No. Replacements for July 10th through July 31st. Rather hard to receive replacements for August-September seeing as they haven't happened yet.
In which case they'd be included in total strength returns as of July 31st, not in addition to them. So whatever that strength returns as of August 1st are include the replacements sent in July.
Have you not been paying attention to the last page?
I'd prefer if you specifically listed them and where they would and when in your mind.
Nah, you keep assuming that they would be crushed despite being stronger then in October and the Germans weaker. In reality, the slower pace and weaker nature of the German advance would allow much more to fall back out of the pocket. The same weakness would also allow many more Soviet forces to successfully escape, as the Germans have fewer men to adequately screen it.
You haven't demonstrated that they were any stronger in August than in October, while in October the reserve units formed in mid/late July were actually more experienced and ready in their echeloned defensive positions than they were in August, while they were busy attacking AG-Center frontally and at Yelnya.
Despite the fact they proved to be a threat to Guderian's thrust towards Kiev in early-September...
Because he was advancing to them where they already were and they didn't have to travel far to get at his flanks in September. If he was advancing East in August they'd have to travel quite a distance to actually get at him, while 13th and 21st Armies of Central Front weren't much of an offensive threat to the flank of advance East, they were demolished handily by 1 Panzer Corps and 2nd Army in a couple of weeks IOTL in mid-August, while Reserve Front and West Front would be engaged and destroyed by the advance East. Can you post a map of what flank armies would be attacking the flanks of a push East in August and September?
Again with the mud myth. In reality, the German collapse, both logistically and in terms of the rate of advance, pre-date the mud...
In some cases yes, but they pushed on far from their start positions, but suffered their logistics issues in concert with the start of the mud on the Vyazma axis of advance; Guderian had logistics issues much further south before being hit with the muds, but was crippled by them when they started, even after solving much of the distance related logistics issues.
... as you subsequently manage to prove yourself. October 3rd is long before the mud set in, especially where Guderian was operating where the Raputitsa set in later then it did further north.
Not on the Southern Front. Guderian experienced issues with mud starting on the 3rd that only got worse. By the 6th it was totally incapacitating his move on Mtsenk. That is confirmed in several sources including Stahel's 'Operation Typhoon', "T-34: a Mythical Weapon" that has an extremely detailed description of the fight at Mtsenk around October 8th, and Forczyk's Osprey campaign book on Moscow Campaign.
This is such OKH thinking that it's uncanny. Yeah, the quartermaster in mid-July said they could possibly supply as many as two panzer corps to Moscow in early September. They said nothing about whether two panzer corps could fight through Soviet defenses in early September. Your assertion that the city would have no defenses is based on assumptions on the initial outcome of the campaign that rests more in the realm of Nazi-esque rotten structure thinking then a rational analysis of the situation.
That's all that is needed in early September after the Vyazma pocket is finished. They could get two Panzer armies to Vyazma and then 1 Panzer corps from each to continue on the highways to Moscow itself. As it was 1 Panzer Corps from Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army effectively destroyed the entire 13th Army on it's own and then assisted 2nd Army in the near destruction of 21st Army and shoving the newly formed 3rd Army backwards toward Kiev. 24th Army was already heavily engaged around Yelnya and lacked a reserve to stop an attack East of the Panzer Corps that shattered 13th Army, plus they weren't really prepared for an attack on the flank across the Desna after the destruction of 28th army at Roslavl.
Because your wrong and he didn't face tough resistance. The resistance Guderian faced from the Central Front can be, and has, been described as "fleeing". He did not have to maneuver around enemy forces (which he would have to if he heads east as there are another two Soviet reserve armies off in that direction) as by the 20th most of the enemies that had made up. After that, Guderian pulled off the line and moved through territory that had already been secured by the 2nd Army down to Gomel. Moving through ones territory you control well to the rear is always vastly easier then advancing
He was repeatedly attacked by Soviet forces the entire way. Just because Central Front fell apart doesn't mean it wasn't a wreck on the 24th because Guderian advanced into thin air, he beat them in heavy combat.
P.385 of Barbarossa Derailed vol. 1 talked about the heavy fighting experienced for over a week, starting on August 8th by Guderian's forces pushing south during which time 13th Army was destroyed as a fighting force. Furthermore Glantz states that the Soviets saw such a move coming and in the creation of Reserve Front and ordered them to prepare their defenses, while Stalin swapped out commanders in late July to put more 'fighting generals' in place to resist Guderian. Days before Guderian attacked 13th army they had been reinforced by the 4th Airborne corps, 52nd Cavalry division, and 21st Mountain Cavalry division. In 3 days of heavy combat (p.387) 13th Army's front was cracked wide open and they were routed and fled south. Within 6 days XXIV Panzer Corps captured 16,000 men, 76 guns, 15 tanks, and an armored train. That was done without the support of 2nd Army, which delayed their attack until the 12th, after Guderian's corps had succeeded in their attack and were already starting a mini-pocket battle.
