War and Game

At Anzio, the beachhead forces remained under tension. It was easy enough for a visitor arriving in April to gain a false impression of safety and calm. Despite the visible destruction around the tiny harbor, the men appeared cheerful, even insouciant. Except for 750 Italian civilian laborers, the population was entirely military; 22,000 men, women, and children had been evacuated to Naples soon after the landings and more than 100,000 troops had taken their places. In apparent unconcern over the danger that struck periodically, men unloaded vessels, trucked supplies to inland dumps, and performed the duties normal in all military installations. The occasional white plume of water that rose as an enemy shell plunged into the bay had an impersonal air. Yet the next shell to whistle over the beachhead might land in the hold of a ship or blow to pieces a jeep driving through Nettuno. At any moment one or a dozen German planes might swoop out of the sun to lay a deadly trail of bombs and bullets.

The horror of the beachhead was the constant, yet hidden presence of death. Casualties were never numerous at any one time. But the continual waiting and expectancy produced strain, for every part of the beachhead was vulnerable to enemy guns and planes. To reduce the accuracy of incoming shells and bombs, a host of smoke generators created artificial fog-smoke pots were placed in a semicircle paralleling the beachhead perimeter and on boats screening the port. During the day the smoke produced a light haze, at night a dense low-hanging cloud. Yet the smoke could neither obstruct nor deflect the random shell, the lucky bomb.

German shells and bombs struck ammunition dumps, Quartermaster depots, and medical installations. Casualties among medical personnel alone totaled 92 killed (including 6 nurses), 367 wounded, and 79 missing or captured for the four months that the beachhead existed.

Trenches, foxholes, dugouts, and pits throughout the beachhead protected men and materiel. Tons of earth pushed up by bulldozers made walls to shelter the neatly stacked piles of gasoline cans and ammunition. Dirt and sandbag revetments ringed the hospital tents, reinforced with planking for added protection to shock wards and operating rooms.

That the port of Anzio continued to operate at all was a testimonial to the quiet courage it took to work under the hazardous conditions. On 29 March, when 7,828 tons of supplies were brought ashore, Anzio in terms of unloading operations was the fourth largest port in the world.

The logistical lifeline, which made possible the continued existence of the beachhead, was a substantial supply effort. Despite the hope of a relatively quick linkup between the beachhead and main front forces, the planners had from the first established supply runs from North African ports and from NapIes. Liberty ships, LST's, and LCT's, some carrying preloaded trucks and DUKW's, brought the means of waging war and the necessities of life, plus some luxuries, to the men in the beachhead.

From 28 January on, weather permitting, a convoy of six LST's departed Naples daily for the 100-mile trip to Anzio. Each vessel carried fifty trucks, a total of 300 per convoy. Each truck was loaded to maximum 5-ton capacity, then backed on a ship for the voyage so that it could be driven off quickly at the destination. The 1,500 tons of cargo carried generally consisted of 60 percent ammunition, 20 percent fuel, and 20 percent rations-for sustaining the beachhead forces and stockpiling items for the coming spring offensive. At Anzio, empty trucks were ready to be driven aboard the unloaded LST's for return to Naples.

Other vessels supplemented the daily LST shuttle. Each week fifteen LCT's made a round trip between Naples and Anzio. Every ten days four Liberty ships, usually loaded at North African ports, arrived at the beachhead.

LST's and LCT's docked in the harbor of Anzio, Liberty ships unloaded offshore, their cargoes brought into the harbor or over the beaches by a fleet of 20 LCT's, almost 500 DUKW's, and a few LCI's. By 1 February the port was handling 8 LST's, 8 LCT's, and 15 LCI's simultaneously. The volume of supplies, for example, enabled the 450 artillery pieces in the beachhead by mid-February to fire an average of 20,000 rounds per day.

Because hospital ships were unable to dock at the Anzio wharf, LCT's ferried patients to the ships standing offshore. Air evacuation was impossible because the dust raised by the planes landing and taking off brought immediate artillery fire from the enemy.

Despite bad weather, relatively poor unloading facilities, and enemy bombardment and shelling, more than half a million tons of supplies were discharged at Anzio during four months, a daily average of about 4,000 tons. No serious supply shortages ever developed at the beachhead.

