The Moscow Option by David Downing Read Free Book Online

casualties were high. In the boulevards of central Moscow there was less fighting, mostly lone snipers blasted out with grenades and mortar fire.
    The remnants of the worker battalions retreated to the subways, to bomb sites, railway yards and the factory complexes of the south-eastern sector. In the huge State Motor Works four hundred workers were to hold out for four weeks before being wiped out to the last man and woman. Other small areas of resistance endured almost as long.
    But these were isolated pockets, and overall the city was militarily secured as early as 8 October. Not long after this date the ‘lions’ of the Army began relinquishing responsibility to the jackals who followed in their wake. The einsatzgruppen began combing the city for Jews and communist officials, and received not a little assistance from Muscovites eager both to pay off old scores and to ingratiate themselves with the conquering Germans. Moscow passed out of the grim light of the war, and into the grimmer darkness of Nazi occupation.
     
    V
    In the weeks prior to Moscow’s fall, Rundstedt’s Army Group South had been making unexpected progress in the Ukraine. Halder had feared that this Army Group, which was outnumbered by more than two to one, would have to remain primarily on the defensive. However, some desperate Soviet attacks had presented Rundstedt with opportunities which were impossible to ignore.
    After the Uman encirclement battle in mid-August one of Kleist’s panzer corps had secured a bridgehead across the Dnieper around Kremenchug. This force offered no great threat to the Soviet position but Stavka, in the throes of the battle before Moscow, decided that every attempt should be made to distract the Germans from their central preoccupation. 38th Army was ordered to throw Kleist’s panzers back across the river.
    It was cut to ribbons. The panzers moved north through this new and inviting gap and into the rear of the Soviet forces in and around Kiev. Rundstedt, seeing his opportunity, pushed Mackensen’s Panzer Corps through a weak link in the Soviet line south of Gomel, and south to join Kleist. For a few days a giant encirclement seemed possible but for once Stavka acted swiftly, ordering a withdrawal of their forces to a line from Bryansk through Konotop to Dnepropetrovsk. Only two armies were trapped when the converging pincers met at Priluki on 15 September. Army Group South disposed of these and moved slowly forward to the new line.
    So by the beginning of October the Germans’ situation was looking much healthier than Halder might have expected. It now seemed as if the major objectives laid down for Barbarossa - Moscow, Leningrad, the Ukraine - would be attained before the winter set in.
    In the central sector the prime objective had already been achieved, and Halder saw no point in extending the central drive to the east, for all Manstein and Guderian’s noisy canvassing. Gorkiy could probably be captured, but to what purpose? It would be better to leave Army Group Centre’s weary infantry on the defensive. Then the trains hitherto engaged in transporting the pressing needs of day-to-day combat could be used to bring forward the winter equipment that was sitting in the Warsaw marshalling yards.
    The panzer groups would naturally have no such respite. They would be needed for operations in the north and south, for the capture of objectives more worthy of their attention than Gorkiy. Panzer Group 3, once again comprising only 39th and 57th Panzer Corps, would be sent north for the attack on Leningrad. Panzer Group 2, which now included Manstein’s 56th Panzer Corps, was to hold the line east of Moscow until relieved by the infantry, and to extend it south-eastwards in the direction of Ryazan. One strengthened corps, to be known as Gruppe Vietinghoff , was to strike south along the Tula-Orel road into the rear of the Soviet armies facing Army Group South. Mackensen’s Panzer Corps was to drive north-eastwards to