WI: Germans Rush to Moscow?

So I was playing Panzer Corps the other day, and when I won the first part of Operation Barbarossa with a decisive victory, it gave me the option of either skipping Kiev and going straight to Moscow, or conquering Kiev first and then taking Moscow. So I went with the former and went for Moscow, and I took the city. So, this brought the question.

Could the Germans have managed to do this in real life? A conquest of Moscow in late September, maybe?

Anyway, after this, if it isn't enough to make the Soviets surrender (and it probably isn't; Stalin seems prepared to do anything he can to push out the invaders), then the Germans swing down and take Kiev, encircling and destroying even more Soviets this time, if it's possible, while also having taken Leningrad early in July when it was more or less undefended, and, if after all this Stalin still doesn't stand down, they go for Stalingrad, which, due to German victories at Leningrad, Moscow, and Kiev, is likely to be much easier this time around.
 

thorr97

Banned
Moscow was the heart of the Russian nation. The transportation net ran through it. The industries were headquartered there. The industrial and military research institutes were based there. Even just successfully encircling the city would have had profound effects on the Soviet's abilities to keep the Leningrad front adequately supplied of weapons, men and food.

So, grabbing Moscow would've been a major blow.

But then, the Germans were attempting to do that anyway and they failed. I'm not sure what else different they could've done since they were driving for Moscow as hard as they could in OTL.
 
So I was playing Panzer Corps the other day, and when I won the first part of Operation Barbarossa with a decisive victory, it gave me the option of either skipping Kiev and going straight to Moscow, or conquering Kiev first and then taking Moscow. So I went with the former and went for Moscow, and I took the city. So, this brought the question.

Yeah i wouldn't think up scenario's using video games if i were you. No real life basis to work with you know. Just ASB.

Yes, they could have possibly taken Moscow. But it was in heavy winter, not by late september. Wether it would have been worth it though, i doubt it.
 
Variations of this idea have been discussed several times. From what I recall of previous discussions (I'm too lazy to use the search function), there are three big problems with a rush to Moscow:
  1. Army Group Center was at the end of its logistical tether in Sept 1941. German last-mile logistics relied heavily on horse-drawn wagons, which have a hard limit on their range from the railhead supply depot based on fodder for the horses eating into the cargo capacity, and which can't keep up with armored/motorized troops in any event. And Russian railroads were a different gauge than German, so Germany needed time for their rail engineers to convert the tracks to German gauge and bring the railheads to the front. This, not Kiev, was the long pole for launching Operation Typhoon. There's a minority view that a "Typhoon Light" could have been launched a few weeks earlier with a smaller and thus easier-to-supply force (supported by Guderian's post-war memoirs claiming that he, Bock, and Halder believed it was possible and advocated for it at the time), but it's questionable that a force small enough to be supplied would have been strong enough to take and hold Moscow.
  2. If AGC doesn't divert its panzers to encircle Kiev and reduce the pocket, that would have left ACG's right flank wide open during the drive to Moscow, and many of the 600k+ Soviet troops that OTL were encircled at Kiev would have been available to attack ACG's flank or to be withdrawn to reinforce Moscow.
  3. OTL, the Soviets took advantage of the pause between Barbarossa and Typhoon to bring up large numbers of fresh troops to the front lines facing AGC. When Typhoon was launched, these forces were quickly encircled and destroyed. In an early Typhoon scenario, these forces would have arrived during the battle and would have fought closer to Moscow and further from the German railheads.
 
The KIev encirclement was in keeping with 150 years of German strategy (i.e. Kesselschlacht.) They won every big war with Kesselschlact, including France in 1940. The idea they are just going to let the flower of the enemy's army just sit there ready to strike at the flank when Germany beat France twice by defeating them in the field of battle just seems to me too deeply ingrained to be changed.

But, if Hitler listens to Guderian and does it, the result is that Stalin's human waves attack north and instead of getting captured in Kiev, they cut off Guderian and the tip of AGC's spear is caputred. Ironically, it might prevent Tyfun-level casualties and it might still be a win in retrospect, but Moscow does not fall.
 
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