Barbarossa's Collapse

In examining the how and why of Operation Barbarossa's failure there is still a significant contingent of historians who believe the sheer numerical superiority of the Red Army had doomed Germany to defeat as early as the late summer of 1941. For instance, the vast majority of David Stahel's decade long work posits that the Wehrmacht in general, but the German army (Heer) in particular, had shot their bolt as early as August of 1941. Oftentimes, exhibit A for those making this argument is the manner in which Barbarossa fell apart late in 1941. It is my contention however, that events on Germany's Eastern Front during the final months of Barbarossa and the early months of 1942 did not in fact play out as they did because the German Ostheer (German army in the east) lacked the strength to carry the war to the larger Red Army. In fact, the Ostheer was far from beyond repair as the Red Army's winter offensives brought Barbarossa to an end.

This is not to deny that the Ostheer had taken a beating, but not simply because it had been worn down by a much larger enemy. Instead, there were significant qualitative reasons at play. These in particular involved questionable German decision making. From there, the second and near co-equal determinant had to be the efforts of a fiercely resisting Red Army, whose strenuous efforts would keep the Soviet Union in the war in spite of equally poor leadership on the part of Stalin and his cohorts. To that last point, in examining the Soviet position in November of 1941 things could hardly have been worse.

Germany's Army Group North not only had besieged Leningrad but stood dangerously close to linking up with Finnish troops. As it was it had, in taking Tikhvin (doing so on November 8th) completely enveloped and isolated Leningrad in every sense of the word. Meanwhile Army Group Center stood just outside the gates of Moscow. And I mean just outside. On November 28th the 7th Panzer Division crossed the Moscow-Volga Canal and its neighboring 2nd Panzer Division moved to within twelve miles northwest of Moscow. Meanwhile, Army Group South had cleared the entire Crimea minus Sevastopol (whose long and bloody siege began on November 16th). Maybe most importantly, Army Group South took Rostov on November 20th - the entry point to the Caucuses and the corresponding source of the vast majority of the economic resources fueling Soviet economic power.

Nevertheless, by November 1941 the Soviet Union's otherwise considerable pre-war industrial capacity had been greatly diminished. Axis forces occupied the bulk of the most economically productive areas of the Soviet Union. Regions lost to the Germans and their Axis allies included the pre-war sources of 92 percent of Soviet manganese, 71 percent of iron, 63 percent of coal output, 58 percent of steel production centers, the Ukrainian breadbasket representing the heart of Soviet food supply as well as forty percent of the pre-war Soviet labor force. If one adds in the staggering Soviet military casualties incurred during Barbarossa (roughly 4.5 million men) - the military and economic capacity of the Soviet Union had taken a horrible hit. Manpower losses were so bad at the front and from the Axis occupation of population centers in the Western Soviet Union that by early in 1942 high ranking Soviet generals were demanding that lower ranking officers exercise greater care be taken with their soldiers lives (i.e. reducing the numbers of horribly wasteful human wave attacks). Meanwhile the NKVD, Soviet Navy and even industrial centers were asked to release manpower for the army's insatiable needs while every single able-bodies man and woman between the ages of 14 and 55 were mobilized for the war effort.

Worse yet, by November of 1941 the Red Army still had no effective answer for Germany's panzer divsisions. The Mechanized Corps had long since all been destroyed or disbanded. It was so bad that the Red Army's primary armored formation during the fall and winter of 1941 was the tank brigade - an unbalanced grouping of men and a few dozen machines that couldn't hope to match up against even a badly worn down panzer division. Moreover, and as for the few tank divisions, they were often nowhere near what one would think of when they hear that term. For instance, on November 18th the Soviet 58th Tank Division, ostensibly and on paper one of the Red Army's most powerful armored groupings at the front, could deploy only 15 light tanks and five artillery pieces. The rifle armies that were the core of the Red Army were in an equally bad state. For example, the Soviet 50th Army reported on November 15th that to defend its 70 kilometer stretch of front six of its seven rifle divisions couldn't put more than 600-2,000 men into the field apiece and each was lucky to have only two or three artillery batteries.

In contrast the Ostheer was, in November of 1941...a mixed picture.

