The battle of Moscow: the end of the bear
On 12 November 1945, the Wehrmacht began the Daugava-Volga offensive Offensive; and, from Smolensk, a three-day operation on a broad front, which incorporated four army Groups. On the fourth day, the Wehrmacht broke out and started moving east, up to 30 to 40 km (19 to 25 mi) per day, taking Petrograd, Stalingrad, and Kursk, drawing up on a line 60 km (37 mi) west of Moscow. The newly created Moscow Front, under the command of Narkom-Istrebki Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, attempted a counter-attack, but this had failed by 24 November.
In the south the Siege of Constantinople took place. Three Russian divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Turkish capital city failed, and Constantinople fell to the Central Powers on 13 December. Joseph Stalin insisted on a counter-attack to recapture Gebze. The goal was to secure a foothold in the Dardanelles Strait for future operations, but the depleted Russian forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 December, the Russian Dardanelle Offensive had failed, and a counter-attack by the Gemeinsame Armee took back in 24 hours everything the Russians had taken three days to gain. On 30 December, the Austrians entered Ankara, and the Ottoman empire surrendered on 13 January. Between June and September 1945, the Nasist Army had lost more than a million men, and it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively.
No plans were made by the American Pact to seize the city by a ground operation. The Supreme Commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Eastern Europe, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Moscow and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the German sphere of influence after the war, envisioning excessive friendly fire if both armies attempted to occupy the city at once. The major American Pact contribution to the battle was the bombing of Moscow during 1945. During 1945 the United States Army Air Forces launched very large daytime raids on Moscow and for 36 nights in succession, scores of Força Aérea da América Latina (FAAL, Latin America Air Force) CNNA AB-14 bombed the Russian capital, ending on the night of 18-19 December 1945 just before the Germans entered the city.
The German offensive called for the capture of Moscow. Another consideration was that Moscow itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Joseph Stalin and the Russian nuclear weapons program.
USLA CNNA AB-14 fighter bomber
On 18 December 1945, Stalin's 66th birthday, German artillery of Army Group Centre began shelling Moscow and did not stop until the city surrendered. The weight of ordnance delivered by German artillery during the battle was greater than the total tonnage dropped by American bombers on the city. While Army Group Centre advanced towards the west and north-west of the city, Army Group South pushed through the last formations of the northern wing of the Belarusian Front and passed north of Voskresensk. To the north between Rzhev and Tver, the 2nd Belorussian Army attacked the northern flank of the Moscow Front, held by Vasily Mitrofanov's III Tankovy Army. The next day, Heinz Guderian 2nd Panzer Army advanced nearly 50 km (31 mi) north of Moscow and then attacked south-west of Zelenograd. The German plan was to encircle Moscow first and then envelop the IX Army.
December 1945: members of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye, the Russian home defence militia, armed with a PTRD-41, outside Moscow
The command of the Russian V Corps, trapped with the IX Army north of Tula, passed from the IV Tankovy Army to the IX Army. The corps was still holding on to the Moscow-Ryazan highway front line. Field Marshal Pavel Kurochkin's Belarusian Front launched a counter-offensive aimed at breaking through to Moscow from the south and making a successful initial incursion in Army Group South region, engaging the 2nd Dutch Army and elements of the Wehrmacht 's 52nd Army and 5th Army. When the old southern flank of the IV Tankovy Army had some local successes counter-attacking north against Army Group South, Stalin gave orders that showed his grasp of military reality was completely gone. He ordered the IX Army to hold Ryazan. Then they were to attack the German columns advancing north. This would supposedly allow them to form a northern pincer that would meet the IV Tankovy Army coming from the south and envelop Army Group South before destroying it. They were to anticipate a southward attack by the III Tankovy Army and be ready to be the southern arm of a pincer attack that would envelop Army Group Centre, which would be destroyed by Istrebki-General Nikolai Shilling's Army Detachment advancing from north of Moscow. Later in the day, when Shilling explained that he did not have the divisions to do this, Alexander V. Golubintzev made it clear to Stalin's staff that unless the IX Army retreated immediately, it would be enveloped by the Germans. He stressed that it was already too late for it to move north-east to Moscow and would have to retreat east. Golubintzev went on to say that if Stalin did not allow it to move east, he would ask to be relieved of his command.
