Battle for Moscow, Bitva pod Moskvoi. Mikhail Gorbachov’s perestroika and glasnost not only freed Eastern Europe by bringing
down the Berliner Mauer but also revealed that the U.S.S.R. had an economy the size of Belgium. Historically and crucially, military archives available from 1994 onwards ensured WWII Soviet Military Archives were accessible and some were even published.
The Wehrmacht’s invasion of Russia on 22nd June 1941 was one month too late in order to
capture Moscow before October 1941, the ratsupista or time of mud. The invading German forces suffered 686,000 casualties by 1st November, 20% of their original force. The Red Army lost 1,656,517 men across their entire front including 636,383 killed, captured or missing up to the 5th December defence of Moscow. The loss of 2.8 million soldiers, in several major encirclements, including Uman and Brjansk, during the first three months of war and another 2 million up to 31st December virtually eradicated the peacetime Red Army. The most valuable reference, Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina
V.A. Zolotarev, Ed. Moscow, Nauka, 1998, provided details of the human and material cost of war between two totalitarian states.
General Popov the defeated Russian Front Commander was executed for treason, early in the war, General Vlasov’s encircled 37th Army defected to the German side, they were never deployed directly in Russia, however, their actions saved Prague from destruction in April 1945.
Russia faced certain defeat if Moscow was captured. Stalin ensured Marshal of the Soviet Union, Shaposhnikov’s General Staff raised, assembled, deployed and committed strategic reserves into combat secretly and successfully, some 8 million men constituted as 177 infantry and 54 armoured divisions and 9 armoured brigades by 31st December 1941. There was an armoured battle at the site of the present Sheremet’yavo airport site, within 10km of central Moscow. This was the nearest the Germans got to central Moscow.
The sudden appearance of fully equipped Siberian and Ural based divisions unleashed on the overstretched German troops resulted in their retreat to their previous November start lines. The battle for Moscow which lasted fully 5 months ensured German troops did not return within 160km of the Russian capital.
General Gotthard Heinrici, Commander of the German Fourth Army’s XXXXIII Army Corps at Moscow assessed the reasons for the German failure:- Hitler underestimated the Bolshevik economic system; Russian soldiers fought tenaciously; the diversion southwards August 1941, to capture Kiev reduced the Central Front’s ability to capture Moscow directly; the width and depth of Russia revealed how poorly motorized German forces were, armour had to wait for infantry; Russian climate and terrain frustrated the Wehrmacht; the Russian counteroffensive from Moscow produced a clear operational crisis which lasted until the capture of Berlin.