The 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation' was the Soviet strategic counter-offensive 1 to drive the Germans from the gates of Moscow after their 'Wotan' assault had been checked by the 'Moscow Strategic Defensive Operation' and then, it was hoped, take and destroy Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock;s Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' (5 December 1941/8 January 1942).

It was on 5 December that the Soviet counter-offensive was started by General Polkovnik Ivan S. Konev’s Kalinin Front. After two days of little progress, Soviet armies retook Krasnaya Polyana and several other towns in the immediate vicinity of Moscow. By this time the arrival of fresh aircraft had raised the German air strength to 599 aircraft, and that of the Soviets to 1,376 aircraft.

Adolf Hitler and Generaloberst Franz Halder, chief of the Oberkommando des Heeres’s general staff, discussed a directive for the winter campaign on the Eastern Front at Hitler’s headquarters during the afternoon of 6 December. Neither of the two men had, until recently, anticipated having to devote much thought to the subject. Before the advent of the rains in October, they had expected the German troops, except a number of infantry divisions needed to be watch over the remnants of the defeated Soviet army, to be home by the end of the year. Since a time early in November, in recognition that that victory was by now not so close, the Germans had been trying to maximise their returns in the last stages of the 1941 campaign and at the same time to delay decisions on whether or not to halt for the winter, and in the case of the former when and where the halt was to be made. The setback at Rostov-na-Donu and ominous reports from von Bock’s Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' and Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb’s Heeresgruppe 'Nord' had apparently at last persuaded Halder to send Hitler a statement on German strength, which was down by 25%, and to request a decision, which Hitler made during the afternoon of 6 December. According to the German leader, numbers meant nothing: the Soviets had lost at least 10 times as many, and on the assumption that they had possessed three times as many men at the start of the campaign, this still meant they were worse off. Single German divisions might be holding 15.5-mile (25-km) fronts, as Halder claimed, but that was an indication of Soviet rather than German weakness. Heeresgruppe 'Nord' should hold Tikhvin and be ready to advance in order to make contact with the Finns on the other side of Leningrad as soon as the army group had received armour and troop reinforcements. Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' should bear in mind that the Soviets never voluntarily yielded an inch of ground and neither should the Germans. Weather permitting and after the receipt of some reinforcement, Heeresgruppe 'Süd' should be able to retake Rostov-na-Donu, and possibly the entire Donets river basin as well.

As Halder well appreciated, Hitler had not made a decision but had evaded one, and did so once again on the following day. Having received a request during the night of 6 December to approve the withdrawals which were already being made by Generaloberst Hans-Georg Reinhardt’s 3^rd Panzergruppe and Generaloberst Erich Hoepner’s 4^th Panzergruppe in the north and Generaloberst Heinz Guderian’s 2^nd Panzerarmee in the south, Hitler agreed on the morning of 7 December to let the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe straighten their lines but said nothing about the 2^nd Panzerarmee, or indeed about the whole situation in which Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' now found itself. Hitler emphasised to the Oberkommando des Heeres that since the pressure on Moscow was now released, the Soviets could be expected to attempt the relief of Leningrad. As Heeresgruppe 'Nord' would need its entire strength to maintain its grip on Leningrad, it could not attack past Tikhvin and should be allowed to shorten its front to a limited degree, but not enough to put the east/west road and railway through Tikhvin out of German artillery range.

Along the front line, 7 December started clear and cold. Early Luftwaffe reconnaissance flights brought back reports of continuing heavy Soviet railway traffic toward Moscow and Tikhvin. At ground level, blowing snow spumes limited visibility, and wind-blown drifted closed the roads. During the night, the roads running to the east and south-east from Klin had seen masses of the 3^rd Panzergruppe's rear-echelon trucks and wagons heading to the west, but how far to the west they were to travel no one knew. The German had started to withdraw from the line of the Moscow-Volga Canal, and General Leytenant Vasili I. Kuznetsov’s 1^st Shock Army was following hesitantly behind the Panzer group, which the weather had already forced to abandon 15 tanks, three heavy howitzers, a number of Flak guns, and dozens of trucks and passenger cars: this was a greater quantity of matériel than would the Panzer Group would normally expect to lose in a week of heavy fighting. Troops could not tow guns out of their emplacements. The engines of some vehicles would not start, and the grease on bearings and in transmissions in others vehicles froze even as they were running. Generalleutnant Friedrich Kirchner’s 1^st Panzerdivision, which had been headed toward Krasnaya Polyana, had reversed course during the night in response to new orders to block the Soviet thrust toward Klin: in the morning the division was extended over some 40 miles (65 km) and it tried to make its way through snowdrifts on blocked roads, with its tanks short of fuel.

The strongest formation of General Georgi K. Zhukov’s West Front, General Leytenant Konstantin K. Rokossovsky’s 16^th Army, joined the Soviet counter-offensive on 7 December along the front to the west of Krasnaya Polyana. But the most dangerous threat to the Germans continued to come from General Major Dmitry D. Lelyushenko’s 30^th Army, which had extended its thrust toward Klin during the night. Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' requested reinforcements to the 3^rd Panzergruppe's neighbouring formations. General Leytenant Ivan I. Maslennikov’s (from 12 December General Major Vasili I. Shvetsov’s) 29^th Army and General Major Vasili A. Yushkevich’s 31^st Army maintained their pressure on Generaloberst Adolf Strauss’s 9^th Army in the area to the west and south-east of Kalinin, but had failed to make any impression by this date. Kuznetsov’s 1^st Shock Army and General Leytenant Andrei A. Vlasov’s 20^th Army, joined by Rokossovsky’s 16^th Army, kept the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe under constant pressure but were unable to gain any significant tactical advantage at any point. General Leytenant Filipp I. Golikov’s 10^th Army occupied Mikhailov after a skirmish with the German rear guard. The sectors of the front held by General Generalfeldmarschall Günther von Kluge’s 4^th Army and Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt’s 2^nd Army remained quiet.

Although the Soviet counter-offensive was gathering strength and taking on a definite form only slowly, there was a steady increase in the tension felt by the German armies along the 700-mile (1125-km) front from Tikhvin to the right flank of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' to the east of Kursk. The entire army group was being subjected to a prolonged shock as successive Soviet formations and units entered the fray and broke radio silence. German radio intercept units detected the signal traffic of 24 or more Soviet divisions and brigades on the army group’s front on 7 December than there had been on 15 November.