Strategically speaking it was obvious Barbarossa would come nowhere near meeeting it's original goals. This raises the question, did it need to? If you are someone that believes the brute force numbers game mattered more than anything else, then maybe it did. If on the other hand, you were one to take into account qualitative elements of success in warfare - then the answer is clearly no. Some have argued that because the Soviet Union did not just fold up within weeks of the German invasion that the Third Reich was doomed. Others point to the German failure to take Moscow in December of 1941 as the war's final tipping point against Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, it's my contention that a closer reading of the historical record demonstrates how Germany wrapped up Barbarossa would end up mattering far more to the Third Reich’s chances for securing hegemony over Europe than whether or not Moscow fell in 1941 no less the events of the previous summer. This is primarily because the German high command's pursuit of classic Prussian military objectives (including taking the city of Moscow as the Soviet Union's ostensible center of gravity and concomittant crushing of the Red Army in the field that would accompany any assault on Moscow) had proven irrelevant to the war's larger outcome. OKH's repeated attempts to destroy the Red Army in a single campaign season may have even played the greatest role in undermining the Third Reich's ability to cement the Third Reich’s future as a viable global superpower if for no other reason than becauase the Ostheer, in November 1941, had come only marginally closer to totally defeating the Red Army than it had been five months prior. In fact, by December of 1941 the Red Army had conclusively proven that given the economic base upon which it could still draw from that it would not be swept from the battlefield any time soon. Needless to say Barbarossa had been a strategic mess from the get-go but it had taken the Red Army's enduring resistance to force the Germans to learn that fact. As a result, and at the same time Operation Typhoon kicked off to great success (only to falter within a matter of weeks) Hitler and OKH had started revamping their strategic and military goals. The new objective would be what the original objective of Barbarossa should have been - seizing the critical economic resources in the Ukraine and southern Russia. Thereby not only providing the Third Reich with the resources to wage warfare across continents, but also permanently stunting the Red Army and Soviet rump state's to alter that strategic reality.

From a big picture perspective, during the fall of 1941 the Germans were finally moving onto firmer strategic ground. But only in part. In the interim Germany's leadership struggled to figure out when to wind down Barbarossa and set about rebuilding the Ostheer for its next campaign. This decision may have been one of the most important of the entire German-Russian war. That's because a decision to shut down Barbarossa before the Ostheer was completely run into the ground represented the difference from a 1942 edition of the Ostheer either just as or very nearly as powerful as the 1941 version or the German summer campaign of 1942 being hamstrung by not having enough resources to effectively support the offensive to come in Southern Russia. Seemingly inevitably, the Germans botched it. Perhaps given that this was the same military brain trust that birthed Barbarossa perhaps yet another strategic fumble was hardly a surprise.

As it was, command failure was part and parcel of a plan (Barbarossa) that at no time had settled on whether it's primary initial goal was to defeat the Red Army in the field or attempt to secure economic resources so as to cement Germany’s position as a continental hegemon while concomittantly weakening the Soviet position. At absolutely no point during the planning or execution of Barbarossa had the Germans answered those questions. In the fall of 1941 the Germans were finally doing so, doubtlessly in recognition of the fact that defeating the Red Army was proving a task beyond the means they had assigned to the campaign. Regardless, the advance on Moscow stumbled forward and did so even after the November 13th OKH conference at Orsha that had been called to debate the issue. There, the primary German military leaders of the campaign, in particular Halder, decided to continue grinding away toward Moscow. Tellingly, the Chiefs of Staff of Army Groups North and South insisted the campaign should be shut down - thereby preserving the Ostheer's still formidable strength and allowing time to rebuild behind a strong defensive bullwark for the anticipated spring 1942 campaign. Even Bock and his Chief Supply Officer (who insisted that for logistical reasons the campaign was done) was ready to reign in OKH's increasingly unrealistic goals. Though wanting to continue the campaign Army Group Center's command at least argued that its armies should move in a direct path on Moscow, cease the previous attempts at envelopment, and then go into winter quarters. Nevertheless, Halder and Brauchitsch decided instead to push on in the same wide ranging fashion with which they had conducted the entire campaign. This happened for a number of reasons but it would be hard to overlook Halder's role in undermining Hitler's more sensible arguments to focus on economic targets and instead insist that if Moscow was attacked the Red Army could be destroyed in place defending the Soviet capital. In turn, and relying on inaccurate intelligence estimates from OKH, Hitler ultimately swung around to back OKH's position. Thus he joined Halder and Brauchitsch in being the key players setting up the final German offensive of Barbarossa - scheduled to begin on November 15, 1941.

