyeing what could be their greatest achievement yet, but meanwhile, the Red Army plunges to new depths. Supply trucks are mired in mud as the Panzers struggle to complete the encirclement against the Southwestern Front. Last week, we witnessed the Southwestern Front and the Bryansk Front fiercely fighting to retain control over Ukraine and its capital, Kyiv. We also observed the renewed momentum of the advance on Leningrad as the Stavka reorganized the city's defenses. In a challenging turn, Army Group Center had to retreat from the Yelna salient, suffering significant casualties in the process. 

The Wehrmacht now faced two daunting logistical issues involving men and machines. Neither was in massive supply by the end of the summer of 1941. By late September, an official report would put German casualties above 500,000. 14 divisions were more than 4,000 men short, 40 divisions were over 3,000 men short, and 30 divisions were more than 2,000 men short. Meanwhile, the Heer had lost nearly 1,500 tanks and artillery pieces. This accounted for about one-third of the starting force. Only 47% of the tanks across all four Panzer Groups were operational, according to a report from September 4, with many tanks requiring spare parts for repairs. Hitler had ordered that all new tank production be held in a strategic reserve in Germany, aiming to form new Panzer divisions. It would take until mid-September for Halder to convince Hitler that the plans for capturing Moscow, Operation Typhoon, required some replacements to be released. Only 96 tanks had been sent forward, just over 10% of the new production from June to the end of August. When Hitler finally allowed the strategic reserve of vehicles to be allocated for replacements, the Panzer arm was in desperate straits. On September 15, he authorized the release of 60 Czech 38(t)s, 150 Panzer IIIs, and 96 Panzer IVs along with an additional 310 replacement engines for the Panzer III. These numbers were completely inadequate. His only other concession was the transfer of two more complete Panzer divisions to the 4th Panzer Group under Hoepner. The 2nd and 5th Panzer Divisions had been unable to participate in the initial invasion due to their poor state of readiness following the Yugoslavia campaign in April. They had since been rebuilt and brought along about 450 new tanks.

However, even the entire stock of production could not have rebuilt the Panzer arm to its original numbers. Most of the new production was of modern designs, which would replace some of the obsolete models they began the invasion with. Yet, that statement doesn't capture the whole truth. Seventy-one of the approximately 800 tanks produced by German factories from June to the end of August were Panzer IIs. These vehicles had proven inadequate in France in 1940 and were certifiably obsolete by the end of the summer of 1941. Nevertheless, production did not cease that year. Remarkably, production of the Panzer II as a mainline tank continued until 1942 with production of derivatives and specialised variants continuing until 1944. As it stood, the Panzer arm was significantly reduced from its June starting point. A complete rebuilding of the force was out of the question, as there simply weren't enough available tanks. Additionally, Hitler forbade any attempts to fully restore the Panzer divisions. Instead, they were forced to amalgamate and make do with what they had. The Heer would have to undertake Operation Typhoon with their diminished resources. There was no other option.

Highlighting the logistical issues facing the Germans, might lead you to believe that the situation was much worse on the Soviets. The summer of 1941 indeed represented a Soviet debacle of grand proportions, marked by mass confusion and enormous waste of men and material. However, it remains a fact that these losses, while dreadfully costly to the Soviet war effort, were bearable. In fact, far from crumbling, the Red Army was growing in size, fueled by a vast pool of non-active reserves. Moreover, unlike the German Army, the Red Army didn't have to win the war in 1941; it only needed to survive long enough for Germany’s offensive strength to exhaust itself. The winter granted the Soviet Union a reprieve, further sweetened by the entry of the United States into the war. Thus, despite the Red Army's weaknesses in the summer of 1941, it succeeded fundamentally in one key respect,it confounded the German leadership’s plan to conquer the Soviet Union in a Blitzkrieg-style campaign during the early weeks of the war. As Historian Jacob Kipp concluded in his study on the Battle of Smolensk “At a horrible cost in losses, Russia gave up her sons and her land to bleed the Wehrmacht white, even if the losses were 10 to 1 in favour of the German invader. Nazi ideology and occupation policies in the end made such sacrifices seem justified and legitimized Soviet totalitarianism . . . After Smolensk it was clear that this would be a long war, not a Blitzkrieg. The Soviet state and society, which Lenin and Stalin had cast as a vast mechanism for mobilization and militarization, had begun that process in earnest”. 