Anzio became the epic stand on a lonely beachhead. But the dogged courage of the men on that isolated front could not dispel the general disappointment- the amphibious operation had not led to the quick capture of Rome.

Furthermore, the expedition had approached disaster, averted only by the grim determination of the troops to hold. What made it possible for the forces at Anzio to endure a situation fraught with defeat was the logistical support they received. Without Allied command of the sea, the very concept of Anzio would have been out of the question. And in the end it was support across the water, tied to courage on the battlefield that turned near tragedy into a victory of sorts.

The operations at Anzio taught two immediate lessons: an amphibious assault needed more strength in the initial landing and an immediate drive to key points inland. These were heeded by the planners who prepared OVERLORD.

To the individual combat soldier, the bitter cold weather of January had added to the discomfort of fighting in mud and water. 'Vet foxholes were the rule, freezing nights the norm, and trench foot and illness the result. A sharp rise in artillery expenditure rates during the last ten days of the month seemed to have little effect, and, added to other causes for concern, gave "every evidence that the enemy intends to prevent, at all costs, the occupation of Rome and juncture of the main Fifth Army with the Anzio forces."

The estimate was correct. On 31 January, when Vietinghoff informed Kesselring that he intended to continue to hold his ground, he indicated that the focal point of his defense was the Cassino massif. If he needed to reinforce the XIV Panzer Corps to prevent the Fifth Army from breaking through, he would weaken the LXXVI Panzer Corps by taking troops from the Adriatic front.

Kesselring was satisfied. "In full agreement with intentions as reported," he said.

At the beginning of February, the Germans had a dual task: eliminate the Anzio beachhead and hold the Gustav Line. The Allied lodgment, if expanded sufficiently to threaten the major lines of communication running south from Rome, would compel the Germans to abandon the Gustav Line and give up southern Italy. Yet the Allied pressure around Cassino to gain entrance into the Liri valley made it impossible for the Germans to divert forces to Anzio from the Gustav Line. In fact, the attacks against the Gustav Line required that more strength be concentrated along the Rapido-Garigliano line than had ever before been committed against the Fifth Army, so much more that Kesselring would have to draw on his strength at Anzio to bolster the Gustav defenses early in February. If the Gustav Line could be held until enough units were gathered at Anzio to eliminate the beachhead, the situation in southern Italy would remain the same as it was before the amphibious operation. The Allied forces would have suffered a crushing defeat and would still be a considerable distance from Rome.

The four German divisions that had been fully committed along the Gustav Line early in January had been increased by the beginning of February to an equivalent of about six divisions, and additional units would appear almost daily despite the requirements of Anzio. Opposite 10 Corps, the 94th Division occupied the coastal area, its eastern flank bolstered by part of the 29th Panzer Grenadier Division. Against II Corps were parts of the 15th Panzer Grenadier, the 71st Infantry, and the 3d Panzer Grenadier Divisions, all of which also had units at Anzio, and the entire 44th Infantry Division. Facing the French were part of the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division and the entire 5th Mountain Division.

All these organizations except the 29th Panzer Grenadier and 71st Divisions had been in the line continuously for at least a month and most of them for longer. All were seriously depleted, the 71st in particular, and not enough replacements were coming in to return the units to full strength. The 44th Division for example, had received approximately 1,000 replacements in January but had lost the same number as prisoners.

In the critical sector, the area immediately around Cassino, the 44th and 71st Divisions, as well as a few units of the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division, had received a battering as they held tenaciously in the hills north and west of the town. To augment these troops and at the same time permit the relatively strong 29th Panzer Grenadier Division to move to Anzio, Vietinghoff would transfer the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division to the Cassino area from the Adriatic coast; units would begin arriving piecemeal around 7 February. A day or so later the 1st Parachute Division would come from the Adriatic front, to be joined at the Gustav Line by units of the division that had earlier been rushed to Anzio. The veteran paratroopers would take positions in the hills behind Cassino. Monte Cassino would become their fortress.