The inability to let go of Barbarossa's now unrealistic expectations exacerbated the German problems in resetting for a direct drive on Moscow. OKH and Hitler's earlier decision to envelope Moscow had forced Army Group Center's powerful panzer army's to spend much of the latter part of October and into November moving ever further northeast and southeast of the Soviet capital. This was done while those same armies fought on the end of a logistical rope not only at its breaking point but clearly so even during Typhoon's early days of October's first week. For example, within days of Typhoon's launch Guderian’s Second Panzer Army suffered from serious fuel shortages. As a result, Guderian’s spearheads (two panzer and one motorized division) went from covering 120 miles in just a few days to sitting in place at Orel while waiting for fuel. It ended up taking two full days in otherwise excellent weather conditions (four full days prior to the onset of the season's first snowfall and subsequent destruction of the region's poor road network) before resupply arrived. Even then it wasn't enough. Though Second Panzer Army's lead kampfgruppe's reached the key Soviet industrial city of Tula in late October, Soviet counter-attacks and supply shortages meant the Second Panzer Army spent much of the next three weeks stuck in place and not able to resume their attack. Meanwhile, on October 19th, and as the great pockets of trapped Soviet soldiers west of Moscow finally began to collapse, Halder didn't order Bock to direct the Third and Fourth Panzer Army directly at Moscow. Instead he commanded Bock to direct his panzers at Rybinsk, i.e. north and east of Moscow. Moreover, this order was given in spite of the fact that on on October 7th the first snows fell in northern and central Russia.

A steady mix of snow and rain turned dirt roads into a quagmire of mud, sucking any non-tracked vehicle into its grip. Losses of German wheeled vehicles soared. For instance, in November 1941, the Ostheer lost 5,996 trucks largely because it had been forced to continue a sweeping advance when the logistical situation didn't allow it and the weather had made things worse yet. However, one should not overstate the impact of the weather on the course of German operations. Barbarossa's failure stemmed from the plan's structure itself, German decision-making during the campaign, and the Red Army's brutally stubborn, costly, but ultimately effective enough resistance. Furthermore, its worth remembering that a core reason the German army lacked the tracked transport and allotment of armored fighting vehicles it had initially desired was that when the time was available to leisurely build up a much more mechanized army the Germans had instead diverted enormous amounts of steel and other such resources into projects like the Siegfried Line (West Wall) and the Kriegsmarine's expensive but largely irrelevant surface fleet. Thus, the weather was only one of many elements undermining Barbarossa. Moreover, had Germany's leadership managed the campaign better, (particularly as it evolved and it became increasingly unlikely that Barbarossa's central premise - that the Soviet Union would just collapse under attack - proved untenable) then they likely could have handled the atrocious weather and reached Moscow in spite of the Red Army’s dogged resistance. Instead, in the weeks following the onset of the season's first snowfall the German advance limped ever eastward at a diminishing pace. The deteriorating speed of the advance occurred even after the ground began to freeze and thus offer better movement opportunities. This was because the weather difficulties were incidental to the fact the Germans had been neglecting the Ostheer's logistical foundation for so long and the related problems had become so severe they were severely impacting the combat operations of all three army groups.

Logistical issues coupled with the aforementioned poor German decision-making and the Red Army's propensity to fight hard even in defeat all worked together to undermine Barbarossa. These three factors were also far more important determinants in Barbarossa's outcome than German losses in men and machines as of November of 1941 or other such quantitative measures of describing the Ostheer's operational readiness. In fact, the continued resilience of the Ostheer early in November of 1941 coupled with the immense losses taken to date by the Red Army meant that at no other point during the entire war did the Ostheer have such a quantitative advantage over the Red Army in key measures of military strength not least of which being armored fighting vehicles. Moreover, couple numerical superiority in motor vehicles, armored fighting vehicles and the like with the Wehrmacht's pre-exising qualitative advantages and the Ostheer had it stopped its advance in November might have been able to cement a a significant advantage over the Red Army in all facets to such an extant as to radically shape the subsequent course of the war. For some such a statement is more than a little controversial. The conventional wisdom as promulgated by brute force influenced analysts of the war's outcome to this day states that the Ostheer had suffered such debilitating losses by November of 1941 that Germany's entire war effort was shot.

Because of the controversial nature of this issue let's further unpack it in part via examining the state of the Ostheer's panzer divisions in November of 1941. Now, there is no question that the German panzer divisions were in nowhere near the condition they had been on the eve of Typhoon, no less the start of Barbarossa. But did this mean that they were so spent, so lacking in the panzer that made the panzer division - that the German war effort was doomed? That they might as well fold up their tents rather than face Soviet tank brigades numbering a few dozen vehicles at best?  Let's see. For instance, in looking at the 5th Panzer Division we find it reporting as late as November 29th that it still had some 101 tanks on its books. Two days later the 7th Panzer Division could report 52 tanks in running condition, with another 142 in some state of repair. Meanwhile, the 6th Panzer Division had reported on October 31st that it had 66 operational panzers and 142 such vehicles in total on its roster (with the remainder in repair).