Both von Bock and army had come to believe that the Soviets could not be introducing significant number of wholly fresh forces, and had therefore been forced to strip the front in some places to supply the battle elsewhere. von Leeb had seen the consequences he feared for his Heeresgruppe 'Nord' as inevitable after the 4^th Army's advance on Moscow failed on 4 December. These consequences soon became evident. General Kirill A. Meretskov had regrouped his 4^th Independent Army and, with reinforcements, was closing on Tikhvin from three sides by 5 December. Here, on 7 December and in a blizzard which extended to cover the Moscow region in the afternoon, the spearhead of Heeresgruppe 'Nord' was almost encircled. Some 27 trains had delivered Soviet reinforcements during the past three days, and the Germans were now outnumbered by a 2/1 ratio. Hitler had promised about 100 tanks and 22,000 men within the next seven to 14 days, but for the present all von Leeb could offer in Tikhvin were five tanks, of which four were inoperable because of the cold, and a modest number of infantry also suffering badly from the extreme cold. In the afternoon, von Leeb had no option but to order the evacuation of Tikhvin.

On 8 December, when the Soviets crossed the railway line linking Klin and approached within 2 to 3 miles (3.2 and 4.8 km) of the road junction at Klin, where very long columns of the 3^rd Panzergruppe's vehicles, von Bock attempted to scrape reserves out of the front. All he could get for the 3^rd Panzergruppe was a single infantry battalion. The Oberkommando des Heeres informed von Bock not to expect replacements of battalion size or greater before the middle of January because the railways could not handle them until that time. When von Bock asked Halder for trained divisions rather than replacements, Halder replied that the Oberkommando des Heeres lacked complete divisions ready for despatch to the front, and that such divisions would have to come from the western theatre, which was controlled by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. The desperate von Bock felt that he had no option but to place the 3^rd Panzergruppe under control of the 4^th Panzergruppe, itself under command of the 4^th Army. Reinhardt saw in this an abdication of the army group’s responsibility for the Panzer group, but von Bock said he thought it would make Hoepner, commander of the 4^th Panzergruppe, and von Kluge, commander of the 4^th Army, more inclined to aid the 3^rd Panzergruppe. The 9^th Army, which was the 3^rd Panzergruppe's neighbour to the north, was having more than enough trouble of its own as the 31^st and 29^th Armies maintained the pressure of their attack on Kalinin. How much help 4^th Panzergruppe or 4^th Army would be, or even could be, was problematical. The more rapidly Reinhardt extricated his 3^rd Panzergruppe from the trap emerging to the east of Klin, the sooner Hoepner’s 4^th Panzergruppe would have to embark on the same kind of westward trek and, once the two Panzer groups had escaped, von Kluge’s front would be exposed. von Kluge would then have come to a decision about whether he was prepared to run the risk of being overwhelmed where he stood or to pull the 4^th Army out of its relatively well-built defensive line and into the snow and cold behind it.

With the Soviets bearing down on him, Reinhardt was in a hurry, but Hoepner did not wish to be rushed. von Kluge would have preferred not to have to make a decision.

Although he did not yet know it on 8 December, von Bock was about to face a greater threat on his southern flank. Here Guderian’s 2^nd Panzerarmee had embarked on the complex task of reducing the size of the bulge it held to the east of Tula, and in a mere two days this task cost the 2^nd Panzerarmee many vehicles and guns which had simply to be abandoned. One of Guderian’s corps alone recorded 1,500 cases of frostbite, 350 of which required the amputation of one or more limbs. Supplies were not reaching the 2^nd Panzerarmee's railhead at Orel as, in other sectors of the front, only the insulated Soviet-built locomotives could continue to work in the extreme cold. The army group had promised to fly in Diesel fuel and petrol on 8 December, but then had to divert the required airlift capacity to support the 3^rd Panzergruppe. Moreover, at Mikhailov, the 10^th Army was committing trainloads of troops into action as soon as they arrived. German air reconnaissance on 8 December reported 50 trains headed in each direction between Ryazan and Mikhailov. On 8 December and again on the following day, Guderian informed von Bock that the 2^nd Panzerarmee faced a major crisis in confidence among the non-commissioned officers and the men, but declined to say against who this loss of confidence was directed, and refused von Bock’s suggestion to report in person to Hitler but asked yet again, as he had already on many other occasions, whether the Oberkommando des Heeres and the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht were being given a clear picture of what was taking place on the Eastern Front.

Schmidt’s 2^nd Army, the 2^nd Panzerarmee's southern neighbour, held a front of 185 miles (300 km), which was longer than that held by any other army on the East Front: the army had seven divisions, each of which had to hold an average length of 26.5 miles (43 km) for a further average of almost 2 miles (3.2 km) per company. While the Germans were still on the offensive, the task of the 2^nd Army had been to fill the gap between the 2^nd Panzerarmee and Generalfeldmarschall Walter von Reichenau’s (from 1 January 1942 Generaloberst Friedrich Paulus’s) 6^th Army. This task had been comparatively easy as long as the attention of the Soviets was focused on Moscow and the Soviet high command had been afforded no time in which to worry itself about this open space and its scattering of small provincial towns such as Yelets, Livny and Novosil. Once it was on the defensive, though, the thinly spread 2^nd Army was the only formation between the Soviets and Kursk, its only railhead, and Orel, the 2^nd Panzerarmee's only railhead. On 7 December the 2^nd Army came to a halt after taking Yelets, the last town of any size within 50 miles (80 km). In the following days, Schmidt proposed that his army should devastate a strip, 9.33 miles (15 km) wide, parallel to his entire line and then pull back behind this scorched-earth barrier to settle for the winter.