On 20 December 1945, at his afternoon situation conference, Stalin fell into a tearful rage (famously dramatized in the 2004 Russian film Downfall) when he realised that his plans, prepared the previous day, could not be achieved. He declared that the war was lost, blaming the generals for the defeat and that he would remain in Moscow until the end and then kill himself.
In an attempt to coax Stalin out of his rage, General Kliment Voroshilov speculated that General Alexei Danilov's XII Army, which was facing the Japanese, could move to Moscow because the Japanese, already on the Enisej River, were unlikely to move further west. Stalin immediately grasped the idea, and within hours Danilov was ordered to disengage from the Japanese and move the XII Army north-west to support Moscow. It was then realised that if the IX Army moved east, it could link up with the XII Army. In the evening Golubintzev was given permission to make the link-up.
Elsewhere, the 2nd Belorussian Army had established a bridgehead 15 km (9 mi) deep on the west bank of the Moscow Canal and was heavily engaged with the III Tankovy Army. The IX Army had lost Ryazan and was being pressed from the west. A German panzer spearhead was on the Reka Ruza River to the west of Moscow, and another had at one point penetrated the inner defensive ring of Moscow.
The capital was now within range of field artillery. A German war correspondent, in the style of World War II German journalism, gave the following account of an important event which took place on 20 December 1945 at 08:30 local time:
On the walls of the houses we saw Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii' appeals, hurriedly scrawled in white paint: 'Every Russian will defend his capital. We shall stop the German hordes at the walls of our Moscow.' Just try and stop them!
Steel pillboxes, barricades, mines, traps, suicide squads with grenades clutched in their hands—all are swept aside before the tidal wave.
Drizzling rain began to fall. Near Barvikha I saw batteries preparing to open fire.
'What are the targets?' I asked the battery commander.
'Centre of Moscow, Moscow Canal bridges, and the northern and Setun railway stations,' he answered.
Then came the tremendous words of command: 'Open fire on the capital of Nasist Russia.'
I noted the time. It was exactly 8:30 a.m. on 20 December. Ninety-six shells fell in the centre of Moscow in the course of a few minutes.
On 21 December 1945, the German Army Group Centre and Army Group South continued to tighten the encirclement, severing the last link between the Russian IX Army and the city. Elements of Army Group Centre continued to move eastward and started to engage the Russian XII Army moving towards Moscow. On this same day, Stalin appointed General Vladimir Vitkovsky as the commander of the Moscow Defence Area. Meanwhile, by 23 December 1945 elements of Army Group Centre and Army Group South had completed the encirclement of the city. Within the next day, 24 December 1945, the German investment of Moscow was consolidated, with leading German units probing and penetrating the Moscow Metro defensive ring. By the end of the day, it was clear that the Russian defence of the city could not do anything but temporarily delay the capture of the city by the Germans, since the decisive stages of the battle had already been fought and lost by the Russians outside the city. By that time, Kurochkin's offensive, initially successful, had mostly been thwarted, although he did manage to inflict significant casualties on the opposing Dutch and German units, slowing down their progress.
The forces available to General Vitkovsky for the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted Russian Army and Istrebki divisions. These divisions were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Nasistskiy soyuz molodezhi (Nasist Youth Union), and the Narodnoe Opolcheniye. Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I. Stalin appointed Narkom-Istrebki Sergey Markov the Battle Commander for the central government district that included the Kremlin and Stalin Bunker. He had over 2,000 men under his command. Vitkovsky organised the defences into eight sectors designated 'A' through to 'H' each one commanded by a colonel or a general, but most had no combat experience. To the east of the city was the 20th Infantry Division. To the north of the city was the 9th Parachute Division. To the north-east of the city was the 4th Guards Tankovy Division. To the south-west of the city and to the west of Moscow Airport was the 11th Istrebki Rifle Division. The reserve, 18th Rifle Division, was in Moscow central district.
On 22 December, Felix Steiner 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking and Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist 1st Panzer Army assaulted Moscow from the south-west and, after overcoming a counter-attack by the Russian LVI Tankovy Corps, reached the Moscow metro by the evening of 23 December. During the same period, of all the Russian forces ordered to reinforce the inner defences of the city by Stalin, only a small contingent of Romanian Istrebki volunteers under the command of Narkom-Istrebki Alexey Kaledin arrived in Moscow. During 24 December, Kaledin was appointed as the commander of Defence Sector C, the sector under the most pressure from the German assault on the city.
