Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

While the final battle for Tula was going on, Guderian received a visit from the OKH Panzerkommission he had requested to review the Battle of Mtensk over a month before. The commission included the head of the Heereswaffenamt [Army Weapons Department] Wa Pruef 6 and his senior designer, along with industry representatives from Krupp, Daimler-Benz, Henschel and MAN. Guderian allowed the commission to inspect captured T-34 tanks and stated that the Wehrmacht needed a new tank to defeat the T-34. He outlined the requirements for such a tank as having ‘heavier armament’ than the current Pz.III/Pz.IV, ‘higher tactical mobility’ and ‘improved armoured protection’. Guderian emphatically told the commission that the purpose of the new tank ‘should be to re-establish the previous superiority [of German tanks]’. The commission returned to Berlin and, before the end of November 1941, the Reichsministerium für Bewaffnung und Munition (Ministry for Armaments Production and Munitions) had issued a formal request for proposals for a new 30-ton tank outfitted with 60mm sloped armour – this became the genesis of the Pz.V Panther tank. Both MAN and Daimler-Benz began developing prototypes during the winter of 1941–42.¹³³

Typhoon: the Last Roll of the Dice, 1 November–4 December

Meanwhile, after breaking through the Mozhaisk Line, the rest of Heeresgruppe Mitte had ground to a halt within 70–90km of Moscow by the end of October. Von Bock – desperate for victory before time ran out – wanted to continue the advance to Moscow, but supplies were dangerously low and the troops were exhausted. Hitler agreed to a two-week operational pause to enable Heeresegruppe Mitte to prepare for the final offensive, which would resume on 15 November. Von Kluge’s 4.Armee took an inordinate time to bring up his eleven infantry divisions and he was reluctant to risk his troops in further attacks. The Russian roads were at their worst in late October and the first week of November, with many vehicles lost in the mud – the German advantage in mobility was temporarily neutralized. Curiously, von Bock squandered his primary remaining advantage – a concentrated armoured striking force – by allowing it to dissipate; he directed Hoth to commit the rest of Model’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) to support the 9.Armee’s useless fighting around Kalinin. Consequently, Hoth’s grandly-named 3.Panzerarmee was reduced to Schaal’s LVI Armeekorps (mot.) with the 6 and 7.Panzer-Divisionen and 14.Infanterie-Division (mot.) – which altogether amounted to barely 150 operational tanks. The Czech-made Pz.35(t) tanks, which formed the bulk of 6.Panzer-Division’s armour, were approaching the end of their useful lives. Erhard Raus estimated that most of the Pz.35(t) had over 12,000km on their odometers by the end of October 1941 and that only ten of the remaining forty-one were repairable through cannibalization.¹³⁴

Von Bock decided to deploy Höpner’s Panzerarmee 4, which still had a total of about 400 operational tanks, with the XXXX and XXXXVI Armeekorps (mot.), on Hoth’s right flank and make a combined attack from Volokolamsk toward Moscow. Höpner detached Kuntzen’s dilapidated LVII Armeekorps (mot.) to operate separately under 4.Armee control near Naro-Fominsk. Consequently, von Bock’s armoured fist had been reduced from five motorized corps to only four, with much less infantry support. German front-line morale declined as the freezing temperatures grew more severe, supplies were low and Soviet resistance refused to break. On the other hand, Hitler had finally agreed to release sizeable tank replacements to the Eastern Front and 397 new tanks were sent east in October-November 1941.¹³⁵