On the following day, even more suddenly than it had dropped, the temperature climbed to a figure above freezing point along the whole of the front held by Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. In the centre of the 2^nd Army, to the south of Yelets, in snow and rain which froze as it hit the still-freezing ground, six Soviet tanks created a hole between Generalmajor Gerhard Körner’s 45^th Division and Generalleutnant Hans-Heinrich Sixt von Arnim’s 95^th Division, and through this gap a Soviet cavalry division plunged. The self-propelled assault guns of the two German divisions could barely negotiate the ice, and by the next morning, after a night in which falls of heavy snow had blown into drifts, they had been rendered immobile by the conditions as well as the fact that both divisions had also run out of fuel. In another day, two more cavalry divisions and one infantry division had opened the gap to 16.25 miles (25 km) and driven 50 miles (80 km) in a wedge to the north-west in the direction of Novosil and Orel. The 95^th Division had lost half of its strength, and the 45^th Division still more. As well as being without motor fuel, both divisions were drastically short of ammunition and food. Delivery from the air was promised, but the weather made it impossible for aircraft to take-off. Schmidt told von Bock that the 2^nd Army was about to be cut in two and driven back on Kursk and Orel, thereby leaving an 85-mile (135-km) gap between the two towns.

On 8 December, Hitler issued the Führerweisung Nr 39 directive for the winter campaign. As the cold weather had arrived early than had been anticipated, Hitler announced, all major offensive operations were to cease: they had, of course, already done so. But. Hitler added, there were to be no withdrawals except to prepared positions. Moreover, he totally ignored the actuality of events on the Eastern Front and instructed the Oberkommando des Heeres to begin the recall to Germany of the armoured and motorised infantry divisions for refitting.

To be left ineffectual was a matter the German field commands had not experienced up to this time. Senior commanders were no well versed in the art of controlling military operations, and breakthroughs such as those at Klin and Yelets were nuisances they were supposed to overcome as a matter of course. The first two or three days would reveal the measure of the Soviet effort, it was believed, and by then the German divisions in the breakthrough area would either be back in control, or their corps, army and army group staffs would have started to move reinforcements of men, armour, artillery and air support into the area in question. The Germans conceded that somewhere an opponent might prevail no matter how strongly the Germans countered, but such an opponent would have to possess greater military skills than the Germans were prepared to concede that the Soviets possessed. The staff would ordinarily have discussed problems such as those which had emerged at Klin and Yelets during a evening, controlled these retreats by telephone and teletype during the morning of the following day. Meanwhile the commanding generals would have gone, if they felt it sensible to do so, to look for themselves and deliver encouragement or reprimand. Every commander knew what he had to do. Corps and army staffs could take some battalions from one location and a regiment from another, or a few companies or one or two divisions depending on the scale of the problem, and have these forces on the move to the location at which they were needed. An army group would have reserves or could make some by taking divisions out of the line, and there were generally one or two divisions on a railway moving somewhere up or down the front. Withdrawals like those 3^rd Panzergruppe and 2^nd Panzerarmee had started were still novel for both staffs and troops, but the various operations officers and chiefs-of-staff knew how to move anything from a division to a whole army some 6.25 to 9.33 miles (10 to 15 km) in a night

The German army had been capable of undertaking this step right up to December 1941, when its capability effectively ended. The 1^st Panzerdivision should have checked the Soviet drive toward Klin, but it was prevented by the climate from doing so. In the prevailing weather, terrain and Soviet commitment, the withdrawals of the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 2^nd Panzerarmee were little masterpieces of military skill. Everywhere the troops withdrew, however, they abandoned weapons and equipment: the loss of armour, artillery and trucks, which would not soon be replaced, would make each successive move more difficult and more dangerous on the one hand, and on the other encourage the Soviets. The Soviet attacks were currently extemporised for the most part, but it was to be expected that worse eventuate when the Soviets became certain of their advantage, a fact which they could deduce from the equipment which the Germans abandoned. All his armies needed fresh troops, but von Bock had none at his disposal, and any attempt to build a reserve out of what he had was an impossible task, for no army commander was prepared to relinquish even a battalion when he knew full well that he himself might need it desperately in the very near future.

On the morning of 9 December, when resuming a telephone conference begun the night before, von Bock informed Halder that Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' had to have reinforcements as it could not withstand a determined attack anywhere along its whole front. von Bock said that he was already converting every kind of specialist except tank drivers into infantry. Halder suggested that the Soviets were using the cadres and untrained troops which they really wanted to save for the coming spring, and that matters might be expected to quieten by the middle or end of the month. Thereafter the two men’s discussion became increasingly futile, von Bock saying that he did not wish to 'whine and complain', but that he needed reserves, to which Halder responded that Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' would get whatever small reserves could be assembled. After this, von Bock told his army commanders to plan to pull the whole army group back some 60 to 90 miles (100 to 150 km) to the line linking Rzhev, Gzhatsk, Orel and Kursk. Even so, von Bock had no confidence that this would be of any use, because it would require several weeks, which the Germans did not have, to prepare the new line. Moreover, to start back before a new line had been prepared would be fruitless in the absence of any halt line, and the level of losses already sustained in local retreats would be multiplied enormously in any retreat undertaken without adequate preparation.

von Kluge pointed out that in any event the Soviets could probably assault any new line within three days, and von Bock confessed to von Kluge that he was about to send Hitler a personal message to the effect that von Bock found himself confronted with the need for decisions with ramifications far beyond the purely military.

On 10 December the Oberkommando des Heeres promised two or three fresh divisions, and gave von Bock an excuse, albeit very slim, for deferring talk of retreat. However, these divisions would not start to depart the western theatre until 16 December and could not be expected to reach the Eastern Front for at least one month.

Although he would not have imagined it, the situation in which von Bock found himself could in fact have been more acute. The tactical performance of the Soviet formations in the first four days of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation' had been disappointing. A West Front directive of 9 December said that some Soviet units were pushing the Germans back frontally instead of passing round and encircling them. Instead of breaking through the German defences, some Soviet units slowed before them and complained about problems and heavy losses. These negative modes of operations provided the Germans the opportunity to redeploy to new lines, regroup and organise a revitalised resistance. Zhukov therefore instructed the armies of his West Front to create mobile groups with tanks, cavalry and infantry armed with automatic weapons to strike behind the Germans, especially the Germans' motor fuel dumps and artillery positions.

On 10 December, the Soviets cut the road to the west out of Klin, which was the 3^rd Panzergruppe's single escape route, and the 3^rd Panzergruppe described the scene on the road to the east of Klin as one of disintegrating discipline; increasing numbers of men making their way to the west on foot without weapons but with whatever food they had managed to obtain; constant air attacks on the road, where the dead were left unburied; rear-echelon troops of all types fleeing to the rear in complete disarray without food even as they froze; vehicle crews unwilling to await the disentanglement of road jams veering off the roads and into villages in search of cover; blockages where there was ice, a slopes or a bridge; and traffic management able to maintain only the slowest of crawls.

