Soviet General Staff - The Battle of Moscow 1941–1942: The Red Army’s Defensive Operations and Counter-offensive Along the Moscow Strategic Direction

The Battle of Moscow, 19411942: The Red Armys Defensive Operations and Counteroffensive Along the Moscow Strategic Direction is a detailed examination of one of the major turning points of World War II, as seen from the Soviet side. The Battle of Moscow marked the climax of Hitlers Operation Barbarossa, which sought to destroy the Soviet Union in a single campaign and ensure German hegemony in Europe. The failure to do so condemned Germany to a prolonged war it could not win. This work originally appeared in 1943, under the title Razgrom Nemetskikh Voisk pod Moskvoi (The Rout of the German Forces Around Moscow). The work was produced by the Red Army General Staffs military-historical section, which was charged with collecting and analyzing the wars experience and disseminating it to the armys higher echelons. This was a collective effort, featuring many different contributors, with Marshal Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov, former chief of the Red Army General Staff and then head of the General Staff Academy, serving as general editor. The book is divided into three parts, each dealing with a specific phase of the battle. The first traces the Western Fronts defensive operations along the Moscow direction during Army Group Centers final push toward the capital in NovemberDecember, 1941. The study pays particular attention to the Red Armys resistance to the Germans attempts to outflank Moscow from the north. Equally important were the defensive operations to the south of Moscow, where the Germans sought to push forward their other encircling flank. The second part deals with the first phase of the Red Armys counteroffensive, which was aimed at pushing back the German pincers and removing the immediate threat to Moscow. Here the Soviets were able to throw the Germans back and flatten both salients, particularly in the south, where they were able to make deep inroads into the enemy front to the west and northwest. The final section examines the further development of the counteroffensive until the end of January 1942. This section highlights the Soviet advance all along the front and their determined but unsuccessful attempts to cut off the Germans RzhevVyazma salient. It is from this point that the front essentially stabilized, after which events shifted to the south. This new translation into English makes available to a wider readership this valuable study.