Thereafter the Panzer Corps and 2nd Army engaged in multiple pocket battles and destroyed several Soviet corps in their push to Gomel and beyond. The shattered remnants of 13th Army withdrew East, the 21st Army south. That was on the 16th of August, about a week after the start of the offensives. Bryansk Front was formed from the wreckage of Central Front on the 14th. Of course during all of this 2nd Panzer Army was keeping most of it's forces fighting Reserve Front, which under Zhukov was hammering on Yelnya. So despite the major commitments against Reserve Front 1 Panzer Corps from Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army and 2nd Army with all of it's supply problems, muddy roads of poor quality, and heavy losses to that point succeeded in about 1 week destroying Central Front as a fighting force, pretty much necessitating the formation of an entirely new Front with it's remnants and reinforcements. I have no idea why you think there wasn't heavy fighting to destroy and entire Front, force the creation of a new one, and inflicted tens of thousands of casualties on Central Front, perhaps up to and over 100k.
Very few of your maps show Soviet forces, they all give zero sense of scale, and you also confuse things by throwing in maps of the 2nd Armies advance as opposed to 2nd Panzer Group (although I understand if you got them confused). Meanwhile, if we scoot back to the maps you post earlier, we can see the truth:
All the maps I used were from Barbarossa Derailed vol.1 on the chapter about Panzer Group Guderian's advance south (pp.367-403). If you have an issue with what the maps represent, take it up with Glantz, as that is what he used to represent Guderian's and 2nd army's push south against Central Front. 2nd Army was the bulk of the forces used, as at least half of 2nd Panzer Army was tied down defending Yelnya at the same time as we can see from the map you posted from Stahel's book, which is a cleaned up modern map from another of Glantz's books of the maps of the Battle of Smolensk.
The red circle is the general region within which Guderian made his advance in mid-August, complete with a scale ruler in the upper left hand corner. Compared to the map showing the dispositions on August 8th...
As one can see, the advance on the left wing is around 30-40 kilometers, about 7-8 kilometers a day.
Guderian's Panzers advanced from the west of Roslavl to a city called Starodub by the 21st, east of Gomel. Rather than trying to mess around with estimations based on maps it's easier to use a distance calculator.
https://www.distancecalculator.net/
Roslavl to Starodub is 152km as the crow flies, much further by main road. From Krychaw, a city west of Roslavl, the nearest point I think I can find on a modern map to the starting point of 3rd Panzer Division on August 8th, it is 143km in a straight line to Starodub, 3rd Panzer's end point on the 21st of August. By road it is 175km, which is the rough route that 3rd Panzer took according to the maps I posted. So rather than your estimations, how about we use modern maps that actually give us usable distances? In that case the distance from the position 3rd Panzer Division started on August 8th was 175km to it's position at Starodub on August 21st.
Vyazma on a direct line from Roslavl is 166km in a straight line, 221km by road. Not quite the same distance, but pretty damn close. 3rd Panzer faced opposition the entire way, but ripped through Soviet front lines and drove on regardless, much as they would do in October and would be able to do on August 8th 1941 if sent East instead of south.
The right wing's advance is deeper to the point it goes off the map, but is still substantially below that of the scale bar so it is likely around the same. It's swinging eastward mainly because the 2nd Army is just further to the south, off the map, crossing over the D'niepr. Comparing it to some of the maps you posted earlier, the rate of advance is little different. 7-8 kilometers a day is not going to be encircling much. Probably not coincidentally, the right wing of the Panzer Group is operating closer to Mogilev, where a secondary rail line is available. We can also see that your claim that most of Guderian's forces were facing eastward in mid-August or were holding the Yel'naya salient is untrue. Only the 17th, 18th, and 10th Panzer are facing eastward and only the 10th and 18th are at the Yel'nya salient, with the latter in a reserve role. The salient itself is being held by the XX Grenadier Corps of the and . Finally note that in the August 8th map, the Soviet armies are shown as not just armies but also as coherent divisions whereas in the August 15th map, only the right wing of the 13th still maintains such coherency. That pretty clearly shows that by the 15th, the Central Front's forces had lost any real ability to resist. Once again, I will reiterate that the degree of Soviet resistance which Guderian encountered during this entire period can, and has, been described This is not remotely comparable to the kind of resistance Guderian could expect to face in a eastward drive. It also rather neatly explains the August 20th map:
Right, Reserve Front was already engaged, but only one Panzer Corps was sent south, which destroyed 13th Army on it's own, while then going on to help 2nd Army destroy 21st Army and finish off Central Front by late August. Central Front only lost division coherency due to combat actions by Guderian's Panzer Corps and 2nd Army demolishing it in the space of about a week, forcing the creation of the Bryansk Front on the 14th to replace it. What do you think Reserve Front, formed on July 30th and mostly filled with militia divisions, recently formed, would do when 24th Army is taken in the flank while engaged with the rest of 2nd Panzer Army at Yelnya? 13th Army and 21st Army of the Central Front apparently have little combat power on the defensive, what sort of offensive would they really be able to run against 2nd Army and at least 1 Infantry Corps of 2nd Panzer Army at Roslavl? Reserve Front didn't have combat power to throw at Guderian if he attacked East from Roslavl as you can see on the August 8th map I posted from Glantz. There were only fragments of divisions and smaller units on the Desna and around Roslavl, they were LESS organized than the 13th Army was!!!