‘A thirteen year old boy manned a machine gun against advancing Allied tanks on the Rhineland frontier, while his mates passed the ammunition. An execution squad composed of 14-16 year olds shot Polish civilian hostages. A monument was erected to a boy still living, commemorating the fact that he denounced his father “loyally to the Führer“: (the father was executed for treason). Herbert Norkus, the Hitler Youth martyr, is the Horst Wessel of most of Germany's young today. Seven years of Nazi indoctrination, at a most susceptible age, in the Hitler Youth has done its work.’

The Nazi youth organization in which membership was effectively compulsory for all German boys ages 10–18. Boys age 10–13 joined the Deutsches Jungvolk (“German Young People”); those 14–18 served in the Hitlerjungend (“Hitler Youth”). Poorly disguised as athletic and sports clubs akin to the quasi-military Boy Scouts organization of the British Empire, these Nazi fronts trained boys and young men in “war sports” or “military athletics” (“Wehrsport”). Key activities were parade drill, map-reading, long-distance hikes, and weapons drill (with bayonet, grenade, and pistol and rifle marksmanship competitions). Boys also practiced taking cover and erecting camouflage, entrenchment, and defense against gas attack, and some learned to fly gliders as preparation for joining the Luftwaffe. All German boys were taught patriotic as well as Nazi Party songs, and closely indoctrinated in the regime’s spurious race theories and radical foreign policy revanchism. There was a parallel organization for “Aryan” girls that similarly stressed physical fitness and moral and ideological purity. Girls under 14 joined the Jungmadelbund (“League of Young Girls”), thereafter transferring to the Bund Deutscher Madel (“League of German Girls”). Both groups inculcated a state-defined ideal of maidenhood tied to eventual “German motherhood,” all aimed at revolutionary nazification of private and family life. The older boys of the Hitlerjungend were ordered into the Waffen-SS on June 24, 1943. They formed SS-Panzer Division “Hitlerjungend” from October 22, 1943. Their first combat came on June 7, 1944, during the Normandy campaign, around Caen. Ferocious and fanatic fighters, they stymied the British and Canadians for many weeks, while taking severe casualties themselves. The Division was reformed and fought next in the Ardennes offensive in Belgium in December 1944. Reformed for a second time, it was transferred to Hungary in February 1945. Its remnant surrendered to the U.S. Army in Austria on May 8, 1945.

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Nothing had come of a German plan to tow submersible rafts across the Atlantic to bombard the United States with V-2 rockets, but the US Navy was determined to match the awesome power of long-range missiles to the submarine. In 1947, a submarine fired the first surface-to-surface cruise missile, the KUW-1 Loon (later renumbered LTV-N-2). This improved version of the German V-1 'doodlebug' was carried in a large watertight cylindrical canister on deck, and launched from a collapsible ramp by a rocket booster. It was assembled on deck and then 'flown' by radio commands, either from the parent submarine or from another boat. The culmination of the programme was the conversion of two 'Gato' class, the Carbonero and Cusk in 1946, the first firing being made by the Cusk off Point Mugu on the Californian coast. Even more impressive was a test firing in 1950, when the Cusk fired her Loon, submerged and tracked the missile for 194.46km (105 miles), using AN/BPQ-2 guidance equipment.

It was the birth of the submarine-launched cruise missile. An improved Loon, the SSM-N-8A Regulus, made its maiden flight in 1950. The first Regulus-armed submarine, the USS Tunny, was commissioned in March 1953, and she and the Barbero could accommodate two missiles in a deck hangar. Regulus was a strategic weapon, and the five boats armed with the system were assigned to the Pacific Fleet to counter any threat from mainland China. An improved Regulus II was fired from the USS Grayback in 1958, but when the programme was cancelled that year she and her sister Growler and the nuclear boat Halibut were armed with Regulus I instead. The money saved was diverted to a much more powerful system, the Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). Although supporters of the Regulus system scoffed at the risk of remaining on the surface to launch it, the submariners would be happier with a system launched from below the surface.

When the Third Reich collapsed in May 1945, teams of American, British and Russian submarine experts converged on German dockyards to locate and recover every scrap of information about the latest U-boat designs. In particular they wanted details of the Type XXI and the even more advanced HTP-driven Type XVII. The Americans and British raised two Type XVIIBs and put them back into service for trials, while the Russians took several hull sections away.