By the time German armies were able to reassemble for their renewed drive on Moscow designated Operation Typhoon, it would already be September 30. The available combat strength and logistical support had fallen far below what would be required to seize the Soviet capital. Following the pattern of earlier offensives, the attack began well and again took advantage of the dreadful Soviet strategic direction to capture another huge haul of Soviet prisoners in two enormous pockets. As Halder recorded on October 4: ‘Operation Typhoon is following an altogether classic course... The enemy is standing fast on all parts of the front not under attack, which gives hope for the creation of pockets.’

However, as in past German offensives, the pace could not be sustained. Over vast distances, the spearheads weakened as their flanks grew, and their supply lines became impossibly long. Soviet counterattacks became relentless. Road conditions worsened along with the weather, and soon German troops everywhere found themselves in freezing temperatures with little more than their worn-out summer uniforms. Deprived of the chance to win the war, or even to escape the slogging battles of attrition, Germany's stalled eastern front underwent rapid de-modernization. This intensified the bitter deprivations of life at the front, especially as winter took hold. As one German soldier wrote in December 1941: ‘Technology no longer plays a role... The elemental power of nature broke the operations of our engines. What do we do?’

Summarizing the first two years of the war, Michael Geyer observed: ‘However successful the first two years of the war, the Third Reich never came close to escaping the dilemma posed by the fact that the political and military-strategic costs of expansion continuously outran the benefits of a newly gained hegemonic position.’ When the hoped-for lightning victory against the Soviet Union proved beyond the Wehrmacht’s capacity, a longer-term, war-winning solution was all that remained open to Germany. However, the prospects of success for this option can be immediately dismissed. As Historian Omer Bartov has written “Once blitzkrieg failed, production, industrial capacity, material and manpower resources, organisation and technical skill, all became more important than tactics, training, and courage. Of course blitzkrieg itself depended on technology, indeed, it made a fetish of modern fighting machines. But now technological innovation had to be paralleled by quantities produced, while the initial psychological impact of mass (but spatially and temporally limited) use of modern weaponry lost much of its force. In this area Germany had no chance of competing successfully with its enemies.”

Raw statistics make this clear. In 1941, German industry managed to produce a total of 5,200 tanks, 11,776 aircraft, and 7,000 artillery pieces over 37mm. In the first half of 1941, the Soviet Union produced 1,800 modern tanks, 3,950 aircraft, and 15,600 artillery pieces and mortars. What is extraordinary is that these figures rose considerably in the second half of 1941, despite the loss of important production centers and the massive industrial relocation to the east. In the midst of the war on its doorstep, Soviet factories turned out another 4,740 tanks, 8,000 aircraft, and 55,500 artillery pieces and mortars. Thus, the Soviet Union outperformed Germany in all major armaments even in the first year of the war, and thereafter, production almost always exceeded losses in the main categories.

Now back to the frontline. Army Group North completed cutting off Leningrad by the end of the first week of September. September 8 is marked as the first day of the formal siege of the city. The Germans intended to completely blockade the Soviets, preventing anyone and anything from escaping. Leeb planned to reach the eastern shores of Lake Ladoga with his armor, thereby stopping the Soviets from supplying the city across the lake. Due to Hitler’s order on September 6, Leeb was forced to transfer the 41st, 56th, 57th Motorized divisions, and 8th Air Corps to Army Group Centre by September 15. He would be left with only two motorized divisions and one Panzer division. Later, as a concession, Leeb would be allowed to keep hold of a second Panzer division. Realizing he needed everything he could to accomplish his mission, he moved up his timetables. The city was still strongly defended, as the Soviets had been preparing their defenses for weeks. Three armies, with a total of 452,000 men, held the perimeter. The various divisions and smaller units that comprised these armies were in varying states of readiness. To supplement these forces, three divisions of People's Militia had been raised from the city’s population. The People’s Militia divisions, also known as the DNO or Division of Narodnoe Opolcheniye, were raised from the civilian population and received little formal training. Equipped with whatever was available, these units were theoretically considered irregular forces. However, many of them fought in Leningrad as regular infantry divisions. Over time, some of these divisions were formally designated as regular units, with a few even being recognized as Guards units. The Baltic Fleet was also present in the harbor, consisting of two battleships and several smaller ships. They provided significant gunfire support to the defenders during the siege, firing 358 barrages that delivered 9,368 shells in September alone.

East of the encircled city, the Northwestern Front was rebuilding, attempting to break the siege and maintain the supply connection across Lake Ladoga. The 85,000-strong 54th Army was assembling at Volkhov while the remnants of the 48th Army held the frontline. The Soviet defenses formed a rough triangle around Leningrad, bounded by Krasnogvardeysky in the south, Lake Ladoga and the Neva River in the east, and the Baltic in the west.Leningrad was already beginning to feel the effects of the encirclement as Leeb had brought up his large siege guns in the first week of September. The siege guns of Army Group North included the 240mm K-3, manufactured by Krupp. Approximately six of these guns were present at Leningrad, deployed under the second battalion of the 84th Artillery Regiment. Later in the siege, at least one of the massive 280mm Bruno guns was brought to bear on the city as well. Additionally, the 18th Army possessed a battalion of 210mm Mörser 18 guns, further enhancing the artillery capabilities aimed at the besieged city.

As the second week began, the bombardment intensified, with the massive artillery pieces complemented by large-scale Luftwaffe bomber raids. One such raid ignited a fire at the Badaev warehouse, which stored the majority of Leningrad’s food supplies. The Germans commenced their assault on September 9. The 4th Panzer Group held the western lines around the city, with Reinhardt’s 41st Corps serving as the main effort in this push. Their objective was to take Krasnogvardeysky and push through Krasnoe Selo to punch a hole in the Soviet defenses west and south of the city. The attack was successfully spearheaded by the 36th Motorized Infantry for 10 kilometers before being halted by concentrated land and naval artillery fire. The next day, they faced a counterattack from the 42nd Army following a significant preparatory artillery barrage. A stalemate developed in the area between Krasnoe Selo and Krasnogvardeysky. Later that day, the 1st Panzer was committed, achieving some initial success, but more reinforcements were needed to break through the Soviet defenses. Reinhardt then deployed his last reserve formation, a single Panzer battalion from the 8th Division, but this did not decisively shift the battle in favor of the Germans. By September 12, it was Voroshilov’s turn to send his last reserves into the fight, including a Naval Infantry Brigade and the newly formed 5th People's Militia Division. Despite these efforts, Krasnoe Selo fell, and Krasnogvardeysky was being outflanked, while Pulkovo held firm. Although there was a small opportunity to capitalize on their success, additional reinforcements were necessary, but none were available, as the 8th Panzer was still reorganizing after its heavy losses in August.

Leeb received explicit orders that the 41st Corps had to be transferred “in good condition,” despite its role as the offensive spearhead. He was also informed that the Soviet 54th Army had begun to attack his flanks, forcing him to desperately reorganize his line to cover the gap created by the imminent departure of the majority of his Panzer Group. Leeb needed to concentrate enough force for another attempt at capturing the city while keeping the outer lines of the blockade secure from Soviet attacks. Reinhardt was instructed to make one final assault before being allowed to redeploy. During this week, Zhukov replaced Voroshilov, who was ordered to return to Moscow and report directly to Stalin.

Voroshilov was having quite a rough few…years to say the least. He had commanded Soviet troops during the Winter War from November 1939 to January 1940. However, mostly due to poor Soviet planning and Voroshilov's incompetence as a general, the Red Army suffered approximately 320,000 casualties compared to 70,000 Finnish casualties. When the leadership gathered at Stalin's dacha in Kuntsevo, Stalin apparently shouted at Voroshilov for the losses, to which Voroshilov screamed back blaming the failure on Stalin for eliminating the Red Army's best generals during the purges. This heated exchange culminated in Voroshilov smashing a platter of food on the table, as told to us through Nikita Khrushchev who went on to say it was the only time he ever witnessed such behavior towards Stalin. Voroshilov was made the scapegoat for the initial failures in Finland and was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko. Subsequently, he was appointed Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters.

Then between 1941 and 1944, he served as a member of the State Defense Committee. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became the commander of the Northwestern Direction from July to August 1941, overseeing several fronts. In September 1941, he commanded the Leningrad Front, where he worked alongside military commander Andrei Zhdanov as German advances threatened to encircle the city. Voroshilov displayed considerable personal bravery amidst heavy shelling at Ivanovskoye, even rallying retreating troops and leading a counterattack against German tanks armed only with a pistol. However, the style of counterattack he employed had long been abandoned by military strategists and earned him contempt from his colleagues. He ultimately failed to prevent the Germans from surrounding Leningrad that got him dismissed from his post. Despite all of this he survived until 1969, lived to be 88. Now after he was canned, his plan to demolish Leningrad’s military facilities was canceled, and a no-step-back order was issued with a penalty of death for any violations. Zhukov was becoming Stavka's fixer, and he focused on preparing Leningrad for a prolonged conflict. He organized further call-ups of local civilians into the militia divisions to bolster defenses.