Away to the south, over this same period Guderian characterised his 2^nd Panzerarmee as a scattered assemblage of armed baggage trains slowly wending their way to the rear.

The 2^nd Army could attempt no counterattack against the fast-moving but vulnerable Soviet cavalry as it had no motor fuel and its troops were exhausted.

In another command shuffle, von Bock subordinated the 2^nd Army to the 2^nd Panzerarmee, and was forced to admit that while Guderian’s recent emotional outbursts had raised a question about his fitness to command two armies, Guderian at least possessed energy.

Everything was now going wrong for von Bock’s forces. The weight and drag of ice and snow were pulling down telephone lines in all directions. von Bock had transferred a security division (older men of admittedly low military capability) from railway guard duty to the 2^nd Army, in which it was likely to be of very little use. Soviet partisans, whose numbers and capabilities were growing steadily, blew a bridge on the army group’s main line of communications. Two trains crashed head on and blocked the track at Vyaz’ma. A train of tank wagons designed to carry motor fuel reached the 4^th Panzergruppe empty.

On 12 December, in a short period in which the telephone system was working, Halder heard some of the army group’s problems and kin a complete change of mind from that of only two days earlier stated that the situation was the worst crisis in the two world wars. Hitler was meanwhile more concerned with the course of Germany’s relationship with Japan, whose 'Ai' carrierborne air attack on the US forces in he Hawaiian islands group had come as a total surprise to him on 7 December. Hitler would have approved of a Japanese attack on the USSR, but had known since the middle of the summer that the Japanese would not commit themselves against the Soviets in East Asia except to garner what they could from a German victory in European Russia. Moreover, Hitler would in all probability seen a continuing Japanese threat to the USA in the Pacific as more useful than an outright war as his policy thus far had been to keep the USA out of the war. On the other hand, Pearl Harbor came when he needed something to divert attention from the German problems on the Eastern Front, and after he had convinced himself that the USA was going to be an annoying but not decisive opponent, on 11 December declared war on the USA.

At the front, increasingly desperate army commanders, most especially Guderian and von Kluge, urged Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Brauchitsch, commander-in-chief of the German army, to travel to the Eastern Front and see the plight of the German forces for himself. The demand to von Brauchitsch was a reflection of the generals' belief that the senior leadership in Berlin was not getting accurate information about the real situation. What substantive help they could have expected from von Brauchitsch is difficult to see: even in better times, von Brauchitsch’s real authority had not been that which should have been the right of a general in his position, since October he had been adversely affected by heart problems, and in recent months Hitler had largely ignored him. von Brauchitsch had already made his decision to resign and was preoccupied with the manner in which he could do so as he felt obligated to Hitler for his appointment. On 10 December, von Brauchitsch had tried to keep himself aloof from problems of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' by the despatch of telegrams to von Bock and his subordinate army commanders telling them that he and Hitler were aware of the difficult nature of the front-line battle with the Soviets and the weather. When this effort to reassure the Eastern Front generals failed, von Brauchitsch appeared soon after 12.00 on 13 December at von Bock’s headquarters, which was located in Smolensk. By this time von Bock and his subordinate commanders had agreed that they had no alternative but to withdraw Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' to the line linking Rzhev, Gzhatsk, Orel and Kursk. von Kluge had objected to such a withdrawal when the army group had proposed it three days before, but now said that he had changed his mind as his forces, most especially the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe, were in the verge of destruction within 10 days, and it was now necessary to sacrifice equipment in order to save the men. Strauss had also believed earlier that his 9^th Army could hold its position, but now said that the army would have to yield Kalinin, which the northern corner post of the army group’s front. In his first conversation with von Brauchitsch, von Bock said the question was whether Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' should stand and fight despite the risk of total destruction, or withdraw even though this would entail major matériel losses.

Early on 14 December, von Brauchitsch reached Roslavl to meet von Kluge and Guderian, and Generalmajor Rudolf Schmundt, Hitler’s chief adjutant, arrived in Smolensk. Though he held only a relatively low rank, Schmundt was a member of Hitler’s 'command group', which von Brauchitsch was not. It is probable that Schmundt was sent to the Eastern Front for an overt display of the fact that Hitler was concerned, and covertly to protect Hitler’s interests in any decisions von Brauchitsch might make. von Brauchitsch returned to Smolensk late in the afternoon of the same day after learning that Guderian’s front to the west of Tula was also beginning to develop gaps, and he agreed that the army group would have to pull back to von Bock’s proposed line. For an hour or so it looked as though all present had at last achieved a consensus. Schmundt called General Alfred Jodl, the chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht’s operations staff, to get a quick decision from Hitler. The German leader answered swiftly with a qualified negative. Hitler said that the 9^th Army and 3^rd Panzergruppe could withdraw to the west from Kalinin and Klin only as far as they had to in order to straighten their lines. The 2^nd Panzerarmee could do the same around Tula. Hitler otherwise expressly forbade giving up ground while 'something' had been done to ready a line to which a retirement could be made. Neither von Brauchitsch nor von Bock spoke with Jodl, who had relayed Hitler’s decision, and both generals assumed 'something' in the way of preparation would serve to satisfy Hitler, and von Bock therefore ordered his formations to ready themselves for a withdrawal and to prepare the line linking Rzhev, Gzhatsk, Orel and Kursk as best they could.

On the morning of 15 December, von Brauchitsch travelled to East Prussia as another cold wave swept over the Eastern Front: during the night the temperature dropped to -33° F (-36° C) at Tikhvin. In the morning von Leeb telephoned Hitler, something which von Bock had not done up to this time, and told the German leader that the time had come to give up the idea of holding close to Tikhvin. To Hitler’s familiar protest that yielding Tikhvin would expose the Leningrad bottleneck, von Leeb replied that the troops had to have shelter and rest, and thus that he was compelled to pull his forces 45 miles (70 km) back to the west to positions on the line of the Volkhov river. When Hitler gave no clear decision either way, von Leeb assumed the choice was his and, at 12.00, issued the order to start the movement back to the line of the Volkhov river. Seven hours later, Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, called and asked von Leeb to reverse his decision as Hitler could still not make any firm decision. von Leeb then decided to visit Hitler’s headquarters.

