taking Moscow. After all, it was the national capital, it had priceless political symbolic
value, it was the hub of Russian rail communications, and it was an industrial centre with
an importance second to none. Eventually, therefore, the Germans did launch a concen-
trated drive on the city. Codenamed Operation Typhoon, it opened on 1 October 1941.
Unfortunately for the Wehrmacht, though gravely wounded in June, July and August,
by the autumn the Red Army had begun to recover its poise. The Russians mobilized
fresh armies to replace those destroyed in the summer and they were ultimately able to
redeploy most of their Siberian divisions from the Far Eastern provinces, where they had
been watching, and deterring attack by, Japan’s Kwantung Army. The Russians had also
been given the time to construct serious lines of fortification to protect their capital, and
the Russian winter was beginning in earnest. On the night of 4 December the temperature
on the approaches to Moscow fell to –25°F.
The net result of these competing strategic efforts was that somewhere between
Smolensk and Moscow the German attack, indeed the German way of manoeuvre war-
fare, ran out of steam as well as ideas. Advance units of Army Group Centre were literally
in Moscow’s suburbs, on the tram route, when on 5 December they were hit by the first
major Soviet counter-offensive of the war. The result was a massive German defeat,
nearly a disastrous rout. The Battle for Moscow in November, December and January
1941–2 was nothing short of a titanic struggle. As many as 7 million soldiers from both
sides participated. In this battle alone, Soviet fatalities numbered some 926,000, a figure
close to the British Empire total for 1914–1 8. This was war on a scale unmatched, indeed
unmatchable, in any other theatre. The German Army survived, though barely. It retreated
some way, while at Hitler’s insistence it held its ground where it could. The Führer took
over operational command of the Army, so contemptuous was he of the competence, lack
of determination and deficient spirit of his generals.
The one-year, one-campaign bid for total victory in the East had failed dismally. And
it had failed at a cost in experienced manpower as well as machines that could not be
made good. The German Army of Operation Barbarossa was always walking wounded
after the protracted Battle for Moscow. Among its problems, erroneous strategy and the
Russian climate merit special notice. As noted already, German strategy intended to win
the war by so damaging the Red Army in great battles of encirclement close to the
frontier that the Russians would collapse as a coherent fighting force. The Red Army did
suffer great damage, but it did not collapse. With respect to the Russian climate, a recent
study claims that ‘The weather did not defeat the Germans: their failure to plan for it did’
(Megargee, 2006: 103).
1942: the tipping point
The year 1942 had been heralded by both good and bad news for Germany. The bad
news has just been outlined: Russia was still in the field, fighting. But Germany had
acquired a maritime ally of the first rank. Hitler was delighted by the Japanese attack on
the Americans in Hawaii and the Philippines. Indeed, so delighted was he that he chose
to declare war on the United States on 11 December. He calculated that the Japanese
would keep America occupied strategically for a long time to come, while Japan would
prove to be both the naval ally Germany needed and a potentially lethal continental
threat to the Soviet Union in Asia. Sad to say for Germany, President Roosevelt adhered
134 War, peace and international relations