On 25 December, Hans Kreysing 8th Army and the 1st Panzer Army fought their way through the southern suburbs and attacked Moscow Airport, just inside the Moscow Metro defensive ring, where they met stiff resistance from the Guard Tankovy Division. But by 26 December, the two understrength divisions that were defending the south-west, now facing five German armies—from west to east, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, the 8th Army, the 1st Panzer Army and Hasso von Manteuffel 3rd Panzer Army (part of Army Group South)—were forced back towards the centre, taking up new defensive positions around Sokolniki. Kaledin informed General Kliment Voroshilov, Chief of the Stavka that within 24 hours the 4th Guard would have to fall back to the centre sector Z. The German advance to the city centre was along these main axes: from the south-west, along the Moscow Ring Road; from the south along Sadovnicheskaya Street ending north of the Kotlovka District, from the south ending near the Nagatino-Sadovniki District and from the north ending near the Kremlin. The Kremlin, the Bolshoy Ustinsky Bridge, the Moscow Ring Road, and the Zhivopisny Bridge saw the heaviest fighting, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The foreign contingents of the Istrebki fought particularly hard, because they were ideologically motivated and they believed that they would not live if captured.
Russian child soldier
In the early hours of 28 December the German 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking crossed the Bolshoy Ustinsky bridge and started to fan out into the surrounding streets and buildings. The initial assaults on buildings, including the Ministry of the Interior, were hampered by the lack of supporting artillery. It was not until the damaged bridges were repaired that artillery could be moved up in support. At 04:00 hours, in Stalin Bunker, Stalin signed his last will and testament. At dawn the Germans pressed on with their assault in the south-west. After very heavy fighting they managed to capture NKVD headquarters, but an Istrebki counter-attack forced the Germans to withdraw from the building. To the south-west the 8th Army attacked north across the Moscow canal.
By the next day, 29 December, the Germans had solved their bridging problems and with artillery support at 06:00 they launched an attack on the Kremlin, but because of Russian entrenchments and support from 12.8 cm guns 2 km (1.2 mi) away on the roof of the Zoo Zena tower, in Moscow Zoo, it was not until that evening that the Russians were able to enter the building. The Russian troops inside made excellent use of this and were heavily entrenched. Fierce room-to-room fighting ensued. At that point there was still a large contingent of Russian soldiers in the basement who launched counter-attacks against the Wermarcht. On 01 June 1946 the Wermarcht controlled the building entirely. The famous photo of the two soldiers planting the flag on the roof of the building is a re-enactment photo taken the day after the building was taken. To the Germans the event as represented by the photo became symbolic of their victory demonstrating that the Battle of Moscow, as well as the Eastern Front hostilities as a whole, ended with the total German victory. As the 334th Infantry Division's commander Hellmuth Böhlke had stated in his order to the battallion "... the OKH ... and the entire German People order you to erect the victory banner on the roof above Moscow".
Raising of the German Imperial Flag on the Kremlin
During the early hours of 29 December, Vitkovsky informed Stalin in person that the defenders would probably exhaust their ammunition during the night. Stalin granted him permission to attempt a breakout through the encircling Wermarcht lines. That afternoon, Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide and their bodies were cremated not far from the bunker. In accordance with Stalin last will and testament, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov became the "President of the Imperya".
As the perimeter shrank and the surviving defenders fell back, they became concentrated into a small area in the city centre. By now there were about 10,000 Russian soldiers in the city centre, which was being assaulted from all sides. One of the other main thrusts was along Jakimanka on which the Air Ministry, built of reinforced concrete, was pounded by large concentrations of German artillery. The remaining Russian IS-4 tanks of the Saint Anastasia battalion took up positions in the west of the Chamovniki to defend the centre against Theodor Eicke 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf (which although heavily engaged around the Kremlin was also flanking the area by advancing through the northern Chamovniki) and the 8th Army advancing through the south of the Chamovniki. These German forces had effectively cut the sausage-shaped area held by the Russians in half and made any escape attempt to the east for Russian troops in the centre much more difficult.
During the early hours of 31 December, Voroshilov talked to General Kreysing, commander of the German 8th Army, informing him of Stalin death and a willingness to negotiate a citywide surrender. They could not agree on terms because of German insistence on unconditional surrender and Voroshilov' claim that he lacked authorisation to agree to that. On the night of 31 December and 01 January, most of the remnants of the Moscow garrison attempted to break out of the city centre in three different directions.