On Heeresgruppe 'Mitte''s front, on this same day the 9^th Army was ready to evacuate Kalinin after completing preparations for the destruction of the city, and most especially of the bridges across the Volga river. The 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe were retreating in a temperature of -26° C (-15° F) as the snow continued to fall, Hoepner predicting that this retirement would cost the 4^th Panzergruppe most of its artillery. von Bock urged Hoepner to think and thin again about ceding every mile. Guderian had a gap 9.33 miles (15 km) wide in the 2^nd Panzerarmee's front to the west of Tula, and Schmidt reported that 2^nd Army could hold to the east of the railway linking Orel and Kursk only if the Soviets made major errors, of which they had not yet offered any evidence. At 12.00 on 15 December, the chief of the Oberkommando des Heeres' operations branch, Oberst Adolf Heusinger, telephoned to advise that an order from Hitler was imminent, and that this would allow the 9^th Army, 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe to withdraw some 31 to 40.5 miles (50 to 65 km) to Staritza and the line of the Lama and Ruza rivers. Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', Heusinger added, would also be free to withdraw gradually to the line linking Rzhev, Gzhatsk, Orel and Kursk.

The day was also that on which momentous decisions were taken at Hitler’s headquarters. Hitler had returned to his headquarters during the previous night after remaining in Berlin to handle some diplomatic affairs. However, his absence from the 'Wolfsschanze' did not mean that Hitler had lost touch with matters at the front: all that the German leader needed or wished to know was available to him by telephone or through the army’s communications centre at Zossen, 18.5 miles (30 km) to the south of Berlin. But Hitler was not in personal contact with the military leadership, which may have suited him as his possessed a tendency toward indecision when faced with the need to make crucial choices. On 14 December he had given von Bock and von Brauchitsch a negative answer which could be construed as a positive answer. On the following day, Hitler had been unable to decide about Tikhvin after more than seven hours, but had apparently agreed to a far larger withdrawal by Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. One day later still, however, Hitler changed his mind once again. In a morning meeting with von Leeb on 16 December, Hitler raise little in the way of objection and agreed that Heeresgruppe 'Nord' could give up the Tikhvin salient. With von Brauchitsch present, Hitler blamed the current situation on the Eastern Front on poor advice from the Oberkommando des Heeres, and he had always known, he declared, that Heeresgruppe 'Nord' lacked the strength for the task demanded of it. Had the Oberkommando des Heeres reallocated the 3^rd Panzergruppe to Heeresgruppe 'Nord' in August, as Hitler had wanted, the surrounding of Leningrad would have been completed, contact would have been made with the Finns, and there would have been no problem.

After delivering his decision with regard to Tikhvin, Hitler turned his attention to Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', and at 12.00 Halder telephoned Hitler’s decisions to von Bock. Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', Halter told von Bock, was to receive an order allowing the 9^th Army, 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe to complete their withdrawals if there was no alternative. The other armies were to close the gaps in their lines and stand fast. Halder had not attended the morning’s meeting, and was transmitting what he had heard from Jodl. The order, as Hitler was having those in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht’s operations branch express it, was much stronger than Halder knew, for a strategic decision equal to any thus far in World War II was being made, and the Oberkommando des Heeres was effectively out of the picture largely because von Brauchitsch had ceased to function even as an intermediary between Hitler and the army high command. After the morning conference, Schmundt told von Bock’s chief-of-staff, General Hans von Greiffenberg, that Hitler had sidetracked von Brauchitsch so far as the discussions of the current situation were concerned. For now Schmundt said he would be the person via whom the army group would contact Hitler’s headquarters as Hitler was now gathering all matters into his own hands.

When von Bock asked later whether or not von Brauchitsch had reported how close the army group was to destruction, Schmundt said that he had not. Implying that Hitler had not been told how serious was the situation in which Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' now found itself, Schmundt added that Hitler had said he could not send reinforcements merely because Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' had a few gaps in its front. Still unwilling to speak personally to Hitler, von Bock re-emphasised his troubles and asked Schmundt to pass these on to Hitler, and added that he could not decide whether holding or withdrawing was the more dangerous option, but either was likely to result in the army group’s destruction. In the middle of the night, Hitler telephoned von Bock to tell him that Schmundt had told him of the two men’s earlier conversation, and that the only option was to hold the line and close the gaps in it. Hitler assured von Bock that infantry reinforcements and air transport were available, and that he himself was co-ordinating their deployment. As he sought to ask what might happen before the reinforcements arrived, von Bock told Hitler that the front might tear open at at moment, but Hitler halted him to say that this was a chance which would have to be taken, and then ended the conversation.

Hitler prided himself on his ability to handle a crisis, many of which he mastered against seemingly impossible odds. He had not only mastered crises, however, but in fact profited from them largely as a result of the fact that he had often contrived their circumstances. The December 1941 crisis on the Eastern Front was one he did not want, but when he had come to the decision that he could not evade it, he did what he had done with preceding crises and sought to resolve it on the terms which suited him best. Thus what the army could not achieve in its own fashion, it would have to achieve in his.

The manner in which Hitler would do this began to become clear on the morning of 18 December, when the order announced two days earlier reached Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. The order mandated that larger evasive movements could not be made as they would lead to a total loss of heavy weapons and equipment. Commanders at all level were to intervene personally to drive the troops into a fanatical resistance in their current positions without regard to Soviet breakthroughs past their flanks or into their rear. This was the only way to gain the time required to deliver reinforcements from Germany and the western theatre. Only if reserves had moved into rear positions could consideration be given to any withdrawal to those positions.

The reactions to Hitler’s order within Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' ranged between resignation and anger. von Kluge predicted that no matter what the orders demanded, the army group could not hold its current positions. Reinhardt and Hoepner doubted that they could halt the divisions of the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe even temporarily on the line of the Lama and Ruza rivers. von Bock passed the order down the chain of command without protest and informed Hoepner that he was to use force if necessary to halt the withdrawal. Guderian asked for air transport to take him to speak with Hitler, and by telephone told von Greiffenberg that the situation was more serious than anyone could imagine, and that unless something happened soon, the German army could expect to see things which had never before occurred. Guderian added that he would not pass the orders further down the chain of command, even if he faced a court martial for his refusal, and wished at least to give his career an honourable end.

