Russia at war 1941-1945

The minimum programme was to restore communications with blockaded Leningrad, to

lift the threat hanging over Moscow, and to close the Germans' access to the Caucasus.

The maximum programme was to break the Leningrad blockade, to encircle the Germans

between Moscow and Smolensk and to recapture the Donbas and the Crimea. As things

turned out, even the minimum programme was only partly carried out: Rostov, the

"padlock of the Caucasus" had been liberated by the Russians at the end of November, and the Germans were pushed back to the Mius line, but apart from a local offensive in the Donbas, later in the winter, which recaptured a small salient including Barvenkovo and Lozovaya, the Russians got no further. In the Crimea, Sebastopol was holding out, but the Russian landing on December 26 on the Kerch Peninsula in the Eastern Crimea

was to end in disaster in the following spring. On the Leningrad front the recapture of Tikhvin on December 9 alleviated Leningrad's supply position considerably. But the land blockade as such continued. The Russian advance in the Moscow area was more

spectacular, yet despite the liberation of large territories—one of the Russian thrusts, for instance, went nearly all the way to Velikie Luki, a matter of about 200 miles—the

Germans succeeded in holding the Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Viazma triangle of fortified hedgehog positions, less than a hundred miles west of Moscow.

It was Hitler who, against the advice of many of his generals— these advocated a major withdrawal—insisted on holding Rzhev, Viazma, Yukhnov, Kaluga, Orel and Briansk;

and, with the exception of Kaluga, all these places were held. Many of the discouraged generals—among them Brauchitsch, Höppner and Guderian—were sacked, while von

Bock fell "ill". In the north, von Leeb was also relieved of his command for reasons of

"health" and was replaced by General Küchler, a more wholehearted Nazi. Hitler had been greatly disappointed by von Leeb's failure to capture Leningrad in August or

September, just as he had been incensed by von Bock's failure to capture Moscow.

Rundstedt also fell into temporary disfavour after the Russian recapture of Rostov.

The Russian counter-offensive was launched on December 5-6 along almost the whole

560 miles from Kalinin in the north to Yelets in the south, and during the very first days spectacular progress was made nearly everywhere. A characteristic of the fighting in winter conditions was the avoidance, as far as possible, of frontal attacks on the enemy's rearguard, and the formation of mobile pursuit units, calculated to cut the enemy's lines of retreat and create panic among them. Such pursuit units, comparable to the Cossacks of 1812, who mercilessly harassed the Grande Armée, were composed of tommygunners, ski troops, tanks and cavalry—notably the cavalry units under General Belov and General Dovator. But the results of these tactics often proved disappointing, and the cavalry units suffered particularly heavy casualties.

The behaviour of the Germans in this winter war varied from place to place; usually they still offered stubborn resistance, but were clearly obsessed by the fear of encirclement; thus, when by December 13 the Russians closed in on Kalinin and Klin and summoned

the German garrisons to surrender, these rejected the ultimatum, but nevertheless

hastened to pull out before it was too late—not without first, it is true, setting fire to as many buildings as possible. In other places, however, the German retreat often

degenerated into a panic flight. West of Moscow and in the Tula area, miles and miles of roads were littered with abandoned guns, lorries and tanks, deeply embedded in the snow.

The comic "Winter Fritz", wrapped up in women's shawls and feather boas stolen from the local population, and with icicles hanging from his red nose, made his first

appearance in Russian folklore.

On December 13, Sovinformbureau published its famous communiqué announcing the

failure of the German attempt to encircle Moscow, and describing the first results of the Russian counter-offensive. The newspapers published photographs of the outstanding

Soviet generals who had won the battle of Moscow: Zhukov, Lelyushenko, Kuznetsov,

Rokossovsky, Govorov, Boldin, Golikov, Belov and Vlasov, the future traitor!

By the middle of December the Red Army had advanced nearly everywhere between

twenty and forty miles, and had liberated Kalinin, Klin, Istra, Yelets, and had completely relieved Tula; in the second half of December the offensive continued, the Russians

recapturing Kaluga and Volokolamsk, where, in the main square, they found a gallows

with eight bodies hanging from it—seven men and one woman. These were allegedly

partisans whom the Germans had publicly hanged to terrorise the population.