Now, as November dragged on and the Germans pushed themselves well past the campaign's culmination point we see tank numbers trending lower. For instance, we see the 1st Panzer Division reporting 37 operational tanks on November 30th. The 10th Panzer Division had a comparable 40 operational tanks as reported the next day. The 3rd Panzer Division was down to 22 operational tanks on December 6th, while the 18th Panzer Division had the same number of runners. Meanwhile the 6th Panzer Division had gone from 66 operational tanks on October 31st to four on November 30th. But again, each of these panzer divisions had huge numbers of vehicles in the repair shops just behind the front lines. For instance, as late as December 22nd - meaning well past the point the initial Soviet counter-offensives had driven the Germans west in disarray and forced them to leave many disabled tanks behind - both Army Group North and Center (the worst hit of the three German army groups) still had in their sixteen combined panzer divisions 1,185 tanks on their books (405 operational) or 74 tanks per division (25 operational).

Though this meant the panzer divisions had taken dreadful losses it also meant because the Red Army had suffered that much more that each panzer division individually still represented the most powerful collection of armor on any battlefield at that time. Moreover, all of this shows that had the Germans shut down their campaign when it was clearly at the point it couldn't possibly take its assigned objectives (which could have been as late as December 1st for Army Group Center) that given the large stocks of serviceable vehicles in each panzer division even three or four days of rest and refitting would have significantly increased the number of operational panzers per division. This meant that any rest and refitting period even marginally longer than that (say five days or more) likely would have resulted in Zhukov's carefully marshalled reserves running into a veritable brick wall where ever Soviet forces hit a panzer divison possessing 80-100 operational panzers instead of the couple dozen faced in reality. An outcome that would have likely killed the Soviet counter-offensives before they got far and allowed the Germans to consolidate their defensive positions in far better shape than what would in fact occur.

Even more illuminative is what happens if we take further the argument that poor German decision making proved more important than other determinants in not only Barbarossa's outcome but the subsequent shape of the Ostheer as 1941 came to a close. For instance, what if the Germans had actually practiced what they preached and really had made the effort in the Soviet Union the sole schwerpunkt of their strategic effort in 1941. Remember this was a time when they faced no other outside threat capable of posing a serious challenge to the German position in Europe. For instance, in the fall of 1941 two entire panzer divisions were doing little more than defending Italy's strategically irrelevant Egyptian colony against a fairly weak British 8th Army that couldn't hope to take the battle to Germany in any place but the eastern Libyan desert. Conversevely Rommel and his men equally couldn't hope to defeat the 8th Army without massive reinforcement. What's more, and in spite of this waste of time and effort on November 18, 1941 these two panzer divisons, the 15th and 21st, had between them 77 Panzer II, 145 Panzer III, 38 Panzer IV, and 14 command tanks. This represented enough operational tanks that either panzer division in and of itself was stronger in tank numbers than any panzer division then deployed in the Soviet Union. Put another way, these panzer divisions in Libya were roughly equivalent to the striking power of the two fresh panzer divisions that joined the Ostheer and reinvigorated Army Group Center on the eve of Operation Typhoon. Panzer divisions that helped produce an epic victory seeing the Red Army lose one million of the one and a quarter million men initially assembled to defend the approaches to Moscow, and an estimated 830-1,300 tanks, and 6,000 artillery pieces, anti-tank guns and mortars. Moreover, Afrika Corps existing panzer contingent was so strong that in November of 1941 it rivalled that of the entire First Panzer Army's tank park. Of course the First Panzer Army was then desperately fighting for the city of Rostov - an objective of strategic value dwarfing the importance of the open desert along the Egpytian-Libyan border and where the Afrika Corps prodigious reserves of panzers were then deployed. But that wasn't even half of the problem. In the bruising attritional battle that the British led "Crusader" offensive closing out 1941 became, Afrika Corps would be pounded west well into Libya. In this process Rommel would lose 195 tanks as total write-offs and yet get dozens of replacement vehicles in December of 1941 alone. These replacements rivalled what the Germans saw fit to send to entire panzer armies then reeling under the weight of the Red Army's counter-strokes during that same month. An example of misplaced priorities to rival this one is tough to find in a year that otherwise was chock full of mistakes made by every party then in the war.

Nevertheless, even with substantial German armored reserves being redirected into the Mediterranean the Ostheer, in mid-November still held a powerful collection of armored assets such that early in November 1941 the Germans deployed in the Soviet Union some 2,000 armored fighting vehicles. These figures meant Germany enjoyed a slight quantitative advantage over the Red Army in AFV’s and heavy weapons for the first time in the war; to couple with overwhelming qualitative advantages in trained men, organization, and tactical leadership. This represented a powerful base to rebuild from. Had the Germans gone into winter quarters during November of 1941 one can extrapolate that based upon the actual rebuilding process occurring throughout the first half of 1942 the entire Ostheer, and not just Army Group South, may have been even more powerful in late June of 1942 than it had been one year prior. Now, before you say wait a second - panzer strength isn't the whole story; what about manpower...well, let's take a look.