The Central Front has fled east, easily allowing the 4th Army to simply move into the new positions while Guderian's panzer corps has moved into the unoccupied space in front of. The withdrawal of his Corps has begun further to the rear however, with some of the grenadier divisions under Guderian's command heading back towards the Mogilev-Gomel rail line for transfer down to Gomel.
The reason it fled was because it was smashed in combat from August 8th to the 16th. What forces did 24th army, east of Roslavl, have in place on the 8th of August? Fragments of divisions, which it's combat power was engaged at Yelnya and attention focused elsewhere than it's flank. Nevertheless the distance Guderian's Panzer Corps traveled by road from August 8th-21st was 175km according to distance calculator, nearly as far as it was to Vyazma.
You have yet to prove that the West and Reserve Fronts would be crushed in an early Typhoon, never mind that we have already thrown out your assumptions about the inability of the Soviets to shift forces around by rail or that there would be no further forces beyond the immediate front.
Reserve Front was the formation East of Roslavl on August 8th with fragments of units holding the Desna after the crushing of 28th army. 24th Army according to Glantz as well as Reserve Front, formed in very late July, was thrown at Yelnya, leaving nothing able to resist along the Desna river to stop Guderian from sending his Panzer Corps across the river in force, using the highway there to roll up the flank of 24th army as it's forces were engaged at Yelnya in offensives, and push on via the open roads to Vyazma. The echeleoned defenses of Reserve Front, such that they were in early August, were not oriented to stop a push over the Desna East of Roslavl. It was open ground with good quality roads (by Soviet standards) to Vyazma. As they attack Reserve Front, weak as it was, in the flank, it takes pressure off of Yelnya where the forces defending it could then transition to the offensive.
That Zhukov spent much of the early and mid-August training the Reserve Front and got it into a combat ready state is well established. This then bore out in the subsequent Yel'naya Offensive where the Soviets successfully fought through the German defensive lines and forced the Germans to withdraw from the Yel'naya salient in order to avoid being cut off and destroyed for the first time in the whole war, as the Germans at the time themselves admitted in private. This alone disproves your nonsensical assertion that the Reserve Front had little combat power... indeed, it rather indicates that the Reserve Front was probably one of the two fronts with the greatest amount of combat power in the entire Red Army, the other being the Southwestern Front (although it's achievement was rather more pulling off a mostly successful fighting retreat rather then managing to force a German withdrawal).
24th Army, their only combat ready unit, was already engaged at Yelnya as of August 8th and had the bulk of it's combat units there.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-я_армия_(СССР)
The successful offensive part of the Yelnya operation happened in early September, but fighting was ongoing since late July non-stop. Soviet offensive success in early September at Yelnya had much more to do with Guderian having pulled out his 2nd Panzer Army to use for the Kiev Operation, which thinned out the line dramatically and made defense of the salient impossible by that point given a serious push by Zhukov. By that point 4th Army was made responsible for holding Yelnya, with vastly extended front to replace the positions 2nd Panzer Army held in August. 4th Army faced Reserve and Western Fronts simultaneously with a front at least doubled by the departure of Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army, so Zhukov's success was a function of the AG-Center losing all it's air support (2nd Air Fleet dispatched it's units to Leningrad and Kiev) and 2nd Panzer Army heading south and requiring 4th Army to hold all of it's August positions plus all of 2nd Panzer Army's August positions as well. No wonder Zhukov succeeded, AG-Center was weaker in that area than it had been at any point since mid-July, while the Soviets were at their strongest point to date in that area and concentrated for a serious offensive. That doesn't mean Reserve Front had some great combat power, it means that Reserve Front concentrated on an area that the Germans weakened to attack somewhere else (Kiev). Southwest Front had the greatest combat power in the Red Army at that time? The West Front would have folded like a wet paper towel if attacked in August-September, just like in early October IOTL.