Zhukov knew he wouldn't have long before Reinhardt's hammer blow struck, resulting in German gains despite frantic counterattacks, aerial bombardment, and artillery fire. All his attempts at a planned counteroffensive were preemptively foiled by the Germans, who attacked first. Zhukov could only feed reserves into local counterattacks while trying to establish a fresh second echelon defensive line, formed by the 16th Army and stretching from the Gulf of Finland to the Neva River. Commanders were strictly forbidden by both Stalin and Zhukov from removing any troops from this line. The Germans reached the Gulf of Finland after capturing Uritsk on the 16th, isolating a Soviet Army in the Oranienbaum bridgehead. Although German assaults eventually captured Krasnogvardeysky, they became bogged down shortly after against a fortified region.

Army Group Centre experienced a relatively quiet week as preparations for the upcoming Operation Typhoon continued. Field Marshal Bock spent much of the month advocating to the OKH for more resources and requesting that formations be kept from being pulled south. Despite the quietness, there was ongoing small-scale attritional fighting along the frontline, particularly affecting the 4th and 9th Armies. This continued even though the Western and Reserve Fronts had switched to a defensive posture. Assaults on the German lines were preceded by hours of continuous artillery barrages, reflecting a supply situation that seemed untenable to the invaders. German artillery had been rationing ammunition for weeks, leading many Wehrmacht soldiers to express disbelief that the Soviets could sustain their forces with such an abundance of ammunition. While this fighting gradually depleted the strength of both sides, there was no imminent risk of a major breakthrough by the Soviets. With the center appearing stable, the focus of both STAVKA and OKH had shifted southward.

Stalin's obstinacy regarding Kyiv, despite all advice from his military advisors, makes little sense from a purely military perspective. However, the city was the third largest in the USSR and held significant historical importance. Abandoning it would have been politically devastating, potentially undermining the morale of the defenders in Leningrad and Odessa. Furthermore, Stalin was eager to demonstrate to the USA and the UK that the USSR was worthy of receiving aid. If it appeared that the USSR was on the verge of capitulation, support would likely diminish. Therefore, Kyiv could not be abandoned without a fight. Stalin had requested that Churchill establish a second front against Germany or, failing that, deploy twenty to thirty British divisions into the USSR as an expeditionary force. This request was refused as impossible. Although Stalin recognized the danger posed by Guderian’s advance southward, he severely overestimated the capabilities of the Red Army while underestimating the strength of the German divisions. He believed Guderian was likely positioning himself for a future flanking offensive against Moscow, rather than attempting to encircle the forces at Kyiv. Even if Guderian continued south, Stalin maintained confidence that Eremenko could contain the unfolding disaster.

Eremenko was struggling to hold back Guderian's advances, despite being promoted and receiving reinforcements. On the 7th, Marshal Shaposhnikov and his deputy Vasilevsky approached the Soviet dictator, seeking permission for the South Western Front to withdraw. Random factoid, over on the Pacific War week by week podcast, I am covering the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria in 1945, and mr Vasilevsky basically ran the show. Their request was initially denied. After much pleading, they were granted permission for localized withdrawals for the 5th and 37th Armies, but no further measures were allowed. Vasilevsky: “In other words, this was a half-way measure. The mere mention of the urgent need to abandon Kiev threw Stalin into a rage and he momentarily lost his self-control. We evidently did not have sufficient will-power to withstand these outbursts of uncontrollable rage or a proper appreciation of our responsibility for the impending catastrophe on the Southwestern direction.” Budyonny and Zhukov were just two of the officers demoted for challenging Stalin over Kyiv.

As for Guderian, the rain continued to turn the landscape into impenetrable mud throughout the second week. The mud had not only slowed the advance but disabled a lot of combat and logistical vehicles. To operate the vehicles had to operate in lower gear which spiked their fuel consumptions further. One estimate was that instead of the normal 300 litres of fuel per 100km fuel consumption was now 15,000 liters per 100km with that increasing again by 100 to 200% cross country. His movements in the first week had not impressed Bock, and their already tenuous relationship was strained further by the slow pace of the advance. However, Guderian and Weichs' 2nd Army offensives began to exploit some cracks in Eremenko’s crumbling front. On the 10th, Model’s 3rd Panzer Division broke through one of these gaps and raced to Romny, which was intended to be the meeting point between Guderian and Kleist. However, there was no sign of Kleist; in fact, he had yet to initiate his offensive. Fortunately, Romny had been a major staging area for the Red Army, and Model’s breakthrough was so sudden and rapid that he managed to capture significant stockpiles of supplies there, alleviating some of their logistical issues. This is just one example among hundreds from the first few months of Operation Barbarossa, illustrating how fate afforded the Germans opportunities that they could not have relied upon. However, sooner or later, they would find that luck would begin to turn against them. Model’s fuel stocks were nearly depleted, and there had not been enough to send his supply trucks back. It was uncertain whether Schweppenburg even had the necessary supplies for replenishment, even if the trucks arrived. If not for the supply dump captured at Romny, September could have turned out much worse for the 3rd Panzer Division and, consequently, for Guderian’s entire offensive. However, Model found himself in a precarious situation, as the small forward elements he had stationed in Romny were completely isolated.

