The Soviet plan was to attack either side of Moscow and bite off the encircling fingers of the German advances from the north-east and south-east. Having eliminated the threat to the Moscow-Volga canal, First Shock Army was to strike west toward Klin and, in conjunction with the Thirtieth and Twentieth Armies, attack Panzergruppe 3 and the German Ninth Army in the north. Twentieth Army, supporting First Shock and combined with Sixteenth Army, was to assault from Krassnaya Polyana and Bely-Rast towards Solnechnogorsk (see map on page 225), capture it from the south and drive towards Volokolamsk. Guderian’s Second Panzer Army salient would be attacked by Fiftieth Army in combination with the Tenth, which were to drive due west, south of the River Upa. The initial intent was to eliminate the immediate German threat to the Soviet capitaclass="underline" as expressed by Lt-Gen Sokolovskiy, ‘to break up the enemy’s attack conclusively and give him no opportunity to regroup and dig in close to our capital’.(3) Just under half the Soviet tank strength, 290 of 720 tanks, was placed at the main point of effort against Klin, Solnechnogorsk and Istra – the nearest German penetrations to Moscow. The Russians were not totally confident of success; a major Russian counter-offensive had yet to succeed in this war. There was, however, an instinctive appreciation that the enemy was probably sufficiently exhausted to be caught off balance.
This lack of balance was hinted at by Generalfeldmarschall von Bock, who declared on 3 December, ‘if the attack is called off then going over to the defensive will be very difficult’. The last card had been staked on Moscow’s fall. In fact, von Bock admitted, This thought and the possible consequences of going over to the defensive with our weak forces have, save for my mission, contributed to my sticking with this attack so far.’ Within two days Panzergruppe 3 reported ‘its offensive strength is gone’. It could only hold its positions if the already decimated 23rd Infantry Division remained under command. Von Bock was also informed by General von Kluge, the commander of Fourth Army, that Hoepner’s planned attack with Panzergruppe 4 should not go ahead.(4) Late that same day Generaloberst Guderian advised that his Second Panzer Army should ‘call off the operation’. He said the ‘unbearable cold of more than −30°C was making moving and fighting by the tired, thinned-out units extremely difficult’. German tanks were breaking down while the Russians, did not.
Oberstleutnant Grampe, commanding a tactical headquarters with the 1st Panzer Division, reported the same day that his Panzers had been put out of action by low temperatures, which had dropped to −35°C. ‘The turrets would not revolve,’ he stated, ‘the optics had misted up, machine guns could only fire single rounds and it took two to three crew members to depress tank gun barrels, only achievable if they stamped down on the main barrel where it joined the turret block.’ His unit was not equipped to cope with such conditions. Cases of first- and second-degree frostbite were beginning to emerge. ‘The division,’ he assessed, was practically immobile.’(5) The German front went over to the defensive, frozen inert at the very moment the Russian offensive was about to strike. Temperatures plummeted from −25°C on 4 December to −35°C on the 5th and to −38°C the following day. Co-ordinated operations appeared impractical. German troops sought only shelter.
The new Soviet armies had been assembled together for only two to three weeks. They were a mixture of fresh Siberian units, burned-out veteran formations and briefly trained militia or reservists. Many lacked equipment and there were shortages of ammunition. Officers and NCOs were inexperienced. Tanks were dispersed among about 15 tank brigades with about 46 machines in each. A high proportion of the units were fresh and unbloodied in battle, and, unlike the enemy, they were warmly clad. Their motivation was superior to that of the German, whose moral component of fighting power had bled profusely, perhaps mortally, since September. As in the case of the original ‘Barbarossa’ invasion, Soviet counter-stroke formations had deployed in such numbers that, even if they were discovered, the difficulty of moving troops and equipments to oppose them was impractical. A‘checkmate’ configuration had been created in these Arctic conditions. They possessed massive local superiority and, above all, total surprise.
In mind-numbing, freezing conditions during the early morning hours of 5 December, the Soviet Twenty-ninth Army attacked across the ice-covered Volga west of Kalinin. They penetrated the German Ninth Army line for up to 10km before they were checked. On the following morning, which dawned clear with temperatures of −38°C, the soldiers of the West and South-west Fronts went over to the offensive. Drifting snow and near-Arctic conditions seriously impeded the final build-up, resulting in piecemeal attacks which gradually achieved a cumulative and unstoppable momentum.
The IInd Battalion of Schützen Regiment 114, part of 6th Panzer Division, in the village of Stepanowo immediately east of the Moscow-Volga canal line, reported on 6 December:
‘During the course of the morning there were signs of unrest among the civil population. The explanation – that Stepan-owo would be taken by the Russians, and that the Germans would leave – was laughed at by the German soldiers. Radio enquiries, however, confirmed the opposite. Soon part of the 7th Panzer Division was coming back along the Stepanowo-Shukowo road.’
A visit by General Model, the corps commander, to 6th Panzer Division headquarters at 10.00 hours, ‘produced a surprising direction,’ admitted the operations officer (1a). Model assessed Panzergruppe 3 had insufficient strength to hold the present line ‘against an enemy who had introduced an astonishing infusion of strength’ and was directing his main efforts against the northeastern flank. ‘As a consequence,’ Model directed, ‘the front must be shortened.’ Engineer rear area route and obstacle reconnaissance was ordered ‘at once’. The logistics (1b) officer was told to ferry back wounded and to begin the necessary reorganisation of the logistic rear support services.(6) Model’s corps was about to embark on its first retreat of the war. It was the third disappointment the 6th Panzer Division had experienced short of victory. They were halted at Dunkirk in 1940 and again before Leningrad in September 1941. Moscow was also to be denied them.
Artillery soldier Pawel Ossipow took part in the barrages that preceded the Russian attack on 6 December. As the infantry moved forward, their inexperience became increasingly apparent. ‘Particularly the youngsters,’ he said, were exposed to a lot of blood and witnessed the horror of war for the first time as wounded men died in deep snow at temperatures of −30°C.’ Pjotr Weselinokov also recoiled at the sights of‘our first battle’. He likened it to an abattoir. ‘The worse thing of all,’ he reflected,‘were the freshly killed bodies of soldiers left steaming’ where they lay in the frozen temperatures. ‘The air was filled with the peculiar stench of flesh and blood.’(7)
On the second day of the offensive, attacks gathered momentum. Thirty-first Army joined the stalled Twenty-ninth Army grappling with the German Ninth Army to the north, on the Kalinin front. They failed to force a passage across the Volga south of Kalinin. Thirtieth Army, however, made a deep 12km penetration into the Panzergruppe 3 flank north-east of Klin. First Shock and Twentieth armies crashed into both Panzergruppen 3 and 4 on a front from Yakhroma to west of Krassnaya Polyana. Some gains were made south of the latter in desperate fighting. Tenth Army, meanwhile, struck Second Panzer Army at the east point of the Tula bulge with one rifle division and two motorised infantry regiments. The rest of the army was still marching up from Syzran. South-west Front’s Second and Thirteenth armies began to apply pressure at Yelets at the southern base of the Tula bulge.