It was 1918 all over again, with the victors almost coming to blows over their shares of the loot. In the end the Americans and British got the lion's share because their armies had overrun the principal shipyards and factories in the West. In all, nearly 40 U-boats were incorporated into various navies, some for trials but others as part of the postwar fleet.

Although the Walter turbine was of great interest, it proved unreliable and offered only limited endurance at great cost. Only the Royal Navy went to the lengths of building HTP boats postwar in an effort to make the system work, and for a while its two experimental boats, HMS Excalibur and HMS Explorer, established a new underwater speed record by exceeding 27 knots. The Type XXI offered a more useful line of enquiry, although the influence of the design itself has been greatly exaggerated by a number of historians and analysts. But there were a number of problems: the hull form had not been tank-tested and proved unstable in service, the internal arrangement of equipment was far from ideal, and there were serious weaknesses in construction. Although the Soviet Navy built a number of boats which closely resembled the Type XXI, the Royal Navy and the US Navy were happier to adapt the best features to fit in with their own designs. Thus the concepts of the Type XXI - the large-capacity batteries and the mechanical reloading gear for the torpedo tubes - became standard around the world.

THE GUPPY PROGRAMME
In 1946, the US Navy began its Greater Underwater Propulsive Power (GUPPY) programme, upgrading the large number of 'Gato', 'Balao' and 'Tench' class boats built during the war.
The basic elements of the GUPPY conversion included streamlining the hull and augmenting underwater power. The prototypes Odox and Pomodon were originally intended to act as fast targets for training surface anti-submarine forces, and to cope with an expected improvement of performance in Soviet submarines. The conning tower was replaced by a streamlined 'sail', which enclosed periscopes and snorkel mast. The characteristic buoyant bow (intended to improve surface performance) was replaced by a round bow, and every possible piece of equipment likely to cause resistance was either removed or made retractable. It was not easy to find space internally for more battery cells because the wartime fleet boats were by no means spacious. The solution was to remove the auxiliary diesel-generator from the after-engine room and reposition it in the space formerly occupied by the magazine for the redundant deck-gun.

Much work had to be done on battery technology to achieve higher output. By accepting a shorter life (18 months) and designing a smaller battery-cell, it was possible to provide four main batteries of 126 cells each (the original boats had only two). This brought new problems, for the high-capacity batteries generated more hydrogen and heat, increasing the risk of fire and explosion. After experimenting with a closed-cell system the US Navy reverted to a water-cooled open-cell system, and the air-conditioning equipment was boosted by nearly 300 percent to handle the extra load.

Apart from minor teething troubles the GUPPY I conversion proved successful. A simultaneous programme to improve the snorkel was running at Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire. The basic problem was that exhausting gases underwater created more back-pressure than the diesels could handle. The American two-cycle diesels suffered pressure fluctuations when the float valve closed, whereas the wartime German four-cycle diesels were not badly affected. Some components of the Fairbanks Morse and General Motors diesels were redesigned to cope with the stresses, but the ultimate solution was to replace the simple float valve with an air-actuated head valve designed to act rapidly and positively. The opening and closing was now controlled by three electrodes located near the snorkel head. When a wave broke over the head it completed a circuit, directing air to shut the valve.

The exhaust mast was designed to be raised with the induction mast, and to ride about 1.21-2.4m (4-8ft) below the surface. The exhaust port was fitted with baffles to reduce the amount of smoke and haze reaching the surface. A mast similar to that in the Type XXI boats was tried in the USS hex in 1947, but it threw up a highly visible plume of spray. The US Navy boats, being much larger than the U-boats, needed a much bigger snorkel head and mast to draw in sufficient air, and a major redesign of the head was needed to reduce the plume. Three types of snorkel were developed: the original GUPPY I type; a simpler type for the unmodernised fleet boats, and a sophisticated type for fast attack boats. Even nuclear submarines need snorkels; they are needed if the boat is running on the auxiliary diesel-electric system, and it is still the quickest way to rid the interior of the boat of the various contaminants which cannot be absorbed by the air-purification system.