From June 22nd to the end of November the Ostheer had suffered 926,100 casualties (including sick and those weather related). Given the Ostheer's organic replacement battalions had held 90,000 men at the onset of Barbarossa and that the German divisions had received another 410,000 replacements in this same period this meant a total shortfall in personnel by early December 1941 of 426,221 men. This is a sizeable number that if averaged out across the 1,201 combat battalions the Ostheer then deployed represented as much as 33-42% of the Sollstarke of German infantry (861 men) and motorized infantry battalions (1,089 men) then deployed on Germany's eastern front. However, these losses were far from out of line for an army that had been campaigning for five straight months. This again implies that had the Germans shut down Typhoon when they debated that very issue at Orsha - not only would a percentage of these losses have been avoided (as the fighting in late November was costly) but as was shown repeatedly through the Second World War if you gave an infantry division days, no less weeks, to rest and rehabilitate plus dig in and set up appropriate defensive positions - it could very credibly defend itself even if operating down a third of its strength.

This is important to understand because one of the worst impacts of the Soviet counter-offensives stemmed from how they hit the German divisions strung out in the open. As a result, and among other things, the retreating German soldiers left vast quantities of equipment in their wake. For instance the Fourth Panzer Army reported that over just two days (December 18th and 19th) two of its corps had left behind 155 howitzers, 40 anti-tank guns, and hundreds of mortars and machine guns. Manpower losses were equally appalling. All told the Ostheer suffered 168,151 casualties in December. This represented fifteen percent of Germany's total losses during Barbarossa (1,094,251 total casualties, including 167,354 dead, between June 22 and December 31, 1941). Horses, one of the German army's prime sources of mobility, had suffered horribly with 179,132 dead by the end of January (from the initial 625,000 horses accompanying the Ostheer's legions). Tank losses skyrocketed with 2,735 tanks and 104 assault guns written off as total losses by the end of 1941 but more importantly nearly twenty percent of these losses occuring just in Army Group Center's panzer divisions during Barbarossa's final weeks. Meanwhile, the Luftwaffe had lost 2,505 aircraft as completely destroyed during the same June 22 to December 31, 1941 period. In addition the Luftwaffe by January of 1942 had written off as destroyed or temporarily in repair 85,000 of the 100,000 vehicles accompanying the Luftwaffe into the Soviet Union as part of Barbarossa.

In aportioning blame one can discuss the weather (as many are wont to do) but the reality was that the Red Army took advantage of a situation the Germans had created for themselves.  A situation the Red Army had desperately needed because had the Germans not acted so recklessly, one can argue about extending the campaign anywhere from one week to a month too far but as we shall see in a moment the problems created by this decision had been inordinately multiplied by the decision to yank badly needed military assets from the region, than the Soviet position would have been even more dire by December of 1941. That's because the Red Army had suffered over four times as many casualties as had the Germans with Soviet losses by the end of 1941 reaching 4,473,820 casualties. Regarding experienced manpower, the reserves redeployed west from the Far East in the fall and winter of 1941, some 27 experienced, well-equipped divisions, represented the last combat ready forces. In addition, Soviet equipment losses were staggering at; 159,000 motor vehicles, 24,400 field artillery pieces, 12,100 anti-tank guns, 4,100 anti-aircraft guns, 20,500 tanks, and anywhere from 10,600 to 21,200 aircraft (depending upon the source). A Red Army that had 90,000 guns and mortars on hand prior to Barbarossa, was down to 21,933 guns and mortars by December 1, 1941.

If not for the tanks and planes redeployed from the Far East, the Red Army would have defended Moscow with scarcely any heavy weapons. Moreover, the need to relocate factories had not only diverted nearly two thirds of all rail capacity for over three months, but also had significantly cut into the Soviet Union’s previously planned armaments output for the year.For example, aircraft production fell from 2,329 aircraft built in September to 627 in November. Ammunition output fell by over half. As for armor, without Lend-Lease (Allied convoy PQ-1 had delivered the first Lend-Lease shipment in October of 1941) the Red Army's tank park would have been even more threadbare. As it was, by January 1, 1942 a quarter of the Red Army’s medium and heavy tanks in service were British.

