The Second World War Illustrated: The Third Year

Chapter One: Hitler’s First Russian Winter

001ww2/3 The four week Russian seasonal heavy rain in October–November (the Rasputitsa) slowed down the German advance during the Battle of Moscow and may have helped save the Soviet capital. German infantry help free a Horch/Opel staff car.

002ww2/3 The rooftop of Moscow's Hotel Moskva, November 1941 when the Germans were approaching the capital: a Russian anti-aircraft position with quad mounted Maxim machine guns. Note the painted compass rose for direction and sighting assistance.

The German offensive to capture Moscow, which lasted from October 1941 to January 1942, was called Operation Typhoon and required three assaults, one to the north of Moscow by the Third Panzer Army and another from the south by the Second Panzer Army. A third drive was by the Fourth Army, advancing directly towards Moscow from the west. The Russians took determined defensive measures and frustrated Hitler's attack on their capital. Three defensive belts were constructed; newly raised reserve armies were deployed; and troops were brought back from the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts. As the German offensives were stopped, a Soviet counter-offensive forced the Germans back to positions around the cities of Oryol, Vyazma and Vitebsk. It was a major setback for Hitler ending the notion that a speedy military victory for Germany could be achieved. The Führer was displeased and Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch was removed as supreme commander and Hitler (a corporal in the Great War) took over the role himself.

Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge commanded the Fourth Army during Operation Typhoon, the German advance on Moscow. It was suspected that he had been involved in the 20 July plot (by fellow German officers) on Hitler’s life and committed suicide, August 1944.

Generaloberst Erich Hoepner commanded Panzergruppe 4, which was subordinated to the Fourth Army under von Kluge. He was implicated in the 20 July plot against Adolf Hitler. He received a public trial and was executed by hanging in 1944. Family members were sent to concentration camps.

003ww2/3 A German armoured column 0f the 20.Panzerdivision advancing towards Moscow, October 1941. A heavy frost decorates the landscape and the ground appears hard; this would soon change.

004ww2/3 Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch with Adolf Hitler. Failure to capture Moscow and win a quick victory over the ‘inferior’ race caused Hitler to remove him from command. Brauchitsch suffered a heart attack in November 1941, which also served as an excuse. He spent the rest of the war in enforced retirement. After the war, Brauchitsch was arrested on charges of war crimes but died of pneumonia in 1948 before he could be prosecuted.

015ww2/3 General Günther Blumentritt, Chief of Staff Fourth Army.

In mid October Army Group Centre set off for Moscow. All that lay between the Germans and the capital was the so-called Moscow Defensive Position. General Günther Blumentritt:

We had no reason to believe that this would prove a particularly difficult nut to crack.

Once we were through that, the road, we thought, would be open. Now, when Moscow itself was almost in sight, the mood of our commanders and troops changed. With amazement 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. During these weeks enemy resistance stiffened and the fighting became more bitter with each day that passed. Marshal Zhukov had now assumed command of the troops defending Moscow.

018ww2/3 Marshal Georgy Zhukov commanded the defence of Moscow.

013ww2/3 Feldmarschall Fedor von Bock commanded Army Group Centre seen here during the opening phase of the drive to capture Moscow.

019ww2/3 An incident on the approaches to Moscow: a Russian soldier surrenders to a German armed with a Maschinenpistole 40 (MP40). Perhaps a posed picture as there appears to be no magazine in the MP40. Bad weather and stiffening resistance will soon halt the German attack.

020ww2/3 Soviet snipers suitably attired for the anticipated change in the Russian weather.

012ww2/3, 021ww2/3. Russian women digging an anti-tank ditch on one of the city’s outer defence rings. Men building a substantial road block on a Moscow street: a concrete line of shelters; weapon positions; Czech hedgehogs; and anti-tank ditch. These defences would not be tested.

026ww2/3 German panzers and infantry in the streets of Kalinin, one hundred miles north of Moscow, October 1941.

027ww2/3 German artillery men south of Moscow, October 1941. The first snow of the Russian winter fell on 7 October. These men have scrounged some winter coats, mittens and boots. The artillery piece is a Skoda 100 mm howitzer.