Elsewhere, more of Guderian’s divisions began to experience sudden success, but this expansion also significantly increased the length of the frontline that needed to be defended. The 47th Panzer Corps found itself tasked with holding a 150 km stretch of the frontline; by the 13th, it had lost its last reconnaissance plane, with no replacements available. Overstretched and effectively blind, the Corps’s best hope was that the enemy would not be in a position to mount a strong attack against them. Fortunately, the 40th Army’s line was in disarray, and confusion reigned among their ranks as they struggled to grasp the situation. Communication was ineffective, forcing them to pull back to reorganize their lines. However, three large Soviet columns were spotted marching towards Romny and two other towns bridging the Sula River. On the morning of the 11th, Model dispatched a forward detachment to advance south to Lukhovitsy. If Kleist was not going to reach Model, then Model would push on to reach Kleist with the remnants of Guderian’s spearhead. Lukhovitsy and its bridge were captured on the 13th, and the Kampfgruppe quickly dug in to repel any Soviet attempts to escape, while also hoping for reinforcements and air support. With Guderian’s offensive now spent, it fell to Army Group South to complete the encirclement.

When Dnipropetrovsk was captured on August 26th, it was accomplished by Kleist’s motorized infantry in conjunction with the Panzers. However, when the infantry struggled to expand the bridgehead across the river, relocating the tanks became pointless until a secure foothold was established, either at Dnipropetrovsk or elsewhere. Even after the bridgehead at Kremenchuk was secured and expanded, preparations for the breakthrough offensive took significant time. It wasn't until September 10th that three Infantry Corps of the 17th Army finished deploying across the river, which meant Kleist could not initiate his crossing until the 11th. This delay provided an opportunity for Kleist’s Panzer divisions to restore their strength, achieving up to 100 operational tanks in three of the four divisions, while the fourth managed to regain only 79 tanks. Estimates indicated that the pre-refit Panzer Group had been degraded to approximately one-third of its initial pre-invasion strength but was eventually restored to about 50% effectiveness. Several Panzer divisions underwent their refit near Dnipropetrovsk, which may have misled Kirponos regarding German intentions. This deception resulted in the German bridgehead at Dnipropetrovsk facing significant Red Army attacks, as more Soviet reinforcements were funneled into the heavy fighting there. Despite this, the 38th Army at Kremenchuk suffered severe losses, with 40,000 casualties and 279 tanks lost due to repeated failed assaults against the German infantry holding the bridgehead.

Zeitzler was finally permitted to withdraw from the Dnipropetrovsk bridgehead on the 10th. Thirteen artillery detachments had been transported across in an attempt to expand the bridgehead, and withdrawing them alone would take nearly six days. Given the upcoming offensive at Kremenchuk, it seemed futile to withdraw, so Zeitzler requested to be relieved by the infantry of the 17th Army instead, a request that was approved. Fighting in Dnipropetrovsk continued well after Kleist broke out at Kremenchug. It was not until September 15th that the 14th Motorized Corps launched an attack in the rear of the 6th Army, relieving some of the pressure on the Germans at Dnipropetrovsk. Notably, the Italian Expeditionary Corps also found success in this assault, marking one of their first major operations in the Eastern Theater. Ultimately, the CSIR would consist of just 62,000 men, intended to be among the best Italy had to offer, so as not to create a poor impression alongside the other Axis allies. When Keitel laid eyes on them upon their arrival on the eastern front at the end of August, he scornfully described the force as "a boundless disappointment," noting that the officers were far too old and that the troops amounted to "half-soldiers" incapable of standing up to the Red Army. Even Hitler disparagingly referred to the Italians as nothing more than "harvest hands." In any case, the Italians were too few in number and arrived too late on the eastern front to have any significant impact on the fortunes of Germany’s 1941 campaign.

