Ten Days in October 1941?
- From: Rich Rostrom <rrostrom.21stcentury@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 21:57:35 -0500
On September 30, 1941, Hitler launched Operation TAIFUN
(typhoon), the German attack on Moscow.
The attack quickly broke through the Soviet defenses.
On October 7, German forces linked up at Vyazma,
encircling six Soviet armies; on October 8, German
forces captured Orel, 200 km beyond their start line;
on October 14, the Germans captured Mozhaisk, 240 km
from their start line and only 100 km W of Moscow;
on October 15, the Germans captured Kalinin (Tver),
280 km from the start line and 150 km NW of Moscow.
By October 20, resistance in the pockets behind the
original Soviet line had ended; the Germans took
over 650,000 prisoners.
About this time, the 'Moscow panic' took place.
On October 16, the Soviet government evacuated key
government workers and the diplomatic corps to
Kuibyshev, 800 km to the east. Many other people also
went east - some walking, or hitching rides on trains;
some officials requisitioned cars or trucks and took
off without authorization. On October 19, Stalin put
an end to this, declaring martial law and deploying
crack NKVD troops to suppress any runaways.
However, on October 7, the autumn rains had begun.
By October 20, heavy rains had turned the unpaved
roads of the area into morasses. The German forces
bogged down completely. The Germans did not resume
the attack until November 15, when winter frosts
turned the ground hard.
That final attack carried into the northern suburbs
of Moscow itself, but the bitter cold and Soviet
reserves exhausted the Germans, and Moscow did not
fall.
Now for some questions:
What would the consequences have been if the rains
had held off for ten more days?
Could the German forces have taken, or encircled
Moscow? (IIRC, Hitler ordered encirclement rather
than assault, not wanting to get Germans chewed
up in street fighting.)
Or were the German effectively bogged down anyway
with the mop-up of the encircled forces and the
supply problems resulting from the initial advance?
If German forces could have pressed forward on
October 15-20, could the 'Moscow panic' have
escalated beyond even Stalin's power to control?
Oh, and a request for help: is there an on-line
source for weather records in Russia in these years?
That is, is there any place one could find records
of when and how much rain fell in October 1941? And
if possible, the same data for October 1939, 1940,
1942, and 1943, for a sense of what the range of
possibilities was.
Such a repository is probably in Russian, but even
that could be useful. (I can probably manage to
translate table labels.)
If anyone can point me to such, much thanks in
advance.
--
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| dirigibles is only one of a great many things that |
| are seriously wrong with this here world. |
| -- blogger "Coop" at Positive Ape Index |
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