Inside the village the surviving T-34 was playing ‘cat and mouse’ with a 37mm anti-tank gun. The latter was eventually cornered and the crew fled as the tank crushed the gun and bulldozed into a cottage directly behind it, the building collapsing to the ground. Stuck fast in a civilian shelter, its see-sawing motion and bellowing diesel engines indicated it could not get out. An anti-tank mine was flung onto its engine deck and the single crack of its detonation reverberated around the village, signifying the end of the action. Clouds of smoke spilling across the snow to the rear of the village also indicated the demise of the tank attack on Putschki. The solitary tank that had evaded the two anti-tank guns had been despatched by a direct-fire hit from the artillery battery.(22)
To the north-west the 23rd Infantry Division sought, with steadily declining strength, to continue its advance to the Moscow–Volga canal. They laboured forward in more than knee-deep snow, 35km from Moscow. Feldwebel Gottfried Becker with Infantry Regiment 9 was ordered to extract a beleaguered company that had been ambushed 5km further east, outside the village of Choroschilowo. The mission was only partially successful. The remnants were rescued but the wounded had to be left behind. Becker delivered his report, much troubled by his conscience. It was received without demur by the battalion commander; these things happened. They remained holding their positions at Staroje, enduring the bitter cold in a totally cheerless landscape. Soon they lost all sense of time. Every two hours a reconnaissance patrol was despatched to check the woodland bordering the village. The veterans were uneasy. There was a collective perception that a Russian attack was pending. A patrol returning that night reported ‘something going on, you can hear loud noises’. Snow began to fall heavily, which reduced visibility to 200–300m. Nobody wanted to do more. Becker was exhausted and his men were tired. They would investigate further in the morning.(23)
Russian probing attacks continued against the 2nd Panzer Division vanguard in the Krassnaya Polyana area. Leutnant Georg Richter gloomily observed that being only 30km from Moscow meant ‘the enemy could move his troops up to the front in trams’. The supporting artillery battery outside Putschki was experiencing problems because ‘its guns could only be traversed with considerable difficulty’. Lothar Fromm, another artillery observer, described the impact of these Arctic conditions:
‘The weapons did not work any more. Let me tell you about the recoil mechanism of the guns. Minus thirty degrees was seen as the lowest temperature at which efficiency could be maintained. They were frozen up. Crews stood there and tried to make them work time, and time again. It didn’t happen. The barrel would not come back and the recoil mechanism was unable to move. That was really depressing.’
By contrast, as Richter complained at Putschki, ‘It was unbelievable what ammunition the enemy had stacked up next to his positions to blast out every calibre’. As a consequence, ‘the factory buildings,’ he wrote, ‘were burning for the umpteenth time.’ Nerves were feeling the strain. ‘The extent of fear and cowardice,’ the dispirited Richter admitted by 3 December, ‘is catastrophic – the cooks won’t come out and cook because they are ducking inside their shelters the whole time.’ Prospects did not appear good. In Richter’s opinion it was ‘senseless’ to try and hold onto the villages of Gorki and Katjuschki.(24)
Generalfeldmarschall von Bock was of like opinion. He instinctively felt the army group had approached the end of its strength. Corps commanders were telexed during the night of 2 December ‘that the undoubtedly serious moment of crisis that the Russian defenders are facing must be exploited wherever the opportunity presents itself.’ But he did not believe it, because he confided, ‘I have my doubts whether the exhausted units are still capable of doing so.’ That night von Bock was presented with a document from the city of Smolensk thanking him for liberating it from Bolshevism. Three months before, Army Group Centre had stood at the pinnacle of success. As he considered the document, von Bock probably reflected all this was virtually an age ago.(20)
Two days later Leutnant Richter was overseeing a gun-position change at Putschki. They were pulling back. Every single vehicle needed to be tow-started in temperatures of −25°C. Many vehicles, in particular the 6.5-ton ‘Tatra’ heavy lorries, had to be abandoned. Their wheels would not turn and the steering was frozen solid. An NCO shouted a warning:
‘“The Russians are attacking. Don’t you see the white ghosts? We have got to open fire, now, now!” For a while I could not see anything, although a burning haystack lit up the surrounding area to some extent, sufficient to shoot. But then, yes, I could see running spectre-like figures; ghosts, one might say. Our men have not got so many white camouflage smocks – they must be Russians.’
They were indeed. Another soldier, writing home that day, encapsulated what was going on in a simple terse statement:
‘The Russians are fielding everything they’ve got, because around here at Moscow – the devil is loose.’(26)
Chapter 16
The devil loose before Moscow
‘The German soldier does not go “kaputt!”’
The Soviet counter-offensive
Soviet ‘Shock Armies’ were originally conceived as being particularly heavy in armour, motorised vehicles and automatic weapons. First Shock Army to the east of Yakhroma and the others created during the winter of 1941–42 were not so well equipped. When Kuznetsov, the First Shock Army commander, took over on 23 November, he expanded it from a single rifle brigade to one division, nine rifle brigades, ten independent battalions, a regiment of artillery and a contingent of Katyusha rocket launches. About 70% of the soldiers were over 30 years old. Likewise Twentieth Army was brought up to a similar strength. Tenth Army was approximately 100,000-strong, consisting of seven reserve rifle divisions recruited from the Moscow region. It had been on the march by rail and foot from Syzran on the Volga, some 480km away. Four other newly formed reserve armies were brought forward from the line of the River Volga at the end of November. Twenty-fourth, Twenty-sixth and Sixtieth were placed east of Moscow and Sixty-first was newly located behind the right flank of the south-west front.
Stalin passed over control of the newly formed strike element First Shock, Twentieth and Tenth Armies – from STAVKA Supreme Command to Zhukov on 29 November. Even without the addition of the reserve armies, the Soviet forces opposite Army Group Centre on 5 December were greater than when Operation ‘Taifun’ began, two months before. The German army group had been unable to replace its considerable losses in troops, equipment and especially leaders. Soviet armies in the Moscow sector, by contrast, acquired one third more rifle divisions, five times more cavalry divisions, twice as many artillery regiments and two and a half times as many tank brigades by 5 December than they had on 2 October.(1)
Zhukov’s Chief of Staff, Lt-Gen V. D. Sokolovskiy, calculated the West Front armies numbered over a million men, slightly under the German figure (ie 1,100,000 against 1,708,000), but the latter also included its rear area elements. Massive losses of German ‘teeth arm’ personnel, tanks and weapons had seriously depleted the combat strength of its divisions. Artillery and mortar numbers were similar at 13,500 as also were 1,170 Panzers to tanks, but fewer were running on the German side. The Soviets had an overwhelming preponderance of 1,370 aircraft to about 600 German, with the further advantage of hardened Moscow airfields.(2)