In fact, and given all of this it hardly seems as if the German position in the war against the Soviet Union was one of inevitable defeat. However, there was something else going on as well. Something that had nothing to do with the supposed inability of the German economy to equip its war machine with enough assets to compete with the Red Army. But something that had everything to do with qualitative reasons for explaining the war's outcome: in this case that element once again was German decision-making. For instance, even though Leningrad, Moscow, and the Caucuses were very much in big trouble they hadn't fallen yet. But the Germans acted like they had. And so with the ability to fundamentally and perhaps irrerepairably harm the Soviet war effort within reach the Germans acted as if they had already won.

Beginning in October of 1941 and continuining into November significant military assets were transferred from the German eastern front. This included seven divisions representing six infantry and one cavalry division in total. Three came from Army Group South (who might have been able to hang onto Rostov with such substantial support) and four from Army Group Center. Worse yet, during Barbarossa's final months the Germans also removed from Russia the headquarters of Luftflotte 2 and twenty-four air groups. Much of this substantial firepower went to support the ongoing operation to defend Italy's Libyan colony. Fourteen of these air groups were of attack aircraft (including dive bombers, bombers, and invaluable close-support asssets). This represented substantial losses to an Ostheer heavily dependent on airpower (which the Germans used as flying artillery). As a result and by January 1, 1942 only one third the Luftwaffe's strength was even deployed in the Soviet Union.

It cannot be stressed enough how much these losses hurt the German military effort. For example, when the German command stripped Kesselring’s 2nd Luftflotten from Army Group Center and ordered it to Sicily this meant that among other things, Soviet reinforcements could assemble in and around Moscow with a degree of freedom from German air attack that they had hardly experienced since the war began. As a result, between the November 15th start of the renewed German push on Moscow and December 2nd the Red Army would fly five times as many sorties as the Luftwaffe over the front outside Moscow. This explains why accounts of this period often mention how the Red Army's aviators were able to in many cases reclaim temporary air superiority over the Germans in select sectors of the front during the winter of 1941-42. It wasn't that Soviet factories were dramatically outstripping German output in the fall of 1941, it was because the Germans largely had what they needed to accomplish their objectives in a measured multi-year campaign but instead chose to disperse their effort in the wild goose chase to defeat the Red Army while simultaneously engaging in a barely coordinated land-grab that was the Barbarossa plan, all while pouring ample resources into strategic dead ends like Libya, or on wide ranging envelopment operations north and south of Moscow in the days following Operation Typhoon's initial success. All done in lieu of concentrating the Wehrmacht's power at the exact moment needed to press home the hard-fought advantages won in the previous months and over Germany's toughest foe to date.

All of the above is how Barbarossa's final days featured local Soviet counterattacks evolving into larger counter-offensives that drove the German army groups back. Army Group South was the first to retreat. By November 20th First Panzer Army had finally captured Rostov on the Don River; the launching pad for a viable offensive into the Caucuses and the interdiction, destruction of, or capture of the overwhelming majority of the oil needed to fuel the Soviet economy and propel the Red Army. However, on November 22nd Timoshenko’s 9th, 18th, 37th, and 56th Armies counterattacked. In a raging six day battle the Soviet forces gradually gained the upper hand over the exhausted First Panzer Army, forcing the Germans to retreat from Rostov on November 28th. The magnitude of this outcome is not often appreciated today. However, in spite of the litany of defeats endured by Soviet forces in the Ukraine and Southern Russia during 1941 this sole victory was the first step in stopping the German summer campaign of 1942 that would decide the war.

From there, Army Group North had driven well east of Leningrad, taking Tikhvin on November 8th but spreading itself so thin that only ten infantry divisions, two motorized divisions, and two panzer divisions (with roughly 100 tanks and assault guns in total) defended the entire two hundred plus mile wide German front between Lake Ladoga and Lake Il’men - a front five times wider than that held by Army Group North in October of 1941. One month later Tikhvin was once again in Russian hands as the Soviet 4th, 52nd, and 54th Armies (all told 192,950 men) had spent the remainder of November and into December driving the overextended Germans west. With two panzer and one motorized division, the XXXIX Corps had represented Army Group North's striking power for much of Barbarossa's final weeks. Early in November of 1941 it had still been a formidable force (albeit nowhere near as lavishly equipped as the Afrika Corps). Nevertheless, because Hitler and OKH had pushed Barbarossa too far, by December 22nd this powerful corps was a shell of its former self - with only 60 operational tanks in its two panzer divisions and its 18th Motorized Division having lost a staggering 9,000 men.

