‘It was snowing! The wind drove thick clouds of snow-flakes across the earth and the ground was already covered in a thin sheet of snow. Even the assault guns parked outside on the road had taken on a curious appearance. They were completely white as if covered in icing sugar!
‘I recorded this first snowfall in my diary and went back inside to lie down again. When I awoke in the morning and glanced outside, the snow had already gone. But as a consequence the road was covered in mud and the land around totally soaked.’(29)
Major Johann Adolf Graf von Kielmansegg was driving forward with the 6th Panzer Division. ‘On 8 October the battle of Vyazma concluded,’ he said in a postwar interview. ‘The aim and objective of this battle had been to kick in the gates of Moscow.’ But conditions changed. ‘On 9 October, as we started to move in the north, centre and south towards Moscow, the temperature dropped and the rain began.’(30) The onset of poor weather affected the infantry also. ‘Yesterday we had the first snow,’ wrote an NCO with the 6th Infantry Division on the same day.
‘Not unexpectedly it was primarily rain, which had the additional disadvantage of soaking the roads. The muck is awful. Luckily the issue can’t last much longer. Our main hope at the moment is that we are not kept behind in Russia as occupation troops.’(31)
‘The roads, so far as there were any in the western sense of the word, disappeared in mud,’ remarked Major Graf von Kielmansegg. ‘Knee-deep mud, in which even the most capable overland tracked vehicles stuck fast.’ The Russians, faced with the same problems, avoided the German tendency, through inexperience, to drive through the same ruts. Ordered to bypass Moscow to the north, 6th Panzer Division remained stuck fast in the mire for two days once the rain began. ‘The division was strung out along 300km,’ von Kielmansegg remarked, ‘whereas the normal length of a division column then was 40km.’ One soldier summed up the development thus:
‘Russia, you bearer of bad tidings, we still know nothing about you. We have started to slog and march in this mire and still have not fathomed you out. Meanwhile you are absorbing us into your tough and sticky interior.’(32)
The great illusion
The colossal victory at Kiev at the end of September rekindled German public interest in the eastern campaign previously thought deadlocked. It resurrected thoughts that the war may be over before the winter. Two Russian cities had consistently held the public’s attention. Leningrad, the birthplace of the Bolshevik ideology, was anticipated to fall soon. Letters from the front stimulated rumours that the other, Moscow, had already been targeted by German Fallschirmjäger units, which had dropped east of the capital. Moscow was the lofty prize that would signify the war’s end. Kiev had already been compared to the World War 1 victory at Tannenberg, and public expectation was raised even further by the news of the latest Army Group Centre offensive.
The final German victories at Vyazma and Bryansk utilising favourable autumn conditions appeared to herald a final Blitzkrieg that would overcome Moscow itself. The final Russian field armies facing Army Group Centre before Moscow were surrounded and annihilated at Bryansk and Vyazma. It was a success comparable with Kiev. The German press claimed final victory even as the much weakened Panzer pincers were brought to a standstill by autumn rains and mud, and an ominously undiminished bitter resistance. The weather denied the tactical mobility thereby gained. In reality, however, the Ostheer was itself mortally wounded and in the throes of ‘victoring itself to death’.
‘German Autumn Storm Breaks over the Bolsheviks’, announced the Völkische Beobachter newspaper on 2 October. This was followed by the Führer’s announcement that ‘the enemy is already broken and will never rise again’. Rumours began to circulate that a new pocket battle for Moscow had started and that its fall was imminent.(1) Front letters appeared to confirm the press line. Infantryman Johann Alois Meyer, writing to his wife Klara, said, ‘you will have heard the Führer’s speech yesterday’ announcing the opening of the final offensive. ‘It ought to finish here before the onset of winter,’ he assessed. ‘That means the end of this month should see the conclusion.’ Meyer, however, hedged his bets like everyone else when he ended: ‘give thanks to God that it does come and pray to God above all else that we come through it sound in mind and limb.’(2)
Radio programmes in the Reich were interrupted during the evening of 8 October with the dramatic announcement: ‘we expect an important special announcement in a moment’. These Sondermeldungen had always presaged momentous events: the capitulation of Warsaw, victory in the Low Countries, the French Armistice and fall of Paris and Belgrade. Brass fanfares had played for the fall of Crete, entry into Athens, the storming of Smolensk and the battle of annihilation at Kiev. Loudspeakers were turned up in expectation in cafés and restaurants. Guests were forbidden to speak and waiters to serve. ‘Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt,’ – “The High Command of the German Armed Forces announces’ – (the precursor to all such statements), ‘the final victory which the decisive battles in the East have led to, has arrived!’ Adolf Hitler declared during a speech to the German people the following day:
‘In a few weeks three primary industrial areas will be completely in your hands. You have taken over two to four million prisoners, destroyed or captured 17,500 tanks and over 21,600 artillery pieces, 14,100 aircraft have been shot down or destroyed on the ground. The world has never witnessed its like before.’
Dr Dietrich, the Reich Press Chief, announced this news to the world’s press and accredited diplomats. Rumours immediately circulated throughout Berlin that Moscow had already fallen, that Stalin was seeking an armistice and the troops would be home for Christmas. A Berlin post official from the post office in Nürnberger Strasse sent a housewife home when she requested ‘front postcards’ claiming, ‘you will not need them any longer’. Sausage was given away free by a butcher in Hausvogteiplatz. On 10 October the Völkischer Beobachter claimed, ‘the eastern offensive has achieved its aim: the annihilation of the enemy’, adding triumphantly, ‘Stalin’s armies have been wiped from the face of the earth’.(3)
SS Home Front reporters monitoring the situation observed, ‘the various phases of the final battle were followed with utmost tension’. Newspaper banner headlines announcing German troops were already far beyond the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets reminded the public of the previous year. ‘One saw parallels between the advance of German troops on Moscow and the taking of Paris, which was followed soon after by the French Armistice,’ stated observers. The press had whipped the Reich into a fervour of anticipation. One housewife wrote to her husband at the front on 14 October:
‘Dear Fritz! Write to me again when the issue in Russia is definitely over… How happy I was to hear that things in Russia are at an end and you can both [including her son Hermann] return home again in good health. Ach dear Fritz, I know you always said at the beginning of the war that it would not last long. You will need to get home quickly if you want to take something else [ie employment] on. You have certainly had about as much as you can take, and know what war is all about. A typical mother’s view, eh?’(4)