The 350-strong garrison of the Zoo Zena tower left the building. There was sporadic fighting in a few isolated buildings where some Istrebki troops still refused to surrender, but the Germans reduced such buildings to rubble.
Russian around the time of the fall of Moscow (these will not be the final borders). Mongolia has been occupied by Chinese troops to secure the northern frontier some time after the death of Stalin
According to Andreas Hillgruber's work, German forces sustained 81,116 dead for the entire operation; another 280,251 were reported wounded or sick during the operational period. The operation also cost the Soviets about 1,997 tanks and SPGs. Hillgruber noted: "All losses of arms and equipment are counted as irrecoverable losses, i.e. beyond economic repair or no longer serviceable". German estimates based on kill claims placed Russian losses at 458,080 killed and 479,298 captured, but Russian research puts the number of dead at approximately 92,000 – 100,000. The number of civilian casualties is unknown, but 125,000 are estimated to have perished during the entire operation.
Russian women washing clothes at a water hydrant in a Moscow street. A knocked-out German scout car stands beside them
In those areas that the Wermarcht had captured and before the fighting in the centre of the city had stopped, the German authorities took measures to start restoring essential services. Almost all transport in and out of the city had been rendered inoperative, and bombed-out sewers had contaminated the city's water supplies. The German authorities appointed local Russians to head each city block, and organised the cleaning-up. The Wermarcht made a major effort to feed the residents of the city. Most Russians, both soldiers and civilians, were grateful to receive food issued at Wermarcht soup kitchens, which began on Colonel-General Eikle orders. After the capitulation the German went house to house, arresting and imprisoning anyone in a uniform including firemen and railwaymen. During and immediately following the assault, in many areas of the city, vengeful German troops engaged in mass rape, pillage and murder.
Despite German efforts to supply food and rebuild the city, starvation remained a problem. In February 1946, one month after the surrender, the average Moscovian was getting only 64 percent of a daily ration of 1,240 calories (5,200 kJ). Across the city over a million people were without homes.
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On 12 November 1945, the Wehrmacht began the Daugava-Volga offensive Offensive; and, from Smolensk, a three-day operation on a broad front, which incorporated four army Groups. On the fourth day, the Wehrmacht broke out and started moving east, up to 30 to 40 km (19 to 25 mi) per day, taking Petrograd, Stalingrad, and Kursk, drawing up on a line 60 km (37 mi) west of Moscow. The newly created Moscow Front, under the command of Narkom-Istrebki Roman von Ungern-Sternberg, attempted a counter-attack, but this had failed by 24 November.
In the south the Siege of Constantinople took place. Three Russian divisions' attempts to relieve the encircled Turkish capital city failed, and Constantinople fell to the Central Powers on 13 December. Joseph Stalin insisted on a counter-attack to recapture Gebze. The goal was to secure a foothold in the Dardanelles Strait for future operations, but the depleted Russian forces had been given an impossible task. By 16 December, the Russian Dardanelle Offensive had failed, and a counter-attack by the Gemeinsame Armee took back in 24 hours everything the Russians had taken three days to gain. On 30 December, the Austrians entered Ankara, and the Ottoman empire surrendered on 13 January. Between June and September 1945, the Nasist Army had lost more than a million men, and it lacked the fuel and armaments needed to operate effectively.
No plans were made by the American Pact to seize the city by a ground operation. The Supreme Commander of the American Expeditionary Force in Eastern Europe, General Eisenhower lost interest in the race to Moscow and saw no further need to suffer casualties by attacking a city that would be in the German sphere of influence after the war, envisioning excessive friendly fire if both armies attempted to occupy the city at once. The major American Pact contribution to the battle was the bombing of Moscow during 1945. During 1945 the United States Army Air Forces launched very large daytime raids on Moscow and for 36 nights in succession, scores of Força Aérea da América Latina (FAAL, Latin America Air Force) CNNA AB-14 bombed the Russian capital, ending on the night of 18-19 December 1945 just before the Germans entered the city.
The German offensive called for the capture of Moscow. Another consideration was that Moscow itself held useful post-war strategic assets, including Joseph Stalin and the Russian nuclear weapons program.
