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This is the first chapter of my new TL. I will mention straight away that it's been inspired by The Red's and BW's collaborative TL and therefore has similarities to it, especially in the beginning. I do intend to take it in a different direction. And of course it's written in my own writing style, which many here know well.

So without further ado I present to you:



Disaster at Moscow

Chapter I, Preparations, September-October 1941.

On June 22nd 1941, Nazi Germany and its Axis allies launched Operation Barbarossa: their surprise offensive into the Soviet Union. Their armies, totalling 3.8 million men, were to advance in three geographical directions: north into the Baltic toward Leningrad, in the centre across Belarus toward Moscow, and in the south into Ukraine. Army Group Centre’s initial strategic goal was to defeat the Soviet armies in Belarus and occupy Smolensk. To accomplish this, the army group planned for a rapid advance using blitzkrieg tactics for which purpose it commanded two panzer groups rather than one. A quick and decisive victory over the Soviet Union was expected by mid-November. The Army Group’s other operational missions were to support the army groups on its northern and southern flanks, the boundary for the later being the PripyatRiver.

Army Group Centre was the strongest of the three German formations. Commanded by Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, it included the Fourth and Ninth Armies, the Second and Third Panzer Groups and the Second Air Fleet. By mid-August 1941 it had crushed Soviet forces in two huge encirclement battles. The first was the Battle of Bialystok-Minsk, in which it destroyed most of the Soviet Third, Tenth, Thirteenth and part of Fourth Army, or about twenty divisions. Once they had conquered the territories in the West of the Soviet Union, the Germans began their genocidal regime, burning thousands of cities and villages, shooting and deporting hundreds of thousands of civilians. Soviet prisoners of war, 300.000 after the battle of Minsk alone, were either killed in Nazi death camps, Nazi concentration camps or literally starved to death in prison camps, mostly nothing more than fields surrounded with barbed wire in the open.

The second major battle of Army Group Centre was the Battle of Smolensk. The Battle of Smolensk was another severe defeat for the Soviets in the opening phases of Barbarossa, but this Axis victory did not come without strategic implications. For the first time, the Red Army tried to implement a determined coordinated counterattack against a large part of the front, although the counterattack was almost entirely a failure. Nevertheless, the increasing resistance showed that the Soviets were not yet defeated, and that the blitzkrieg towards Moscow was not going to be an easy task. This exacerbated a division between the German high command and political leadership. The leaders of the General Staff, Franz Halder and Walther von Brauchitsch, and frontline commanders like Fedor Von Bock, Hermann Hoth, and Heinz Guderian advised against dispersing the German armoured units and to focus directly on Moscow. Hitler reiterated the lack of importance of Moscow and strategic encirclements, and ordered a concentration on economic targets such as Ukraine, the Donets Basin, and the Caucasus, and more tactical encirclements to weaken the Soviets further. As a result, the German offensive effort became more fragmented, leading to the battles at Kiev and Uman. Those battles were also German victories, but also cost them vital time, men, and material on their approach towards Moscow, allowing the Soviets time to prepare the defences of the city.

In the meantime, Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb, the commander of Army Group North, received his latest order and he didn’t like very much, not that his relations with the Führer were anything to write home about. He’d been retired twice before by Hitler because of his anti-Nazi attitudes and opposing the invasion of the Low Countries on moral grounds. He had only been brought back because of the escalation of the war. The order was for Army Group North to go onto the defensive and maintain the encirclement of Leningrad and let the city starve. The Fourth Panzer Group was to join the left flank of Army Group Centre for participation in the drive to Moscow as soon as rolling stocks were available for transport.

Marshal Ritter von Leeb wanted to be the man who captured Leningrad since he had played just a minor part in the Battle of France. He weighed his options. He could disobey Hitler and launch the offensive he’d been preparing for anyway and earn the Führer’s forgiveness by winning. Von Leeb also considered the men under his command. He had visited 1st Panzer Division recently and they and their machines had been exhausted after fighting uninterruptedly since June. Therefore, he would have to not only ignore his orders to send them forward again but also go against his own better judgment as an officer in favour of personal glory. In his heart Leeb knew that Moscow was the key objective of the campaign. The German possession of the Moscow communication and transportation node would turn Russia’s vastness, normally an asset, into a liability for the defending Red Army.

The orders went out Fourth Panzer Group to service and repair their vehicles because in three days they would be sent off to participate in Operation Typhoon. All of Army Group North’s air support would be coming along as well. The XLI Panzer and LVI Motorized Corps serviced their tanks and trucks while the troops got some much needed rest for the big fight. It would prove to be one of the biggest decisions of the war. The Fourth Panzer Group had a high percentage of seasoned personnel and veteran officers who would lead the critical northern thrust towards
Moscow. The remainder of Von Leeb’s forces, the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Armies, dug in and subjected the Leningrad garrison to siege warfare and prayed that the Panzers would return soon. Von Leeb, in the meantime, fully expected Moscow would fall and that he could take Leningrad the following spring.[1]

Leeb lacked 20/20 hindsight and can’t be blamed for believing the Soviet capital could be taken. In fact, many German generals such as Hoth, Guderian, Von Bock, Von Manstein and others believed it to be possible in autumn 1941 despite Hitler’s decision to divert Guderian’s Second Panzer Group to Ukraine, a decision they viewed as erroneous. Standing between the Wehrmacht and Moscow were three Soviet fronts formed from battered armies that had been fighting for several months. The forces committed to the city’s defence numbered 1.25 million men, 3.200 tanks, and 7.600 artillery guns. The Soviet Air Force had suffered appalling losses of more than 21.000 aircraft, but extraordinary industrial achievements had begun to replace losses. The Soviets had 936 aircraft for the defence of the capital, though only 545 were serviceable at the “moment supreme”. Even with reinforcements, air strength was a shadow of pre-war strength. Troops and equipment, while equal to the Wehrmacht in numbers, were poorly located, with most of the troops deployed in a single line, and they had few reserves to the rear. Furthermore, many Soviet defenders were seriously lacking in combat experience and some critical equipment, while their tanks were obsolete models. There were still numerous obsolete T-26 tanks and BT-7s defending Moscow; the T-34 wasn’t as ubiquitous yet as it would be later in the war.

In October 1941, Stalin replaced Semyon Timoshenko with Georgy Zhukov as the commander of the central front. He was assigned to direct the defence of
Moscow. Immediately he began constructing extensive defences around the city. The Rzhev-Vyazma defence setup was built on the Rzhev-Vyazma-Bryansk line. The Mozhaisk defence line was a double defence stretching between Kalinin and Kaluga. Finally, a triple defence ring surrounded the city itself, forming the Moscow Defence Zone. These defences were still largely unprepared by the beginning of Typhoon. Furthermore, the German attack plan had been discovered quite late, and Soviet troops were ordered to assume a total defensive stance only on September 27th 1941. However, new Soviet divisions were being formed on the Volga, in Asia and in the Urals, and it would only be a matter of months before these new troops could be committed. The question was whether they’d arrive in time.

[1] This is the PoD: Leeb decides not to make one last lunge toward Leningrad. This means the Fourth Panzer has enough tanks to advance into Moscow.
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