039ww2/3 The first snow, heralding the onset of a Russian winter, caught the German army unprepared, as this squad before Moscow typifies. A German infantry Gruppe (squad) consisted of ten men: a non-commissioned officer or Unteroffizier; a deputy squad leader: a three-man machine gun team and five riflemen. As personal small arms the Gruppe leaders carried submachine guns.

023ww2/3 On 7 October 1941 the first snow fell and German soldiers were caught unprepared and ill equipped for the Russian winter, as they engaged in the battle for Moscow.

024ww2/3 Transport for the German rifle companies in 1941 consisted of three-horse wagons, on which the troops loaded their packs. 179,000 horses died in December 1941 and January 1942 alone.

022ww2/3, 025ww2/3. When the first snow melted after the first week of October, roads and open ground became muddy quagmires, (a bi-annual event known as rasputitsa in Russia). A German motorcyclist struggles to find hard ground for his NSU machine. An 88 mm anti-aircraft/anti-tank, although hauled by a tracked vehicle, is proving difficult to bring into position. German armour and support transport came to a standstill, allowing Soviet forces to fall back and regroup.

032ww2/3, 031ww2/3. The days of the Blitzkrieg were over. Here a motorcycle and sidecar abteilung have to drag their BMW machines across waterlogged fields.

Following the thaw and mud, the temperature plunged to forty degrees centigrade below zero. Weapons were immediately affected. The lubricant fluid of the artillery pieces froze, making opening of the gun breech difficult and the mechanism of the machine guns froze. The German army did not have glycerine, nor fuel, designed for use in extreme temperatures. Fires had to be kept burning under tank engines to prevent freezing up and cracking of the casing. The ground was like iron, making digging all but impossible. Then the heavy winter snow descended.

035ww2/3 Germans tend a fallen comrade brought down during an advance on a Russian town. Both sides had bombarded clusters of dwellings and single farms, but with the extreme cold, they could have done with the shelter.

037ww2/3 A Russian artillery team hauling a 76 mm field gun. The Russians were also affected by the conditions, but were far better off. The extreme cold was no novelty to them; they were accustomed to it. With Moscow behind them, the supply line to the front was short, whereas the German supply line was over a great distance and was frequently cut by partisans. The German railway engines were not built to withstand the Russian climate and water froze inside the boilers. Their engines could only pull half the number of wagons and a shortage of artillery shells developed.

034ww2/3 Generaloberst Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff.

Deteriorating weather caused Chief of the German General Staff, Generaloberst Franz Halder, to call for a meeting of the chiefs of staff of the armies in von Bock’s Army Group Centre on 12 November at Army Group Centre’s HQ at Orsha (310 miles west of Moscow). The matter for discussion was a simple one: should Army Group Centre take up ‘winter quarters’, and make plans to campaign in 1942, or should it continue the attack?

The meeting elicited a storm of protests against further advance from some of the chiefs of staff. But, in the end, Halder’s decision was that the advance to Moscow be continued.

033ww2/3 German armour attacking Istra, twenty-five miles west of Moscow, 25 November 1941.

036ww2/3 A German infantry squad resting during the advance on Moscow. By 15 November 1941, the ground had finally frozen, solving the mud problem.

038ww2/2 German tanks and supporting infantry advancing into a village in the district of Volokolamsk during the battle of Moscow.

041ww2/3 The original German caption reads: Soldiers of the Panzergrenadier Division Das Reich make themselves at home. It was the worst winter in 120 years.

040ww2/3 Soldiers of the SS Das Reich west of Moscow. The original German caption reads: Apart from the winter, the Russian T 34 tank was the big surprise, the 3.7 cm anti-tank gun could do nothing against it, so the men manufactured ‘Panzer cocktails’. The front line soldier has to know how to improvise.

039ww2/2 The German front line west of Moscow, December 1941. German fighting capabilities had diminished because of wear and fatigue. More than 130,000 cases of frostbite were reported among German soldiers. At the same time, the Germans were aware of the continuous Soviet build-up, reinforcements from the east. However, given the tremendous Soviet casualties, they did not expect the Russians to be able to put up a determined defence or to mount a counterattack.

105ww2/3 A German column rolling on towards Moscow; movement is still possible with the first snow. A Stug Ausf B, a self-propelled 75 mm gun, leads the column of Sd Kfz armoured cars.