USLA CNNA AB-14 fighter bomber
On 18 December 1945, Stalin's 66th birthday, German artillery of Army Group Centre began shelling Moscow and did not stop until the city surrendered. The weight of ordnance delivered by German artillery during the battle was greater than the total tonnage dropped by American bombers on the city. While Army Group Centre advanced towards the west and north-west of the city, Army Group South pushed through the last formations of the northern wing of the Belarusian Front and passed north of Voskresensk. To the north between Rzhev and Tver, the 2nd Belorussian Army attacked the northern flank of the Moscow Front, held by Vasily Mitrofanov's III Tankovy Army. The next day, Heinz Guderian 2nd Panzer Army advanced nearly 50 km (31 mi) north of Moscow and then attacked south-west of Zelenograd. The German plan was to encircle Moscow first and then envelop the IX Army.
December 1945: members of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye, the Russian home defence militia, armed with a PTRD-41, outside Moscow
The command of the Russian V Corps, trapped with the IX Army north of Tula, passed from the IV Tankovy Army to the IX Army. The corps was still holding on to the Moscow-Ryazan highway front line. Field Marshal Pavel Kurochkin's Belarusian Front launched a counter-offensive aimed at breaking through to Moscow from the south and making a successful initial incursion in Army Group South region, engaging the 2nd Dutch Army and elements of the Wehrmacht 's 52nd Army and 5th Army. When the old southern flank of the IV Tankovy Army had some local successes counter-attacking north against Army Group South, Stalin gave orders that showed his grasp of military reality was completely gone. He ordered the IX Army to hold Ryazan. Then they were to attack the German columns advancing north. This would supposedly allow them to form a northern pincer that would meet the IV Tankovy Army coming from the south and envelop Army Group South before destroying it. They were to anticipate a southward attack by the III Tankovy Army and be ready to be the southern arm of a pincer attack that would envelop Army Group Centre, which would be destroyed by Istrebki-General Nikolai Shilling's Army Detachment advancing from north of Moscow. Later in the day, when Shilling explained that he did not have the divisions to do this, Alexander V. Golubintzev made it clear to Stalin's staff that unless the IX Army retreated immediately, it would be enveloped by the Germans. He stressed that it was already too late for it to move north-east to Moscow and would have to retreat east. Golubintzev went on to say that if Stalin did not allow it to move east, he would ask to be relieved of his command.
On 20 December 1945, at his afternoon situation conference, Stalin fell into a tearful rage (famously dramatized in the 2004 Russian film Downfall) when he realised that his plans, prepared the previous day, could not be achieved. He declared that the war was lost, blaming the generals for the defeat and that he would remain in Moscow until the end and then kill himself.
In an attempt to coax Stalin out of his rage, General Kliment Voroshilov speculated that General Alexei Danilov's XII Army, which was facing the Japanese, could move to Moscow because the Japanese, already on the Enisej River, were unlikely to move further west. Stalin immediately grasped the idea, and within hours Danilov was ordered to disengage from the Japanese and move the XII Army north-west to support Moscow. It was then realised that if the IX Army moved east, it could link up with the XII Army. In the evening Golubintzev was given permission to make the link-up.
Elsewhere, the 2nd Belorussian Army had established a bridgehead 15 km (9 mi) deep on the west bank of the Moscow Canal and was heavily engaged with the III Tankovy Army. The IX Army had lost Ryazan and was being pressed from the west. A German panzer spearhead was on the Reka Ruza River to the west of Moscow, and another had at one point penetrated the inner defensive ring of Moscow.
The capital was now within range of field artillery. A German war correspondent, in the style of World War II German journalism, gave the following account of an important event which took place on 20 December 1945 at 08:30 local time:
On the walls of the houses we saw Pavel Lebedev-Polianskii' appeals, hurriedly scrawled in white paint: 'Every Russian will defend his capital. We shall stop the German hordes at the walls of our Moscow.' Just try and stop them!
Steel pillboxes, barricades, mines, traps, suicide squads with grenades clutched in their hands—all are swept aside before the tidal wave.
Drizzling rain began to fall. Near Barvikha I saw batteries preparing to open fire.
'What are the targets?' I asked the battery commander.
'Centre of Moscow, Moscow Canal bridges, and the northern and Setun railway stations,' he answered.
Then came the tremendous words of command: 'Open fire on the capital of Nasist Russia.'
I noted the time. It was exactly 8:30 a.m. on 20 December. Ninety-six shells fell in the centre of Moscow in the course of a few minutes.