The stand-fast order meant that Hitler had taken all command initiative out of the hands of the generals. While it was later said that this was probably the best 'solution' at the time, in the shorter term Hitler had in effect given Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' little more than a suicide mission: front-line leadership was in effect replaced by rear-area compulsion, and the leadership of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' was thus transmuted into an agency for Hitler’s will. What the order could or would accomplish in the area round Moscow remained a question, but it certainly removed the last pretence of army autonomy within the Nazi state. Speaking with Schmundt on 16 December, and aware by this time that he was about to be given an order that would almost certainly leave him to preside over the death of his army group, von Bock had pointed out his own health problems and that Hitler might desire to have fresh blood in command of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. von Bock added the he did not mean to imply any threat but merely to state fact. However, von Bock was wholly unprepared when, on the following day, von Brauchitsch telephoned him to say that Hitler wished him to submit a request for leave. Taken aback, von Bock from this time onward became more concerned with establishing whether or not Hitler had anything against him than with the fate of his army group. On 19 December, after being granted leave until his health was better, von Bock transferred command to von Kluge, command of whose 4^th Army passed in the short term to General Ludwig Kübler, and departed with the assertion that this bitter period was drawing to a close.

Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive continued. In the north, Klin and Kalinin were liberated on 15 and 16 December as the Kalinin Front drove to the west. Konev, the Soviet front commander, attempted to envelop the left wing of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', but met strong opposition near Rzhev and was forced to a halt after his forces had created a salient that would see a great deal of sanguinary fighting and last until 1943.

In the south, the Soviet offensive went equally well, with the forces of the South-West Front relieving Tula on 16 December. However, in the period between 17 and 22 December the Luftwaffe destroyed 299 motor vehicles and 23 tanks around Tula, hampering the continued momentum of the Soviet pursuit.

The Luftwaffe was reinforced, as Hitler saw it as the only hope to 'save' the situation. Two Kampfgruppen, namely Oberstleutnant Dr Gottlieb Wolff’s II/Kampfgeschwader 4 and Hauptmann Sigmund-Ulrich Freiherr von Gravenreuth’s II/KG 30, arrived from Germany, where they had been refitting, while four Transportgruppen, with a strength of 102 Junkers Ju 52/3m transport aircraft, were deployed from Generaloberst Alexander Löhr’s Luftflotte IV in the southern part of the USSR to evacuate surrounded army units and improve the flow of supplies to the front-line forces. It was a last-minute effort, but nonetheless worked. The German air arm was thus able to help in the prevention of the total collapse of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'.

It cannot be disputed that despite the Luftwaffe’s best and at times very successful efforts, the Soviet generally managed to obtain and then preserve air superiority, and this made a huge contribution to the Soviet victory outside Moscow.

In the centre, however, progress was much slower, and Soviet troops liberated Naro-Fominsk only on 26 December, Kaluga on 28 December, and Maloyaroslavets on 2 January 1942 after 10 days of violent action. The Soviet reserves were now running low, and the offensive was halted on 7 January 1942, after having pushed the exhausted and freezing German armies back 60 to 150 miles (100 to 250 km) from Moscow.

Meanwhile, as he had been omitted from the decision-making process of 16 December, von Brauchitsch had finally offered his own resignation, which Hitler accepted three days later and then issued a proclamation that he had taken personal command of the army. The departure of von Brauchitsch came as no surprise, but Hitler’s assumption of personal command of the army led to major changes. Up to this time Hitler had used a plethora of separate agencies with overlapping responsibilities to run the war, but with its own commander-in-chief, even one as limited as von Brauchitsch, the army had possessed its own identity. The new situation left the army prone to a measure of dismemberment: the offices which assumed its tasks were small and largely semi-independent groups. One of these was the Office of the Chief of Army Armament and the Replacement Army headed by Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm, and another the Office of the Chief of Army Personnel headed by Generalmajor Bodwin Keitel. As he controlled army procurement and production, and commanded all army troops inside Germany, Fromm had enough power at his disposal to control the German state. Keitel, the younger brother of Wilhelm Keitel of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, kept the officer personnel files and could influence promotions and appointments. Fromm and Keitel were directly subordinate to the army’s commander-in-chief, but as he had no desire to become involved in administrative matters Hitler placed both these offices, nominally at least, under Keitel in his capacity as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. This latter had failed to establish itself as a true joint command over the three services, and had for some years served as a kind of second army command, superior in its closer relationship to Hitler but unable to extend its reach past the army’s commander-in-chief into army concerns. How much capital the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht could make out of the army personnel office and the replacement training office was perhaps questionable, but in armament production the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht and the Oberkommando des Heeres were definite rivals.

For the core of the Oberkommando des Heeres, namely the army general staff, the position was still more critical. Jodl’s armed force operations staff advised Hitler on strategy, and was already the general staff for all theatres except that in the east. When Hitler named himself the commander-in-chief of the army, even if the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or the Oberkommando des Heeres did not become superfluous, either the armed force general staff or the army general staff most certainly did. Hitler seldom expressed any objection to having two agencies doing a single task as long as he controlled both of them, and during the afternoon of 19 December told Halder that the Oberkommando des Heeres was to carry on its activities as usual, but then within hours word began to spread from Hitler’s headquarters that Jodl soon would replace Halder as chief of the army general staff, and that General Erich von Manstein would move from command of the 11^th Army to replace Jodl. According to the rumour, the changes would occur as soon as von Manstein had completed his reduction of Crimea, which was expected within a few weeks. von Manstein had Hitler’s approval as the German leader had profited from von Manstein’s strategic ideas, particularly in the 1940 campaign in the west, but not that of the general staff, which had long seen von Manstein as too importunate to succeed Halder. Jodl and von Manstein could have spelled the end for the Oberkommando des Heeres as it had existed under von Brauchitsch and Halder.

If Hitler had deprived the field commands of their practical right to act on their own initiative, he had done even more to the Oberkommando des Heeres. In the prevailing atmosphere of change, in which apprehension vied with ambition, Hitler could do exactly as he pleased without thought of any opposition. On 20 December, Hitler instructed Halder about how the war on the Eastern Front was to be undertaken: a fanatical will to fight would have to be instilled in the troops by all, and indeed severe, means; soldiers had no contracts restricting them to specific duties, so those in support positions could and should defend their own positions, and all troops would have to learn to tolerate breakthroughs without undue concern; rifle pits were to be dug by blasting holes in the ground or by excavating them with artillery fire; the German troops could take winter clothing from Soviet civilians; the army was solely obligated to take care of its own troops; and every man had to defend himself where he was. Halder sent a summary of these orders to the army groups as an further elucidation of the stand-fast order.

