December 5 Russia celebrates one of the heroic dates in the history of the Great Patriotic War. It was on this day, 75 years ago, that the Red Army launched a counteroffensive near Moscow along a wide front from Kalinin (now Tver) to Yelets. The result of the operation was the defeat of the Nazi troops near Moscow with the simultaneous pushing back of the advanced units of the Wehrmacht from the capital of the Soviet Union. The significance of such an event is truly difficult to overestimate, given the fact that at critical moments no more than 20 km remained from the aforementioned forward positions of the Nazis to Moscow.
The German command was building a plan for the capture of Moscow in the first three months of the so-called "Blitzkrieg" - before the onset of cold weather. However, the plans of Operation Typhoon, as the battle of Moscow is called in Western historiography, was not destined to come true.
First, the operation itself was launched by the Hitlerite army not in the summer, as originally planned, but only at the end of September. One of the reasons for the "timing adjustments" (this term was used by German generals in their reports to Hitler) was the protracted battles near Smolensk, as well as the need to keep a large grouping of troops near Leningrad. Historians also attribute the defense of Kiev by the Soviet troops to the reasons for the "timing adjustment". In this sector of the front alone, Army Group "South" and Army Group "Center" of the Wehrmacht from July 7 to September 26 lost more than 125 thousand soldiers and officers (including sanitary losses, missing and taken prisoner), of which almost 30 thousand killed. Despite the defeat at Kiev, the Red Army was eventually able to gain time and give its other formations an opportunity to prepare for a defensive operation near Moscow.
According to the idea of the Hitlerite command, the main forces of the Wehrmacht were to take the Red Army grouping of troops defending Moscow in ticks, after which, after completing a bypass from the flanks, cut off the possibility of retreat. A concomitant goal was also pursued - to inflict a powerful psychological blow, since the loss of Moscow for the Soviet government and the people would be, as the German archives say, "a blow to the solar plexus of the Soviets."
It is worth noting that against the background of the constant victories of the Wehrmacht, the soldiers, officers, and also the high command, by the time of the start of Operation Typhoon, had a firm opinion that any defeat was out of the question. There was also a blatant underestimation of the enemy, which, however, quickly dissipated. German general Franz Halder (who later became one of the ideological inspirers of the assassination attempt on Hitler) made an entry in his diaries in 1941, which, logically, should have sobered the German army:
Russians everywhere are fighting to the last man. They very rarely give up.
From a letter from a German soldier named Voltheimer, who fought on the eastern front, to his wife:
This is hell. The Russians don't want to leave Moscow. They began to attack. Every hour brings terrible news for us (…) I beg you, stop writing to me about silk and rubber boots, which I promised to bring you from Moscow. Understand, I am dying, I am going to die, I can feel it …
The text is more than eloquent … It contains not only the open confusion of the German soldier due to the fact that the myth about the invincibility of the Wehrmacht has been dispelled, but also the obvious psychological pressure under which the German troops found themselves faced with the heroic resistance of the Red Army near Moscow.
Here are a few more excerpts from the letters of the German servicemen who took part in the operation "Typhoon" - "Typhoon", infamous for them, in which they were absorbed, having suffered the first crushing defeat.
Private Alois Pfuscher:
We are in a hellish cauldron, and whoever gets out of here with whole bones will thank God (…) The fight goes on to the last drop of blood. We met women shooting from a machine gun, they did not give up, and we shot them. No way in the world would I want to spend another winter in Russia.
Jacob Stadler:
Here, in Russia, there is a terrible war, you don't know where the front is: they shoot from all four sides.
Against this background, things were happening unprecedented for the Hitlerite army. So, after the start of the Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow, the rank and file of the Wehrmacht actually expressed open dissatisfaction with the actions of the command. So, in the German archives, which were declassified a few decades after the end of the Great Patriotic War, evidence was found of how Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, who commanded Army Group South, was sent notes demanding "to let the soldiers go home to Germany." Reichenau, by the way, was one of the authors of the notorious order "Das Verhalten der Truppe im Ostraum" ("On the behavior of troops in the east"). From the order, which is one of the evidence of the destructive Nazi ideology:
The duties of a soldier in the east are not limited to military tasks. One of the tasks is to eradicate Asian and Jewish influence in Europe. The German soldier is a fighter for the ideas of National Socialism and at the same time an avenger for atrocities against the German nation.
The end of the life of one of the ideologues of Nazism attracts attention: after a brain hemorrhage, they tried to send Reichenau to Leipzig for treatment. On January 17, 1942, on board the plane, he died, and the plane itself with his body crashed while trying to land, crashing into the aircraft hangar of the Lviv airfield.
After the start of the Red Army's counteroffensive in December 1941, the German army needed to create military tribunals for deserters. Since December 5, desertion in the Wehrmacht has become virtually commonplace. Historical documents contain data that, before the end of the Soviet counteroffensive near Moscow, over 60 thousand servicemen were convicted of desertion in the German army! For obvious reasons, Hitler's official mouthpieces were silent about these figures, trying to present the situation as "temporary difficulties" on the eastern front. "Temporary difficulties" turned out to be the beginning of the end.
After the most important message from Richard Sorge from Japan that the Japanese army did not intend at that time to enter the war against the Soviet Union, the command of the Red Army had the opportunity to transfer Siberian and Far Eastern divisions to Moscow. Previously, such a transfer was impossible for the reason that the Far Eastern units were awaiting the invasion of Japan as an ally of Nazi Germany.
As a result of the regrouping of the main forces, the Red Army inflicted a series of crushing blows on the Nazi troops, forcing them to withdraw from Moscow at a distance of at least 150 km. In some areas of the front, the Wehrmacht lost up to 350-400 km of previously occupied territories. The total losses of the Hitlerite army in killed, wounded, captured and missing amounted to almost 430 thousand people. The Soviet Union paid twice the price for the victory near Moscow. This is a huge price, but the reasoning on the topic “could have done with much less losses” today looks like nothing more than idle speculation, because history, as you know, does not tolerate the subjunctive mood.
The counteroffensive near Moscow, launched 75 years ago, ended not only with an outstanding victory, but also with the fact that the myth of the invincibility of the Nazi hordes was completely dispelled.