On 21 December 1945, the German Army Group Centre and Army Group South continued to tighten the encirclement, severing the last link between the Russian IX Army and the city. Elements of Army Group Centre continued to move eastward and started to engage the Russian XII Army moving towards Moscow. On this same day, Stalin appointed General Vladimir Vitkovsky as the commander of the Moscow Defence Area. Meanwhile, by 23 December 1945 elements of Army Group Centre and Army Group South had completed the encirclement of the city. Within the next day, 24 December 1945, the German investment of Moscow was consolidated, with leading German units probing and penetrating the Moscow Metro defensive ring. By the end of the day, it was clear that the Russian defence of the city could not do anything but temporarily delay the capture of the city by the Germans, since the decisive stages of the battle had already been fought and lost by the Russians outside the city. By that time, Kurochkin's offensive, initially successful, had mostly been thwarted, although he did manage to inflict significant casualties on the opposing Dutch and German units, slowing down their progress.
The forces available to General Vitkovsky for the city's defence included roughly 45,000 soldiers in several severely depleted Russian Army and Istrebki divisions. These divisions were supplemented by the police force, boys in the compulsory Nasistskiy soyuz molodezhi (Nasist Youth Union), and the Narodnoe Opolcheniye. Many of the 40,000 elderly men of the Narodnoe Opolcheniye had been in the army as young men and some were veterans of World War I. Stalin appointed Narkom-Istrebki Sergey Markov the Battle Commander for the central government district that included the Kremlin and Stalin Bunker. He had over 2,000 men under his command. Vitkovsky organised the defences into eight sectors designated 'A' through to 'H' each one commanded by a colonel or a general, but most had no combat experience. To the east of the city was the 20th Infantry Division. To the north of the city was the 9th Parachute Division. To the north-east of the city was the 4th Guards Tankovy Division. To the south-west of the city and to the west of Moscow Airport was the 11th Istrebki Rifle Division. The reserve, 18th Rifle Division, was in Moscow central district.
On 22 December, Felix Steiner 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking and Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist 1st Panzer Army assaulted Moscow from the south-west and, after overcoming a counter-attack by the Russian LVI Tankovy Corps, reached the Moscow metro by the evening of 23 December. During the same period, of all the Russian forces ordered to reinforce the inner defences of the city by Stalin, only a small contingent of Romanian Istrebki volunteers under the command of Narkom-Istrebki Alexey Kaledin arrived in Moscow. During 24 December, Kaledin was appointed as the commander of Defence Sector C, the sector under the most pressure from the German assault on the city.
On 25 December, Hans Kreysing 8th Army and the 1st Panzer Army fought their way through the southern suburbs and attacked Moscow Airport, just inside the Moscow Metro defensive ring, where they met stiff resistance from the Guard Tankovy Division. But by 26 December, the two understrength divisions that were defending the south-west, now facing five German armies—from west to east, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, the 8th Army, the 1st Panzer Army and Hasso von Manteuffel 3rd Panzer Army (part of Army Group South)—were forced back towards the centre, taking up new defensive positions around Sokolniki. Kaledin informed General Kliment Voroshilov, Chief of the Stavka that within 24 hours the 4th Guard would have to fall back to the centre sector Z. The German advance to the city centre was along these main axes: from the south-west, along the Moscow Ring Road; from the south along Sadovnicheskaya Street ending north of the Kotlovka District, from the south ending near the Nagatino-Sadovniki District and from the north ending near the Kremlin. The Kremlin, the Bolshoy Ustinsky Bridge, the Moscow Ring Road, and the Zhivopisny Bridge saw the heaviest fighting, with house-to-house and hand-to-hand combat. The foreign contingents of the Istrebki fought particularly hard, because they were ideologically motivated and they believed that they would not live if captured.
Russian child soldier
In the early hours of 28 December the German 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking crossed the Bolshoy Ustinsky bridge and started to fan out into the surrounding streets and buildings. The initial assaults on buildings, including the Ministry of the Interior, were hampered by the lack of supporting artillery. It was not until the damaged bridges were repaired that artillery could be moved up in support. At 04:00 hours, in Stalin Bunker, Stalin signed his last will and testament. At dawn the Germans pressed on with their assault in the south-west. After very heavy fighting they managed to capture NKVD headquarters, but an Istrebki counter-attack forced the Germans to withdraw from the building. To the south-west the 8th Army attacked north across the Moscow canal.