On the morning of 20 December, Guderian set out by air to Hitler’s headquarters without pausing at the army group headquarters as protocol demanded. While Guderian’s 2^nd Panzerarmee was in flight, von Kluge was occupied with with telegrams from his other army commanders. The 4^th Army reported that the Soviets were attacking in the army’s deep flank in the direction of Kaluga, the army had no more forces at its disposal, combat strength was declining, and holding its present positions was impossible in the long run. From Hoepner at the 4^th Panzergruppe von Kluge learned that General Heinrich-Gottfried von Vietinghoff-Scheel and General Richard Ruoff, the commanders of the XLVI Corps (mot.) and V Corps respectively, had reported that their formations could not hold their positions, there had been heavy losses of trucks and weapons in recent days as these had been destroyed for lack of fuel, weapon strengths were down to 25% to 30% of requirements, the only option was to give orders to hold to the last man, and the troops would then be destroyed, leaving a gap in the front. And from Strauss at the 9^th Army von Kluge learned that the present battle area was wooded and offered poor visibility, if it had to hold there the army was probably be penetrated and destroyed.

To Halder, with whom he maintained telephone contact throughout the day, von Kluge offered a number of proposals for withdrawals. Citing Hitler’s several demands that no ground be yielded, Halder rejected all of these. After the fall of night, von Kluge telephoned Halder to inform him that Guderian’s determination had waned and as a result he did not intend to hold his line. On checking the 2^nd Panzerarmee's reports and dispositions, von Kluge added, he had discovered that Guderian had moved one regiment from each of his army’s divisions back some 40 miles (65 km) to the Oka river, which could only indicate that Guderian intended to retreat. Guderian had by then arrived at headquarters and was closeted with Hitler when Halder telephoned with what von Kluge had told him. Hitler accused Guderian of having concocted an insane plan, and after this Halder telephoned von Kluge to inform him that Hitler had sorted out Guderian and given him a direct order to hold his front exactly where it stood.

von Kluge now returned to his own proposals for withdrawals. The trouble with what Guderian wanted to do, he said, was that it would have been a rapid retreat rather than a considered step-by-step withdrawal. Unwilling to discuss either alternative with Hitler, Halder attempted during the morning of the following day to influence von Kluge, through Brennecke, his chief-of-staff, to hold everywhere for two more weeks, claiming that the crisis would have passed by then and that the army group would be sorry if it pulled back too soon.

Finally, on the morning of 22 December, von Bock arrived from Smolensk by car at Hitler’s headquarters. Hitler received von Bock in a friendly manner during the afternoon, and the two men talked about Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' in general terms. von Bock seemed to have been satisfied when Hitler assured him that he knew very serious position in which Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' found itself. After Hitler had also informed him that he could report back when he was recovered, von Bock took his leave and departed, again by car, to Berlin.

As army commander-in-chief, Hitler paid no greater heed to the problems of any one group than he ever had been: Hitler hated to lose ground taken with 'German blood', but was untouched by human despair, and his thoughts shifted readily away from human suffering to other concerns. He worried about a loss of prestige at Leningrad and discussed with Halder the possibility of using poison gas to end the resistance in the city without further delay.

On 23 December, Hitler summoned Fromm from Berlin to report on manpower and armaments, and spoke to Fromm for several hours about the ways in which the army could be rebuilt for an offensive in 1942, and about a 'tractor of the future' that would use far less raw material than the current generation of trucks, adding that Dr Ferdinand Porsche, designer of the Volkswagen car, would have a prototype ready in just a matter of days. As far as the Eastern Front was concerned, Hitler expected that the current crisis would have passed in 10 to 14 days, adding that there had been a hole near Tula, but that elsewhere the front would hold.

After the first few days of the new regime, the generals on the Eastern Front discovered that having Hitler in direct command was stimulating though at times ominous. For a long time none of the generals had known what, if anything, transpired between Hitler and von Brauchitsch, and in recent times von Brauchitsch had effectively communicated neither with Hitler nor with his own subordinates. From 19 December, Halder and two or three of his branch chiefs saw Hitler every day, and while he lectured to them rather than consulted them, they appreciated that they were at the centre of the decision-making process and no longer receiving their instructions second or even third hand through Keitel, Jodl or Schmundt.

After his meeting with Hitler on 23 December, Fromm believed that either the Oberkommando des Heeres or the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht would disappear, but nonetheless possessed sufficient confidence that the former would survive to order his staff to do all that it could to support the Oberkommando des Heeres.

von Kluge was commanding an army group which was in desperate trouble, but was at last holding a command commensurate with his field marshal’s rank. When von Bock reached in Berlin, however, he learned that he was no longer the commander of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', on leave, but had joined Generalfeldmarschall Gerd Rundstedt, ex-commander of Heeresgruppe 'Süd', in the high command reserve pool.

Back on the Eastern Front, the first phase of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation' ended on 16 December. The German spearheads aimed at Moscow had been destroyed and the majority of the original Soviet objectives had been taken. The 20^th Army had entered Solnechnogorsk on 12 December, and the 10^th Army was in Stalinogorsk on the following day. A mobile group of the 30^th Army had taken Klin on 15 December, and the 31^st Army entered Kalinin on the following day. With these successes the Soviet armies had advanced more than 32 miles (50 km) on the northern flank and more than 50 miles (80 km) on the southern flank. While no new armies had been deployed during this first phase of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation', the number of troops committed to the battle had probably grown considerably during the 10-day period. At the headquarters of the 30^th Army, Lelyushenko had been awaiting the arrival of the larger part of a group of six divisions from the Ural mountains and Siberia as the counter-offensive began.

Zhukov had issued an initial directive for the second phase of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation' to his right flank armies on 13 December, ordering them to advance to an average depth of 80 to 95 miles (130 to 160 km) to the west and north-west of Moscow. It was Zhukov’s belief that the primary objective for the rest of the winter should be for the Soviet forces to drive the whole of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' back 150 miles (240 km) to the line, lying to the east of Smolensk, from which the Germans had begun 'Wotan' (i) early in October. Zhukov estimated that this would need resupply and replacements for the armies already in action in the offensive’s first phase, and four fresh armies from the Stavka reserves. Zhukov’s intention was to keep the advance essentially frontal while using mobile groups of the type being formed in each of the armies (typically with one cavalry division, one tank brigade and one infantry brigade) to strike at targets of opportunity ahead of the main forces.