Kleist’s offensive finally commenced on the morning of the 12th. Hube’s 16th Panzer, supported by artillery and air force, shattered two Soviet rifle divisions and raced to Semenovka by the afternoon. However, Hube’s advance was halted 15 km short of Khorol due to running completely out of fuel. This situation was worsened by the mud, which slowed the following 9th Division, still in the process of crossing the river. Had there been any Red Army forces with sufficient strength or mobility, Hube’s isolated division would have faced a serious risk of counterattack and potential destruction. After refueling overnight, the 16th Panzer pushed to Lubny, moving 40 km from Model’s advanced Kampfgruppe. There, the Panzers were stopped until the next day by fierce resistance from the NKVD, local worker militias, and an anti-aircraft battery. Subsequent attacks by the 17th Army and the rest of Kleist’s divisions led to the near disintegration of Feklenko’s 38th Army. Over the following two days, Kleist managed to get three Panzer divisions across the river, supported by the 48th Motorized Infantry Corps. The Soviet 47th Tank Division attempted a flank attack against Kempf’s Motorized Corps, but its remaining few dozen light tanks made little impact. With several Panzer divisions now positioned behind their lines, panic began to spread across the entire Southwestern Front, causing both its southern and northern positions to crumble under the weight of the German infantry offensives.

By the end of the 13th, it was clear that Kirponos was doomed. Only the 38th and 40th Armies remained operational. The 38th was nearly shattered from the fighting at Kremenchug, while the 40th was poorly positioned to offer assistance. There were no reserve armies available to break the encirclement, and Kirponos was constrained to unfavorable defensive positions due to Stalin's directives. With more than 200 km between them and safety at the Eastern frontlines, each day's delay condemned thousands to their fate. The initial breakout attempts were carried out by rear-area supply troops who lacked heavy weapons and a cohesive command structure. Despite being extremely outnumbered, Model’s forces managed to hold onto the river crossings. Although the main bridges were secured by the Germans, the encirclement was not completely sealed. Along Guderian’s line, breakout attempts led to several unexpected battles. One notable instance involved Schweppenburg’s 24th Panzer Corps command post being abruptly attacked by a Soviet column and nearly overrun. Ultimately, the 9th Panzer broke through to Model’s position at Lukhovitsy, officially closing the encirclement on the 15th. The convergence of small units from opposing sides during an encirclement is often regarded as the defining moment marking the end of the encirclement. At this stage, the battle is typically considered resolved. However, the reality on the ground is often quite different. Breakout attempts occurred in every major encirclement on the Eastern Front, and the Battle of Kyiv was no exception. Additionally, the mere meeting of the two halves does not ensure that the pocket has been effectively closed. For days, or even weeks, a pocket could remain unsealed, despite what operational maps at headquarters might indicate.

Out of 261,696 men and 259 tanks committed to combat in an attempt to stop Guderian, the Bryansk Front suffered approximately 100,000 casualties and lost 140 tanks. Fewer than 200,000 men remained available for combat across the entire Bryansk front. Stalin had placed too much faith in Eremenko, despite repeated requests for a change from other officers. Eremenko’s offensives had drained the Red Army’s offensive capabilities, although the Germans remained unaware of this depletion. Concern rippled through the chain of command regarding the exposed position of the 2nd Panzer Group. Some of its divisions were tasked with covering frontages of over ninety kilometers—a challenging prospect even under optimal conditions. However, the unfamiliar terrain and poor supply lines meant the already weakened divisions were being stretched to their limits. It was the frailty of Eremenko’s front and the Stavka’s inability to orchestrate a strong offensive anywhere along the line that saved the 2nd Panzer Group from being encircled. While German soldiers were exhausted, the decisive blow never landed. The Red Army was in an even worse state. The war began to resemble a matchup between two punch-drunk boxers, swaying back and forth, exchanging blows without the strength to finish the fight. Stalin’s refusal to permit a retreat had facilitated the encirclement of the Southwestern Front, leaving only one question: How severe would the impending disaster be? Would the Red Army endure?

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As the German siege of Kyiv intensified, General Guderian led an aggressive push against the resilient Soviet Red Army. Despite initial successes, the Nazis faced severe logistical challenges and heavy casualties as rain turned battlefields into mud. Meanwhile, Hitler's changing directives hampered operations, leading to a stalled advance on Moscow. By September, the brutal realities of war shifted tactics, and both sides prepared for a long, grueling conflict. The fight was far from over.