Meanwhile, the final plan to take Moscow that had been decided upon at the Orsha conference sowed the seeds of Barbarossa's final defeat. The plan was again one woefully optimistic in light of the inadequate logistical resources gathered to support Army Group Center's final drive of the campaign. For instance and for weeks German locomotives had broken down with a stunning regularity in the harsh Russian winter. As a result supply trains running east were in the process of declining by one third from where they had been in September 1941 - with the transit crisis afflicting the railways (and thus the army group's lifeblood) reaching its nadir in January 1942. Thus, in spite of the fact for months it had been completely obvious logistical support proved hardly adequate, the Germans had persisted in constructing a plan for taking Moscow dependant upon two huge armored pincers, Third and Fourth Panzer Army to the north and Second Panzer Army to the south, coupled with Fourth Army's infantry intensive effort in the center all seeking to operate virtually independently and envelope an enormous metropolitan area the size of Moscow. All ordered up in lieu of simply taking what was there and directly marching upon and breaking into the city - which had the Germans attempted such a move there was no way the Red Army could have stopped them and any efforts to do so doubtlessly would have drained Zhukov's reserves before he could emply them as he wished.

This is all evidenced by the fact that regardless of the lack of logistical support on November 27th German soldiers took the suburb of Klin. The next day German forces crossed the Volga-Moscow Canal at Yakhroma and thus had traversed the last major geographical barrier blocking a German path to encircling the city. Just days later the 11th Panzer Division's spearheads approached to within sixteen miles of Moscow. Further south, Guderian’s 17th Panzer Division penetrated into Kashira on the Oka River, the last natural defensive barrier blocking Second Panzer Army's path to envelope Moscow from the south. Then, on December 1st, a patrol from the Fourth Panzer Army had slipped past the Soviet 16th Army’s lines and reached Khimki, and thus stood only about eleven miles from the actual Kremlin. At the same time the 11th Panzer Division's III. Abteilung/A.R. 119 brought up a 10cm K 18 long-range gun (maxium range 18.9 kilometers) with plans to begin shelling Moscow. Problematically however, Kluge's Fourth Army had failed to pace his peers aggressive pace. In addition, the Soviet 16th and 30th Army's had maintained their force structure as they fell back, denying the Germans the chance to destroy them in place while fixing their foes attention as Zhukov gathered his reserves for his planned counter-attack. But the Germans were coming close enough to the capital that Stavka had to react. Though counterattacks had all too often proved more painful to the Red Army than the German army that is nevertheless what happened.

As a result and beginning on November 28th the 1st Shock and 20th Armies counter-attacked earlier than Zhukov perhaps would have liked, albeit enjoying substantial close air support in skies denuded of German aircraft sent to the Mediterranean. This initial counterstroke promptly forced the Germans to retreat back over the Moscow-Volga Canal while Third Panzer Army and Ninth Army went onto the defense on November 30th followed by Fourth Army on December 2nd. Though historical accounts regard the December 5-7th period as the big opening of the Soviet counterstrokes around Moscow the reality is that local counterattacks had been launched by the Western Front's forces in particular for the better part of a week before becoming the grander counteroffensive that they did. The concept of a larger counteroffensive had been kicking around Stavka since early in November but it was only toward the end of the month, and the realization that Barbarossa was finally running out of steam, that the Soviet command authorized the Western Front to strike back. Zhukov received substantial reinforcements for his command, including the 1st Shock Army mentioned earlier.

As befitting its name the 1st Shock Army was the initial army of five shock armies formed from December 1941 to the end of 1942. Shock armies typically contained more heavy weapons, including tanks and artillery, than did standard armies and the 1st Shock Army was no exception. With nine rifle brigades, twelve ski battalions, an artillery regiment, a tank battalion plus an extra company of KV series heavy tanks plus two divisions of Katiusha rocket launchers it was one of the best equipped Soviet armies in the Western Front. In a rolling counteroffensive beginning December 3rd to 5th the 1st Shock, 16th Army, 20th Army, and 30th Army's began to push the Germans back.

The German forces were strung out in the open with no prepared defensive positions. Worse yet, this final three week effort had seen Army Group Center eat itself while accomplishing little more than seize land. For example, as German panzers broke down or were knocked out - their expensively trained tank crews were ordered into the meat grinder as infantry. As were anti-aircraft crews, artillerymen, engineers, signals specialists, and the other specialists who formed the vital core of an effective fighting formation. With these men, even if the infantry were bled white albeit assuming NCO and junior officer losses were not catastrophic, a combat division could rebuild itself in relatively short order. Without them, and those same formations would need months of rest and rehabilitation they were not going to get in the kind of numbers needed to maintain the 1942 Ostheer in the condition it had been in for much of 1941. And it was at this moment late in December's first week that Zhukov struck with the mass of his reserves. Though he had managed to gather 1.1 million men Zhukov had only been able to scrape up 700-800 tanks (depending upon the source) - a telling statistic that once again reaffirms how powerful the German position had been early in November of 1941. Of the Western Front's tank park only 205 were KV series or T-34's.

All of the above also reminds us that had the Germans even called it off one week prior there would have been little chance for the Red Army to force Army Group Center into anything like the retreat it subsequently engineered. As it was, Zhukov's men pounded into Army Group Center and drove it west, with the general withdrawal only ending a few weeks later in the pause before the Red Army's January 1942 offensive. Interestingly enough, and though German equipment losses were heavy, Army Group Center's three panzer armies (with over one dozen panzer divisions between them) only lost just over twice as many tanks in December as did Afrika Corps two panzer divisions in November and December, (496 tanks to 195).  On a percentage basis this once again shows how wasteful the fighting in North African was at a time when the Germans needed to do everything they could to bolster their position in the Soviet Union for when they renewed their offensive in 1942. But the Germans weren't doing that. Instead the Red Army was the army getting all the support that its command could muster. For instance, the Soviet Western Front received three independent tank battalions to bolster its counteroffensive against Army Group Center. Just one of those battalions, the 133rd Independent Tank Battalion (with ten KV heavy tanks, one T-34 medium tank, and twenty T-60 light tanks) represented a stronger collection of armor reinforcements than any of Army Group Center's panzer armies received in the entirety of December 1941.

In that regard we are getting ahead of ourselves however, because  the Red Army wasn't finished with its first grasp at holding the initiative. Stalin overrode the objection of Zhukov and ordered a January 1942 frontwide offensive. This began on January 7, 1942. Though it put immense pressure on German Army Groups North and Center in particular - it was enormously costly. The Red Army's Fronts simply lacked the firepower and mobility to comprehensively defeat the German armies. Though its commonplace to point out that the Red Army had already secured an advantage in gun tubes over German artillery across much of the front one of the things not often mentioned is the paucity of ammunition. For instance, the Soviet 4th Army, fighting near Tikhvin had on average only seven rounds per day available for its 122mm howitzers and 120mm mortars. Even 82mm mortars weren't allowed to fire more than fourteen rounds per day. This is because in January of 1942 only 79 percent of the planned trainloads of munitions and supplies were even loaded and sent to railheads near the front. From there the lack of motorized transport meant that only 35 percent of the planned trainloads of supplies even reached the combat troops. For food the situation was even worse with only 27.7 percent of the planned truckloads reaching the front. Again, though the increased size of the Red Army's motor vehicle pool in January of 1942 is often cited as evidence of its rejuvenative ability (having gone from 272,600 such vehicles in June of 1941 to 318,500 vehicles in January of 1942) the Red Army had only done so by stripping the civilian sector bare (with all that implies for feeding the Soviet workforce and civilian sector) while adding not nearly enough additional vehicles to cope with the increase in manpower being directed to the military. And though the German army's use of horses is often pointed out as evidence of the Ostheer's increasing frailty, the Red Army was no different. On December 24, 1941 the Red Army formed the first of seventy-six independent horse-drawn transport battalions to compensate for the lack of trucking capacity.

Given logistical probems such as these it should be no suprise that the front wide effort stretched the battered Red Army far too thin and results were nowhere near what had been over-optimistically expected. For that matter, the same problems afflicting the Red Army continued to be an issue: poor reconnaissance, inadequate communications, a lack of iniative in the officer corps and the resultant reliance on frontal human wave assaults, inadequate logistical backing, an inability to effectively combine arms, and a general failure to exercise sound command and control as well as a lack of motorized transport all contributed to the Red Army's inability to defeat the German forces. As did the impatience of Stalin and Zhukov and the rest of the senior Soviet leadership who continually pushed ill equipped and under supplied forces to attack regardless of the circumstances. Casualties soared as a result with the January 8 to April 20 1942 counteroffensive against Army Group Center alone resulting in three quarters of the men committed being killed or wounded (1,059,200 troops initially allocated for the offensive and 272,300 killed, missing, or captured with another 504,569 evacuated as sick or wounded). Equipment losses similarly reached tremendous levels. As early as February 19th the Western Front's initial January 7th strength of 709 tanks was down to only 153 operational vehicles. By April 1942 the Battle for Moscow that had begun with Germany's Operation Typhoon in September 1941 had ended as the larger Soviet offensive had sputtered out. Though fighting continued across the front, the Germans had stemmed the worst of their bleeding. The Ostheer set about rebuilding. Readying itself once more to carry the fight deeper yet into the Soviet Union.