The success of the Odax and Pomodon led to a further 22 'Balao' class boats being converted, but after further improvements all 24 were redesignated the GUPPY II type. In 1950, a cheaper and simpler GUPPYIA was authorised for ten more 'Balao' class, while the GUPPY IIA conversion (16 boats) included streamlining but substituted a bigger sonar installation for the two forward sets of machinery.
The GUPPY concept was adopted by other navies. The Royal Navy converted its 'A' and T' classes along similar lines, lengthening the hulls to accommodate more batteries. The snorkel was also introduced, but nicknamed the 'snort', a copy of the German folding type. Only after the disastrous loss of HMS Affray in 1951, when her snort mast fractured, did the Royal Navy turn to the US Navy's telescopic type, which was enclosed by the sail.

With the capture of Cherbourg at the end of June marking the close of the first phase of continental operations, General Eisenhower had the choice in the next phase of directing action east toward the Seine ports of Le Havre and Rouen, or south toward the Breton ports, principally St. Nazaire, Lorient, and Brest. A move to the Seine ports, a more direct thrust toward Germany, was the bolder course of action, but unless the Germans were already withdrawing from France or at the point of collapse, success appeared dubious. More logical was an American drive southward to capture the Breton ports while the British and Canadians covered American operations by striking through Caen and later toward the Seine. A major impediment to this course of action was the terrain.

The ground that was to serve as the battlefield in July was of a diversified nature. On the Allied left was the Caen-Falaise plain, gently rolling open country of cultivated fields and pastures, dry and firm ground suitable for large-scale armored operations and airfield construction. Facing the Allied center between the Orne and Vire Rivers were the northern fringes of a sprawling mass of broken ground-small hills, low ridges, and narrow valleys-gradually rising in height toward the south. West of the Vire River in the Carentan area was a marshy depression crisscrossed by sluggish streams and drainage ditches. On the extreme right of the Allied front, between the marshland and the coast, a cluster of hills dominated the countryside and gave the Germans a solid anchor for their left flank.

With the exception of the Caen-Falaise plain, the battlefield had a compartmentalized character that was bound to impose limitations on the Allies. It restricted maneuver and by the same token favored the German defense. The natural limitations were further aggravated by a man-made feature encountered at every turn, the hedgerow, the result of the practice of Norman farmers for centuries of enclosing each plot of arable land, pasture as well as orchard, no matter how small.

The hedgerow is a fence, half earth, half hedge. The wall at the base is a dirt parapet that varies in thickness from one to four or more feet and in height from three to twelve feet. Growing out of the wall is a hedge of hawthorn, brambles, vines, and trees, in thickness from one to three feet, in height from three to fifteen feet. Originally property demarcations, hedgerows protect crops and cattle from the ocean winds that sweep across the land. They provide the inhabitants with firewood. Delimiting each field, they break the terrain into numerous walled enclosures. Since the fields are tiny, about 200 by 400 yards in size, the hedgerows are innumerable. Because the fields are irregular in shape, the hedgerows follow no logical pattern.

Each field has an opening in the hedgerows for human beings, cattle, and wagons. For passage to fields that do not lie adjacent to a road, innumerable wagon trails wind among the hedgerows. The trails appear to be sunken lanes, and where the hedgerows are high and the tops overarch and shut out the light, they form a cavelike labyrinth, gloomy and damp.

From a tactical point of view, each field is a tiny terrain compartment. Several adjoining fields together form a natural defensive position echeloned in depth. The abundant vegetation and ubiquitous trees provide effective camouflage, obstruct observation, hinder the adjustment of artillery and heavy weapons fire, and limit the use of armor and the supporting arms.

The hedgerow is the most persistent feature in the Cotentin. Unimpressed by fine terrain distinctions, American soldiers called the whole area .the hedgerow country, often simply "this goddam country." Many troops had already become familiar with it in June, and before long many more would come to know and detest it.

One of the major problems that had hampered the First Army-how to use tanks effectively in the hedgerow country- appeared to have been solved just before COBRA. The most effective weapon for opening gaps in hedgerows was the tank dozer, a comparatively new development in armored warfare. So recently had its worth been demonstrated that a shortage of the dozers existed in Normandy. Ordnance units converted ordinary Sherman tanks into dozers by mounting a blade on the front. Some hedgerows, however, were so thick that engineers using satchel charges had first to open a hole, which the dozers later cleared and widened.