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ельнинская_операция_(1941)
Formed a so-called projection Elninskaya deeply go into the Soviet defenses and pose a threat parts Red Army Viaz'ma direction. In July and August, the connection of the 24th Army tried several times unsuccessfully to cut off this ledge and align the front.
According to the head of the German General Staff, Colonel-General
F. Halder , fighting in the Yelnya area became a typical example of
trench warfare . German command was able to withdraw its troops from moving Elninskaya projection and replace them with infantry divisions.
August 15 the commander of Army Group "Center" General Field Marshal
von Bock wrote in his diary:
... It is difficult to give a definitive answer to the question, what is better: to hold a protrusion or leave it. If Russian will continue to attack the ledge, then keep it profitable. But if they cease attacks that may well be, then the projection is worth preserving, because it will not only become a reference point for our further attacks in the east, but also give an opportunity to provide cover for certain Smolensk railway junction and highway Smolensk - Moscow.
August 21, 1941, after yet another failed attempt to eliminate Elninskaya enemy beachhead, commander of the Reserve Front Army General G. K. Zhukov ordered Major General K. I. Rakutinu stop the attack and to begin preparations for a new, stronger and more organized strike. July 30 artillery commander of the Reserve Front was appointed Major General
L. A. Govorov , who made a great contribution to the training and
artillery ensure the upcoming offensive. On his initiative, the 24th Army was created powerful artillery group, consisting of the Army Group and a long-range infantry support groups in the divisions. Artillery support the attacking forces shall be implemented by successive concentration of fire as well as fire and a separate battery of guns operating in combat formations of infantry. Advantage has been created over the enemy artillery in 1,6 times, it has been adjusted artillery reconnaissance.
[1]
Once again, you make the assertion that the Soviets are less combat capable and the Germans more, totally ignoring what the math and scholarship tells us. OKH did the same thing, so I guess it's just fashionable or something.
Except you haven't proven that at all, you just use points taken entirely out of context to 'prove' your points. When those are knocked how the entire house of cards that your 'argument' is based on comes apart at the seams.
What? The 24ths divisions were mainly 1st wave mobilization divisions formed in July in either the Moscow or Orel military districts.
Sure and they were focused on fighting at Yelnya, not defending the Desna on August 8th. They were the single most combat capable army in Reserve Front and would have been demolished by a flank attack as they were in October IOTL when hit unexpectedly. See the Stahel/Glantz map for August 8th, area east of Roslavl for 24th Army, Reserve Front. The Desna is held by 222nd something or other (division?) at the boundary with 43rd Army and major road headed east over the Desna river that could be used to head to Vyazma (and was in October by 4th Panzer army).
And info about the 43rd Army:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43rd_Army_(Soviet_Union)
The 43rd Army was formed on 31 July 1941 in accordance with a Stavka order dated 30 July 1941. The army was formed from the
33rd Rifle Corps and was part of the
Reserve Front. It was commanded by Lieutenant General
Ivan Zakharkin.
[1]
From its formation the army defended the
Desna River south of
Yelnya on the line of
Kholmets and
Bogdanovo, fighting in the Battle of Smolensk. After the destruction of
Group Kachalov, some of its units became part of the 43rd Army.
[3] On 6 August, the army was to attack and destroy the German troops around
Roslavl.
[4] The attacks, launched in conjunction with the
24th Army were unsuccessful.
[5] On 8 August,
[6] Pavel Kurochkin was appointed army commander in place of Zakharkin.
[7] During the
Dukhovschina Offensive, a portion of the army was to attack west across the Desna south of Yelnya.
[8] On 2 October, the
4th Panzer Group and the
4th Army attacked the 43rd Army at its boundary with the
Bryansk Front. The German attack was part of
Operation Typhoon[9] and broke through the defenses of the 43rd Army, creating a 4-6 kilometer wedge in its positions.
[10] The army counterattacked with the
149th Rifle Division and the
148th Tank Brigade. The attack was stopped by German air attacks.
[11] On 3 October, the army became part of the
Western Front. It was ordered to defend the
Snopot River.
[12] The army was beaten to the river by German troops
[13] and became disorganized.
[14] On 7 October,
Ivan Bogdanov reported that army commander
Pyotr Sobennikov had only a group of staff officers with him.
[15] The army retreated in heavy fighting back to the
Mozhaisk Defence Line. The army was pushed further back to the
Nara River northwest of
Serpukhov, where it stopped the German advance.
[16]
Edit:
Here is how far south Guderian and 2nd Army had advanced as of September 2nd, which is much much further than on August 21st and consequently more difficult to supply, but they were still able to: