‘Most of them could hardly keep going and despite that they were constantly cudgelled. They simply broke down and remained lying on the ground. If someone from the local population threw them a loaf of bread they would be beaten or even directly shot on the spot. The edges of the road were covered with bodies, which were left lying for days. Only 2,000 of these 15,000 prisoners survived their arrival at Smolensk.’(9)
Even von Bock, the army group commander travelling the same road on 20 October to check supply difficulties, stated:
‘The impression of the tens of thousands of prisoners of war, who were scarcely guarded, marching toward Smolensk, is dreadful. Dead-tired and half-starved, these unfortunate people stagger along. Many have fallen dead or collapsed from exhaustion on the road.’(10)
Small wonder the Soviet soldier, despite being aware of the shortcomings of his own totalitarian regime, opted to fight to the death.
The rapid German advance, which resulted in the occupation of further towns and cities, was an unmitigated disaster for all that lay in its path. Panzergruppe 3 achieved the maximum progress: 400km compared to a minimum of 220km marched by Ninth Army.(11) Fifteen-year-old Alexander Igorowitsch Kristakow, in a village near Vyazma, had lived a simple and happy life up to this point. The family had geese, chickens, two pigs and a cow. After receiving instructions to herd their livestock to a collective farm near Gorki, ‘the Germans,’ Kristakow said, ‘time and time again attacked us with low-flying aircraft’. He survived the experience and returned in time to witness the arrival of the Germans at the beginning of October. ‘All the chickens and geese were taken away and eaten,’ he said. Their sole cow was taken the following year. The day after he was liberated by returning Russian troops, Alexander Kristakow stepped on a mine and was blinded.
On 15 October the Germans reached Rzhev. ‘That was it so far as employment was concerned,’ said 33-year-old postmistress Jelena Gregoriewna. This was a tragedy. She had already lost her second husband at Leningrad. ‘I had to sit there with four children with nothing to eat.’ They made their way into the cellar where they hid throughout the German occupation. Four days previously the town had been bombed, prior to German entry. ‘It’s awful,’ confided Nina Sernjonowa to her diary, ‘what is going to happen?’ It became impossible to sleep at night. ‘Gestapo people came persistently asking the same question – “where have all the Communists disappeared to?” If they were not given up, the family would be shot. A German officer billeted nearby boasted that Leningrad and Moscow had been occupied by the Germans. ‘I said nothing – I did not believe him.’ Nina Sernjonowa grew to detest the Germans once the executions started and soldiers took all their food. She was not to survive the occupation.
Kalinin had fallen on 14 October and, Nikolaj Antonowitsch Schuschakow said, ‘the Germans were given full freedom over five days to plunder everything.’ Moreover, ‘they freed the convicted criminals and got them to join in.’ In all 155 shops in the town were looted and then torched. Two weeks later Alexandra Scholowa and her friend Lobow Karalisowna entered the city. ‘My God, it was a sight!’ she exclaimed. She had lived in the city before ‘but I could hardly recognise it again’. All around, the houses were in ruins, trams stood forlornly, hollow shells, with their cables dangling grotesquely into the street. There was no light or electricity. They saw there were Panzers parked around the railway station. Soldiers had pulled the statue of Lenin from its plinth in Lenin Square and were smashing it into sections to the accompaniment of laughter. A huge swastika flag hung in its place, which a young Russian tried to remove the following day. Caught in the act, he was hanged, head down, from the very plinth he had sought to clear. ‘He took two days to die,’ remarked Scholowa, ‘which served only to harden our resolve to resist.’(12)
From the beginning of October and continuing into November, Luftwaffe air formations attacked transport, military installations and other targets in and around Moscow. Natalya Pavlicheva, a factory worker, remembered air raid warnings sounded mostly at night. They never went home.
‘So a group of us from the home defence brigade would run up on to the rooftops. We then ran around and simply threw off the fire bombs… Nobody wants to die and of course it was frightening – especially when you were only 17 – but you can get used to anything, can’t you?’
Anastasia Egorova animatedly gesticulated during the same interview as she said:
‘Of course we were frightened. These phosphorus fire bombs were blazing and throwing off sparks and you had to go right up to them, pick them up and run off and find somewhere to put them out. Sparks could quite easily hit, you know, because they were flying off in all directions. It was terrifying, of course, but after a while we got very fierce. We’d pounce on the bombs, grab them by the tail, and stick them straight in [a bucket of] water.’(13)
The fall of Kaluga on 13 October and Kalinin the following day unhinged the defence belt south and north of Moscow. The weak defence line from Volokolamsk to Mozhaisk and Maloyaroslavets that lay in between was breached in several places. In Moscow there was little knowledge about what was going on. Actress Maria Mironowa remembered how ‘we listened to the radio the whole time, poring over the news’. It was all they lived for. ‘But it was a time full of worries. Nobody could get away from it, even a famous artist.’ In the factories workers slept in rows inside following a 12-hour day. Sixteen-year-old Natalie Shirowa, making parts for Katyusha rocket launchers, recalled: ‘We often thought of Moscow as already surrounded and did not even bother to go home after work.’(14)
The Communist Party Central Committee and State Defence Committee decided to evacuate a number of government agencies and the entire foreign diplomatic corps to Kuibyshev, a city 850km further east on the River Volga. The evacuation – nicknamed the ‘Big Skedaddle’ – began during the night of 15/16 October and witnessed scenes of stampeding at railway stations. These signs of collective panic, accompanied by some looting, represented the nadir of fortune for the Communist regime. Lorries loaded with families and their possessions began to move through the streets. Officials sought to leave without permits, and traffic jams developed on the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Rumours proliferated that surrender was imminent. Offices and factories stopped working. Trains entering stations were swamped by masses of passengers.
‘16 October was an awful day for Moscow,’ recalled journalist A. Maluchin, observing the panic at Kasaner station. ‘Trains were not just made up from passenger wagons,’ he said, ‘but also goods wagons and underground carriages.’ He noticed the trains were going only one direction – eastwards. ‘Trains set off without automatic safety governors [ensuring they were set distances apart], they departed in dense rows separated only by visual distance.’(15) Even Lenin’s coffin was removed from its Red Square Mausoleum to be transported to safety. Stalin remained.
Stalin’s presence in the capital was a stabilising factor. Outside the city, reports of flight were causing unease. Gabriel Temkin, digging anti-tank ditches on the defence belt, said: ‘the gloomy news had a devastating effect on the morale of our labour battalion, creating a mood of complete apathy.’ Digging came to a virtual halt. There appeared little point. ‘People were grumbling, “our fortifications are just another exercise in futility”,’ he said. The morale-boosting talk from their Politruk (political party official) was seen as ‘hollow’ and he quickly left. ‘He knew everybody detested his speeches.’ Life for Temkin, like many others, deteriorated into a series of personal crises that quickly dwarfed the strategic events being conducted around them. As the weather got worse the left sole of his boot fell off. It could not be replaced and, worse still, with winter approaching, his underwear was stolen on one of the rare occasions the battalion received a shower. Temkin almost tangibly felt, as the weather got colder, his survival chances ebbing away.(16)