Because the use of demolitions and tank dozers was time consuming, the tanks in offensive activity had often remained on the roads, and when cross-country movement became necessary, progress was inevitably slow. In order to speed up the movement of armor, Ordnance units and tankers throughout the army had devoted a great deal of thought and experimentation to find a device that would get tanks through the hedges quickly without tilting the tanks upward, thereby exposing their underbellies and pointing their guns helplessly toward the sky. The gadgets invented in July 1944 were innumerable.
As early as 5 July the 79th Division had developed a "hedgecutter," which Ordnance personnel began attaching to the front of tanks. Five days later the XIX Corps was demonstrating a "salad fork" arrangement, heavy frontal prongs originally intended to bore holes in hedgerow walls to facilitate placing engineer demolition charges but accidentally found able to lift a portion of the hedgerow like a fork and allow the tank to crash through the remaining part of the wall. Men in the V Corps invented a "brush cutter" and a "greendozer" as anti-hedgerow devices.

The climax of the inventive efforts was achieved by a sergeant in the 102d Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, Curtis G. Culin, Jr., who welded steel scrap from a destroyed enemy roadblock to a tank to perfect a hedgecutter with several tusklike prongs, teeth that pinned down the tank belly while the tank knocked a hole in the hedgerow wall by force. General Bradley and members of his staff who inspected this hedgecutter on 14 July were so impressed that Ordnance units on the Continent were ordered to produce the device in mass, using scrap metal salvaged from German underwater obstacles on the invasion beaches. General Bradley also sent Col. John B. Medaris, the army Ordnance officer, to England by plane to get depots there to produce the tusks and equip tanks with them and to arrange for transporting to France by air additional arc-welding equipment and special welding crews.
Every effort was made to equip all tanks with this latest "secret weapon," for it enabled a tank to plough through a hedgerow as though the hedgerow were pasteboard. The hedgecutter sliced through the earth and growth, throwing bushes and brush into the air and keeping the nose of the tank down. The device was important in giving tankers a morale lift, for the hedgerows had become a greater psychological hazard than their defensive worth merited.

Named Rhinoceros attachments, later called Rhinos, the teeth were so effective in breaching the hedgerows that tank destroyer and self-propelled gun units also requested them, but the First Army Ordnance Section carefully supervised the program to make certain that as many tanks as possible were equipped first. By the time COBRA was launched three out of every five tanks in the First Army mounted the hedgecutter. In order to secure tactical surprise for the Rhinos, General Bradley forbade their use until COBRA.

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The code name of the Wehrmacht offensive operation launched toward Moscow in the autumn of 1941. Army Group Center, led by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, had broken the main Soviet defenses 200 miles from Moscow in the middle of July, during the first phase of the long Battle of Smolensk ( July–September, 1941). Adolf Hitler and the OKW then turned the bulk of mobile forces against the flanks, reinforcing a thrust to Leningrad in the north and two great Kesselschlacht (“cauldron battles”) at Uman and Kiev in the south. Hitler did not order a resumption of the advance on Moscow until September 6, when he issued Führer Directive #35. Army Group Center was strongly reinforced with the addition of 3rd Panzergruppe under General Hermann Hoth and with a Fliegerkorps drawn from Army Group North and more combat aircraft advanced from the Luftwaffe reserve. General Heinz Guderian arrived with 2nd Panzergruppe, returned to Bock’s command after spectacular successes in Ukraine. Along with Colonel General Erich Hoepner’s 4th Panzergruppe, Bock had available the largest concentration of German armor to date—three full Panzergruppen— and over 1.9 million men as he prepared a second lunge at Moscow.

To reach Moscow the Germans would have to smash through the Ostashkov– Pochep Line 200 miles west of the city. Three Red Army Fronts stood opposite Army Group Center. Western Front, under General Ivan S Konev, fielded six armies holding the north end of the Ostashkov–Pochep Line.