Stalin and the Stavka, however, were beginning to think in less conservative terms. They therefore allowed the West Front to embark on the second phase as Zhukov proposed, but without the four reinforcement armies originally planned. This change was made by Zhukov, who brought his central group of forces, comprising General Leytenant Leonid A. Govorov’s 5^th Army, General Leytenant Mikhail G. Efremov’s 33^rd Army, General Major Konstantin D. Golubev’s 43^rd Army and General Leytenant Ivan G. Zakharkin’s 49^th Army, into the counteroffensive on 18 December. Elements of the 5^th Army, including a mobile group under General Major Lev M. Dovator, had been in action since 11 December, and the 49^th Army’s left flank had been engaged together with the 50^th Army in the Tula sector since 14 December. The 33^rd Army and 43^rd Army took a week to move out of their starting positions.

The reinforcement armies were committed to the outer flanks of the offensive, which were not controlled by Zhukov. Lelyushenko’s 30^th Army, from the West Front, and Maslennikov’s 39^th Army, from the Stavka reserve, were allocated to the Kalinin Front, and Konev’s orders as of 18 December were to employ these and General Major Vladimir I. Vostrukhov’s 22^nd Army, Shvetsov’s 29^th Army and Yushkevich’s 31^st Army in a drive to the west and south-west toward Rzhev and thus into the area behind the left flank of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. In the south, between 18 and 24 December, the Stavka reactivated the Bryansk Front under the command of General Polkovnik Yakov T. Cherevichenko, giving it General Leytenant Petr S. Pshennikov’s 3^rd Army and General Leytenant Avksenti M. Gorodnyansky’s 13^th Army, and also General Polkovnik Fyedor I. Kuznetsov’s 61^st Army from the reserve. Cherevichenko was instructed to break through the 2^nd Army and strike to the north-west toward Mtsensk behind the right flank of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. From this it can be seen that the Stavka, at this time envisaged nothing less than the encirclement of the entire Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' by having Kalinin Front advance to the south past Rzhev to Vyaz’ma while the Bryansk Front advanced to the west and north-west to Vyaz’ma and Bryansk as the West Front pinned the German army group in the centre. The Soviet high command was clearly feeling ambitious.

In the middle of December, right across the front the Germans were identifying new Soviet formations and units in numbers so great that the Oberkommando des Heeres found itself almost unwilling to hear the reports, so threatening were they. Via the general staff, Halder despatched an advisory letter stating that the large number of Soviet units identified had sometimes exercised a paralysing effect on the German leadership, which must not be permitted to fall into a 'numbers psychosis', and that intelligence officers had to be trained into better discrimination. The Soviet troops, as Halder meant to imply, were in fact very low in qualitative terms though great in quantitative terms. Many of the Soviet troops were boys or middle-aged men, half-trained and committed to battle sometimes without even hand weapons, often with inadequate artillery and automatic weapons support, and always with a complete disregard for losses. In the 10^th Army, 75% of the troops were ages between 31 and 40 years, and sometimes older; in the 1^st Shock Army the figure was between 60% and 70%. The same was probably true of the other reserve armies. Whatever their ages, shortage of training and poor levels of equipment, however, the Soviet troops were warmly dressed and the quantities of their supplies and equipment seemed to be increasing. Moreover, in their apparent ability to endure the extreme cold, they appeared to the Germans to be almost superhuman. The Germans were amazed at the ability of the Soviet troops to remain in the open at temperatures far below zero for days in succession: some of the men did freeze, but most survived and kept on fighting. Moreover, like the Soviet troops, the Soviet T-34 medium tank was also proving itself in the winter. Its compressed air starter could start its engine even in the coldest weather, and its broad tracks could carry the tank across ditches and hollows holding 5 ft (1.5 m) deep in snow.

von Bock had remarked earlier in the month that in situations such as that on the Eastern Front at this time, when some things start to go wrong everything does. By the middle of the month this was entirely true of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. In the depth of a bitter winter and under constant Soviet pressure, the army group’s subordinate formations were hard hit be problems. Each army normally had sufficient transport to move between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of supplies per day. Because of the snow, cold, mechanical failures and losses, the 2^nd Panzerarmee could manage no more than 360 tons per day, and the other armies were no better off. Large stocks of winter clothing, except for items overlooked in planning months before, such as fur parkas and felt boots, was located in the army depots at the railheads. So far the Germans had not yet been able to issue one-third of the clothing to the troops because they could not deliver these items to the front. The movement of ammunition, vehicle fuel and rations had to be prioritised. Tanks, trucks and the mass of other vehicles, run down after six months in the field without deep maintenance, could not take the strain of being driven through snow and over ice, and as a result the Germans were having to abandon vehicles of all types every day, while others were worn out or had vital parts broken by the cold. Lubricants froze in crankcases, on bearings, in artillery recoil mechanisms, and even in the lightly oiled operating systems of machine guns. Out of the 970 tanks with which it had begun the 'Barbarossa' campaign or received subsequently, the 2^nd Panzerarmee currently had just 70 tanks in running order and another 168 under repair. The 3^rd Panzergruppe would, by the time it reached the Lama river, have destroyed or abandoned 289 tanks. Hitler had ordered 26 new tanks and 25 self-propelled assault guns driven from Heeresgruppe 'Süd' to bolster the 2^nd Panzerarmee, but on the first stage of 60 miles (100 km) from Dniepropetrovsk to Krasnograd, eight tanks and one assault gun had broken down, and the rest still had 300 miles (480 km) to cover even as they carried all their own fuel as the truck column allocated to fuel transport was stuck fast ion the mud to the south of Krasnograd.

Even when they had tanks, the German forces faced with Soviet tanks found themselves having to rely increasingly on their field artillery, most of which lacked the mobility and power to cope with the T-34. During the autumn, the Germans had tested a hollow-charge artillery shell capable of penetrating the armour of Soviet tanks, but Hitler had ordered the recall of this ammunition in November: it had occurred to him that if the Soviets learned the secret, the hollow charge would be vastly more effective aga