Russia at war 1941-1945

were no trains any more by which we could leave, and what was father to do? He might have walked two or three kilometres, but no more...

"But they did not come that night. At the factory the next morning everything was mined; it was only a case of pressing a button, and the whole factory would have gone up in the air. And then came a phone message from Pronin, the Chairman of the Moscow Soviet,

saying 'Absolutely nothing must be blown up.'

"And it was also on that day that the announcement was made that Stalin was in Moscow, and this made an enormous difference to morale; it now seemed certain that Moscow

would not be lost. Even so, from the northern outskirts, people were being evacuated to the centre. There were continuous air-raid warnings and bombs fell. But on the 20th the factory was opened again; we all felt so much better and were quite cheerful again after that..."

It was, indeed, on October 17 that Shcherbakov announced on the radio that Stalin was in Moscow. At the same time he explained to the people of Moscow the "complexity" of the situation (in official Russian war-time terminology "complexity" always meant "gravity") as a result of the German offensive against the capital; he also explained why it had been necessary to take those numerous evacuation measures. He firmly denied the rumours

about the imminent surrender of the city, rumours, he said, which had been spread by enemy agents. Moscow, he said, would be defended stubbornly, to the last drop of blood.

"Every one of us, no matter what his work or his position, shall act like a soldier defending Moscow against the Fascist invaders."

Two days later, a state of siege was proclaimed in Moscow. This had partly been caused by the looting that had gone on, here and there, at the height of the panic; now all

"breaches of law and order" were to be dealt with by emergency tribunals, and all spies, diversionists and agents provocateurs were to be shot on the spot. The maintenance of order inside Moscow was entrusted to the Commandant of the city and his NKVD troops.

These, together with regular army units and newty-formed "Communist battalions" were to man the gorodskiye rubezhy, the defence lines just outside and inside Moscow. The state of siege had, by all accounts I was to hear later, a salutary, and, indeed, stimulating effect on morale.

By the end of October over two million people had been officially evacuated from

Moscow; in addition, there were many others who had fled unofficially; many stories

were current later, for instance about a very important person on Moscow Radio, who

disappeared on October 16, and did not turn up again until three weeks later. Disciplinary action was taken in some cases against such "deserters", but there is no official record of the extent of these reprisals; it seems, however, that allowances were made for the

general state of chaos in Moscow that day, and for the fact that people were genuinely frightened of falling under German occupation.

Many of those who had stayed on in Moscow later took some pride in not having lost

their heads—or their faith in Moscow being saved [Those who had fled retorted in some cases: "You didn't mind being occupied by the Germans—I did."], and liked to recall the

"heroic atmosphere" of half-empty Moscow in the second half of October and in November, with the battle still raging not far away and, indeed, coming nearer and nearer in the second half of November. But it was now felt that the situation was well in hand and that a sudden German incursion into Moscow—which seemed so likely on that 16th

of October—had become impossible.

Chapter XI BATTLE OF MOSCOW II STALIN'S HOLY

RUSSIA SPEECH

In the first nineteen days of their offensive the Germans had advanced to less than fifty miles from Moscow at Noro-Fominsk and were even nearer the capital in the

Volokolamsk area. But all the time the Russian resistance was stiffening and by October 18 counterattacks slowed down the German advance. Losses were extremely heavy on

both sides, there were signs of growing fatigue among the Germans, and between

October 18 and the beginning of November they made very little progress.

German war memoirs stress the Wehrmacht's supply difficulties; but it is quite clear that the famous "Russian winter" was in no way decisive either in October or at the beginning of November. On the contrary, some of the Germans' difficulties arose from the fact that the roads had not yet frozen. To quote Guderian:

On October 29 our leading tanks reached a point some two miles from Tula. An