106ww2/3 With temperatures at night falling to forty degrees centigrade below zero, fuel and lubricants froze, weapons ceased to function and vehicles froze into the icy ground. Here a Panzer III drags a Stug out of trouble.

107ww2/3 Not a sight German soldiers ever expected to see: pulling back a thick horse blanket has revealed three of their comrades who have frozen to death on the battlefield before Moscow.

By the end of November 1941 Stalin had transferred over eighteen divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East to remove the threat to Moscow. On 5 December 1941, the Soviet counteroffensive started on the Kalinin Front. Russian arimies on the South-Western Front and Western Fronts began their offensives the next day. After little progress initially, Soviet armies retook Solnechnogorsk on the 12 and Klin on 15 December.

042ww2/3 Lieutenant General Aleksandr Vasilevsky coordinated the Moscow counteroffensive, which began in December.

043ww2/3 The Russian T-34/76A medium tank. It had a 76.2 mm gun with seventy-seven rounds, a crew of four and a range of 280 miles. It came as a shock to the Germans and set the standard for tank design for the world’s fighting forces.

044ww2/3, 047ww2/3 Soldiers of the Red Army leaving for the front after a parade on Moscow’s Red Square

054ww2/3 Marshal Zhukov Commanded the successful defence of Moscow and the massive counter offensive to drive the invaders back from the Soviet capital.

German Army Group Centre had orders from Hitler to stand and fight, contending every metre of ground. Had the German generals attempted a strategic withdrawal of their forces over frozen snow and ice covered ground, it likely would have turned into a total collapse. Fighting withdrawals were undertaken in the face of fierce Soviet attacks..

050ww2/3 A Soviet 122 mm gun in action near Moscow, December 1941.

051ww2/3 On 5 December, 1941, Stalin launched his counter-offensive against the Wehrmacht. He had transferred over eighteen divisions, 1,700 tanks and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East. The T 34 tank faired better than the German tanks in the extreme cold.

052ww2/3 Supporting the Soviet counter attack, a formation of Russian Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik, ground attack, fighter bombers, near Moscow, December 1941.

The Soviet Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik, ground attack aircraft could absorb extensive battle damage. Protective armour on the Il-2 led to it being given the nickname, Betonflugzeug (concrete plane), by the Germans. Some 35,000 were produced during the war, more than any other combat aircraft.

046ww2/3 The moment of surrender – a German soldier ceases to resist. Freezing, exhausted and hungry Germans were giving up to the Russians during the Soviet counter offensive. Used to victories across Europe, professional veterans had been pushed to their limit by Hitler.

049ww2/3 Soviet officers inspecting captured German troops and weapons, near Moscow, Russia, 20 Dec 1941.

045ww2/3 A frame from a Soviet newsreel showing some surrendering German soldiers west of Moscow.

With the Soviet forces moving to encircle and destroy the German Fourth Army attacking Moscow, the commander, von Kluge, planned a withdrawal westwards to straighten the line. He called a meeting of his commanders at his headquarters to begin organising in detail the withdrawal.

General Günther Blumentritt:

At that point a telephone call came through from the Chief of Staff, Army Group Centre, who told me, ‘You had better make yourself comfortable where you are. A new order has has just arrived from Hitler, Fourth Army is not to retreat a single yard.’ As far as we generals could see this would mean the destruction of the Fourth Army. Yet we obeyed this order. Hitler had just taken over the position as Commander-in-Chief after dismissing von Brauchitsch; he believed that he personally could ward off the catastrophe that was impending before Moscow. And it must be admitted, quite frankly, that he in fact succeeded in doing so. His fanatical order that the troops must hold fast was undoubtedly correct. Hitler realized, instinctively, that any retreat across snow and ice must, within days, lead to the dissolution of the entire front and the Germans would suffer the same fate as Napoleon’s Grande Armée in 1812.

016ww2/3 General Blumentritt, Chief of Staff Fourth Army.

055ww2/3 Hitler visited the leader of the Finns, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, 4 June 1942, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. The Finnish army invaded Russia from the north, co-operating with the Germans until Finland had recaptured territory lost in their recent Winter War with the Soviets; but they refused to make further advances on Leningrad.

Führer Directive 21: The mass of the Finnish army will have the task, in accordance with the advance made by the northern wing of the German armies, of tying up maximum Russian strength by attacking to the west, or on both sides, of Lake