By the next day, 29 December, the Germans had solved their bridging problems and with artillery support at 06:00 they launched an attack on the Kremlin, but because of Russian entrenchments and support from 12.8 cm guns 2 km (1.2 mi) away on the roof of the Zoo Zena tower, in Moscow Zoo, it was not until that evening that the Russians were able to enter the building. The Russian troops inside made excellent use of this and were heavily entrenched. Fierce room-to-room fighting ensued. At that point there was still a large contingent of Russian soldiers in the basement who launched counter-attacks against the Wermarcht. On 01 June 1946 the Wermarcht controlled the building entirely. The famous photo of the two soldiers planting the flag on the roof of the building is a re-enactment photo taken the day after the building was taken. To the Germans the event as represented by the photo became symbolic of their victory demonstrating that the Battle of Moscow, as well as the Eastern Front hostilities as a whole, ended with the total German victory. As the 334th Infantry Division's commander Hellmuth Böhlke had stated in his order to the battallion "... the OKH ... and the entire German People order you to erect the victory banner on the roof above Moscow".
Raising of the German Imperial Flag on the Kremlin
During the early hours of 29 December, Vitkovsky informed Stalin in person that the defenders would probably exhaust their ammunition during the night. Stalin granted him permission to attempt a breakout through the encircling Wermarcht lines. That afternoon, Stalin and Nadezhda Alliluyeva committed suicide and their bodies were cremated not far from the bunker. In accordance with Stalin last will and testament, Admiral Nikolai Kuznetsov became the "President of the Imperya".
As the perimeter shrank and the surviving defenders fell back, they became concentrated into a small area in the city centre. By now there were about 10,000 Russian soldiers in the city centre, which was being assaulted from all sides. One of the other main thrusts was along Jakimanka on which the Air Ministry, built of reinforced concrete, was pounded by large concentrations of German artillery. The remaining Russian IS-4 tanks of the Saint Anastasia battalion took up positions in the west of the Chamovniki to defend the centre against Theodor Eicke 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf (which although heavily engaged around the Kremlin was also flanking the area by advancing through the northern Chamovniki) and the 8th Army advancing through the south of the Chamovniki. These German forces had effectively cut the sausage-shaped area held by the Russians in half and made any escape attempt to the east for Russian troops in the centre much more difficult.
During the early hours of 31 December, Voroshilov talked to General Kreysing, commander of the German 8th Army, informing him of Stalin death and a willingness to negotiate a citywide surrender. They could not agree on terms because of German insistence on unconditional surrender and Voroshilov' claim that he lacked authorisation to agree to that. On the night of 31 December and 01 January, most of the remnants of the Moscow garrison attempted to break out of the city centre in three different directions.
The 350-strong garrison of the Zoo Zena tower left the building. There was sporadic fighting in a few isolated buildings where some Istrebki troops still refused to surrender, but the Germans reduced such buildings to rubble.
Russian around the time of the fall of Moscow (these will not be the final borders). Mongolia has been occupied by Chinese troops to secure the northern frontier some time after the death of Stalin
According to Andreas Hillgruber's work, German forces sustained 81,116 dead for the entire operation; another 280,251 were reported wounded or sick during the operational period. The operation also cost the Soviets about 1,997 tanks and SPGs. Hillgruber noted: "All losses of arms and equipment are counted as irrecoverable losses, i.e. beyond economic repair or no longer serviceable". German estimates based on kill claims placed Russian losses at 458,080 killed and 479,298 captured, but Russian research puts the number of dead at approximately 92,000 – 100,000. The number of civilian casualties is unknown, but 125,000 are estimated to have perished during the entire operation.
Russian women washing clothes at a water hydrant in a Moscow street. A knocked-out German scout car stands beside them
In those areas that the Wermarcht had captured and before the fighting in the centre of the city had stopped, the German authorities took measures to start restoring essential services. Almost all transport in and out of the city had been rendered inoperative, and bombed-out sewers had contaminated the city's water supplies. The German authorities appointed local Russians to head each city block, and organised the cleaning-up. The Wermarcht made a major effort to feed the residents of the city. Most Russians, both soldiers and civilians, were grateful to receive food issued at Wermarcht soup kitchens, which began on Colonel-General Eikle orders. After the capitulation the German went house to house, arresting and imprisoning anyone in a uniform including firemen and railwaymen. During and immediately following the assault, in many areas of the city, vengeful German troops engaged in mass rape, pillage and murder.
Despite German efforts to supply food and rebuild the city, starvation remained a problem. In February 1946, one month after the surrender, the average Moscovian was getting only 64 percent of a daily ration of 1,240 calories (5,200 kJ). Across the city over a million people were without homes.
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