I think the proposition suffers from an excess of hindsight and the usual assumption that the only people able to influence matters are the Germans.
You need to recall the situation of the German armies through October.
Early in the month at great effort they had put together a respectable force for the initial Typhoon battles. However in the process ( the approach marches) they had shed 30-60% of their vehicles on non combat wastage. As the supply and engineer officers had said a short rest enables them to get some vehicles running, it does make then box fresh, they will break if driven far.
Around Mid October Hitler announces to the World that the Russians are defeated and its over we can move on to the fun genocide bit.
Realistically from 2 October AGC has advanced around 300km between 2 and 24 October ( Wagner Army QMG) that’s pretty good going and the only thing certain about stopping for the winter is that it means the Russians have 6 months to raise more armies, train more armies and equip more armies.
However the second half of October is a disaster but only in hindsight. The German attack gets confined to predicable lines has to go through a series of defensive belts and push back but do not break through the Soviets. By the end of the Month 10th Pz is described by its corps commander as ‘no more than a reinforced reconnaissance patrol’ and in other divisions regiments were at company strength.
In order to do that and maintain that advance the Germans are shedding and cannibalising vehicles to keep something mobile and using 24 horse teams to pull one gun forward.
The end result is that formations are strung back along up to 300km of front with, until a freeze, no way of recovering heavy kit, and limited options for doing that anyway. They have expended much of their strength getting there, and in several cases deliberately broken up higher formations to retain some form of mobility.
They are engaged in fairly continual combat along the whole AGC sector and some quite desperate defensive battles ( the kind where regimental HQ staffs get squished by T34s) around Kalinin.
Quick review of this action –German regiment overrun and decimated heroic panzers arrive like Seigfried and the Valkyrie, shout Seig Heil, fight a battle and drive off the Jewish Bolshevik beast. But they have to high speed motor for 10km, several turn their gear boxes into mush in the process, fuel is burned, oil is burned men and machines are destroyed in the battle and as the infantry generals said it all happened after the regiment is decimated, so the survivors have to cover another kilometre per company.
The Logistics situation has been screwed for 3 months and in November only half the required number of trains will reach AGC. That’s trains btw not tons, trucks or anything else. From September the Trains don’t get to Russia in sufficient numbers, pushing the railhead further east just compounds that.
As it is for the November drive on Moscow the tanks have a basic load of ammo and enough fuel to get half way there.
Stopping at the end of October means that’s where you are. Strung out, ill supplied and short of everything, cold and increasingly hungry with the logs only able to bring up around half of what you need much less the explosives, timber, wire, ammunition etc needed to ‘ go on the defensive’.
Retreat along the lines proposed means attempting to break contact with an aggressive enemy with a superior air force (they had the Moscow hardstanding and heated hangars to work in) artillery ( they had the depots and the wagons and the trucks and all the horses of Siberia to call on to pull them), cavalry, maps ( its around this time that the AGC map depot gets sabred to death) march back leaving behind the sick, wounded and everything you cannot carry for at least 10 days in -40 temperatures.
Attacking the army you have just destroyed twice over and whose last (?) defensive lines you have blown through is not a daft option, especially if you are a German general whose solution to every problem is a rapid mobile offensive or a Fuhrer who has just pronounced the end of Soviet resistance.
You need to recall the situation of the German armies through October.
Early in the month at great effort they had put together a respectable force for the initial Typhoon battles. However in the process ( the approach marches) they had shed 30-60% of their vehicles on non combat wastage. As the supply and engineer officers had said a short rest enables them to get some vehicles running, it does make then box fresh, they will break if driven far.
Around Mid October Hitler announces to the World that the Russians are defeated and its over we can move on to the fun genocide bit.
Realistically from 2 October AGC has advanced around 300km between 2 and 24 October ( Wagner Army QMG) that’s pretty good going and the only thing certain about stopping for the winter is that it means the Russians have 6 months to raise more armies, train more armies and equip more armies.
However the second half of October is a disaster but only in hindsight. The German attack gets confined to predicable lines has to go through a series of defensive belts and push back but do not break through the Soviets. By the end of the Month 10th Pz is described by its corps commander as ‘no more than a reinforced reconnaissance patrol’ and in other divisions regiments were at company strength.
In order to do that and maintain that advance the Germans are shedding and cannibalising vehicles to keep something mobile and using 24 horse teams to pull one gun forward.
The end result is that formations are strung back along up to 300km of front with, until a freeze, no way of recovering heavy kit, and limited options for doing that anyway. They have expended much of their strength getting there, and in several cases deliberately broken up higher formations to retain some form of mobility.
They are engaged in fairly continual combat along the whole AGC sector and some quite desperate defensive battles ( the kind where regimental HQ staffs get squished by T34s) around Kalinin.
Quick review of this action –German regiment overrun and decimated heroic panzers arrive like Seigfried and the Valkyrie, shout Seig Heil, fight a battle and drive off the Jewish Bolshevik beast. But they have to high speed motor for 10km, several turn their gear boxes into mush in the process, fuel is burned, oil is burned men and machines are destroyed in the battle and as the infantry generals said it all happened after the regiment is decimated, so the survivors have to cover another kilometre per company.
The Logistics situation has been screwed for 3 months and in November only half the required number of trains will reach AGC. That’s trains btw not tons, trucks or anything else. From September the Trains don’t get to Russia in sufficient numbers, pushing the railhead further east just compounds that.
As it is for the November drive on Moscow the tanks have a basic load of ammo and enough fuel to get half way there.
Stopping at the end of October means that’s where you are. Strung out, ill supplied and short of everything, cold and increasingly hungry with the logs only able to bring up around half of what you need much less the explosives, timber, wire, ammunition etc needed to ‘ go on the defensive’.
Retreat along the lines proposed means attempting to break contact with an aggressive enemy with a superior air force (they had the Moscow hardstanding and heated hangars to work in) artillery ( they had the depots and the wagons and the trucks and all the horses of Siberia to call on to pull them), cavalry, maps ( its around this time that the AGC map depot gets sabred to death) march back leaving behind the sick, wounded and everything you cannot carry for at least 10 days in -40 temperatures.
Attacking the army you have just destroyed twice over and whose last (?) defensive lines you have blown through is not a daft option, especially if you are a German general whose solution to every problem is a rapid mobile offensive or a Fuhrer who has just pronounced the end of Soviet resistance.