Marshal Semyon Budyonny was at the critical center, commanding two armies designated Reserve Front. General Andrei I. Yeremenko commanded the three armies of Briansk Front holding the southern end of the Line. In all, 1.25 million Red Army krasnoarmeets , with supporting artillery and tank forces, defended the most vital and central few hundred miles of the Eastern Front. However, Stalin and the Stavka did not anticipate that the main German blow would fall on this central section of the Eastern Front. They were preoccupied with the ongoing German drive to take Leningrad and with the aftermath of the disasters at Uman and Kiev, which had ripped open the south, and a new calamity pending in the Crimea. Lack of command attention at the top reinforced the Soviet weakness of divided command along the frontlines, notably at the Schwerpunkt where the Germans were about to strike at Budyonny’s Reserve Front. Command confusion among Soviet leaders, civil and military, was one of the underlying reasons for early German success in TAIFUN.

Bock’s first move came on September 30 with a diversionary attack in the south by Guderian against Yeremenko’s position. Bock intended to pull Soviet forces away from the main blow to be landed some 400 miles farther north. That assault came three days later, as 4th Panzergruppe sliced right through Budyonny’s dispositions, racing ahead 100 miles in a sweeping northeastern arc to take the critical rail junction at Viazma on October 7. Meanwhile, 3rd Panzergruppe broke through in the north. Hoth’s Panzers and motorized infantry curled southeast and linked with Hoepner at Viazma: the Wehrmacht had achieved another vast encirclement, with four Soviet armies trapped inside the “Kessel.” The Red Army suffered another catastrophic defeat as over 650,000 of its troops surrendered, including a large number of senior officers. Worse was to come: a second successful German encirclement was carried out at Briansk, where an additional 120,000 or more surrendered. The casualties were truly staggering: perhaps as many as one million officers and men were lost to death, wounds, or captivity, as well as thousands of tanks and guns and masses of other war matériel.

Only General Georgi Zhukov’s personal intervention with Stalin prevented the arrest and execution of Konev as yet another scapegoat for the dictator’s own failings as supreme commander. As early as October 5th, before the fall of Viazma, Stalin and the Stavka agreed to pull back to a fourth defensive position: the Mozhaisk Line. It was poorly manned with NKVD police battalions, opolchentsy (“People’s Militia”), and other scratch forces. The first Panzers touched the Mozhaisk Line on October 10. They were through it just eight days later. The road to Moscow lay wide open, with almost no effective Red Army formation standing in the way. Stalin panicked: the government was ordered to evacuate Moscow for the Urals; Zhukov later reported that week as the most harrowing of the war. Yet, Moscow never fell. What happened?

The Germans were slowed by the mud sea of the October rasputitsa, but there was more in play than that. Hitler paused the offensive, falsely confident that the Viazma–Briansk encirclement—added to the earlier and highly successful Kesselschlacht and mass Soviet surrenders at Uman and Kiev—had already broken the back of the Red Army. He was certain that the Soviet had no more reserves to block the path to Moscow. The delay lasted six weeks, during which lingering resistance behind German lines was ruthlessly crushed. Even then, Hitler and the OKW waited. It was not until the cold of mid-November froze mud roads and permitted resumption of wheeled movement that Bock was ordered to continue the advance to Moscow. That was the second major error made by Hitler and his generals: the Wehrmacht resumed offensive operations into the teeth of a building Russian winter, rather than going into winter quarters to husband strength for a spring offensive. Most importantly, the long delay permitted the Stavka to find still more troops to hurl into the battle: five fresh divisions from Siberia and others pulled from the Volga Line, about which Hitler, OKW, and the Abwehr had not the slightest inkling. The final German surge was made starting on November 15, but Army Group Center did not have the logistical legs to carry it the last few dozen miles to Moscow. Weapons and equipment wore down, men were exhausted, and bitter cold made every step an ordeal. By December 4 forward movement by the Germans ceased. The next day, the Red Army struck back with a wholly unexpected and massive counteroffensive led by the fresh Siberians. It stunned the Wehrmacht. Within three days even Hitler understood that TAIFUN had failed and ordered all German forces in the east to “transition to the defensive.” Instead of taking Moscow, Army Group Center thereafter found itself reeling away from the capital, defending against a ferocious Moscow offensive operation that lasted into January 1942. The Wehrmacht would never be so close to Moscow again.