Nonetheless, by the end of September, the Germans had assembled a force of 1.9 million men and over one thousand tanks for Operation Typhoon, which the Führer assumed would be the last great battle of the eastern war. Mindful of the experiences of large numbers of the enemy escaping loose pockets, he stipulated in his directive a close-knit, tight encirclement east of Smolensk in the area of Vyazma before the attack on Moscow itself would proceed. Since both Halder and Bock considered such a move too limited to accomplish the destruction of remaining Soviet forces, the former, as he had done consistently, did his best to undermine Hitler’s intentions by indicating to the latter that he need not take his orders too seriously. Although Bock initially planned to use the Third and Fourth Panzergruppen to encircle Soviet forces in the Vyazma region, thus seizing a vital railway junction and tearing a gap in the enemy’s defenses that could be exploited quickly, discussions during September, influenced by the magnitude of the triumph at Kiev, led to a broadening of the offensive. Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe, to be hastily reassembled after its action in Ukraine, would form a third concentration in the south, with the objective of crushing Soviet forces near the equally vital rail center of Bryansk. If successful, the three armored groups would collapse the Soviet front and leave Moscow utterly defenseless.28
Moscow had always been the prime target for Halder, so, despite the lateness of the season and the diminished fighting power of his units, he pushed the offensive forward. Although it was not the moment he had originally envisioned for the showdown, he proceeded in the hope that the presumed superiority of the German soldier would allow one last triumph. Although Hitler, clearly aware of the time factor, had hoped that the offensive could begin as soon as mid-September, the heavy fighting at Leningrad and in Ukraine meant that some units were delayed in reassembling while others did not return at all. From the outset, then, the Germans had difficulty concentrating their forces as well as ensuring adequate supply. Tellingly, at the last planning conference on 24 September, the decision was taken that Guderian’s forces would launch their attack on 30 September, two days before the general offensive, in order to reach the surfaced road between Orel and Bryansk, vital for logistic purposes, as soon as possible. This meant that many of his formations would enter the attack after three months of nearly constant fighting with no rest or replenishment.29
The relative lull in the central sector of the front had also given the Soviets time to build deeply echeloned defenses on the main routes to the capital. The forwardmost line extended from Vyazma to Bryansk, with successive belts to the east, the most important of which was centered on Mozhaisk, just to the west of Moscow. Special efforts had also been made to beef up the Red Air Force in the Moscow area. Although the Red Army had manned this defense system with 1.25 million troops, German pressure in the north and south meant that the great majority of them were new, poorly trained and equipped formations sprinkled with veteran units worn down in earlier battles. With a lack of vehicles and poor communications, Soviet units were, thus, not fully adequate to conduct a skillful defense. Nor did the Stavka, despite intelligence reports warning of a German attack, fully appreciate the significance of this information. Soviet officials had expected an attack earlier but now, with the impending onset of the autumn muddy season, seem not to have anticipated that the Germans would launch another large offensive so late in the year. Not until 27 September did the Stavka issue a warning to expect a possible German attack, and even then the warning failed to reach Russian troops in the forwardmost positions.30
When, on 30 September, a clear, sunny autumn day, Guderian’s Second Panzergruppe struck between the Sejm and the Desna Rivers in the direction of Orel and Bryansk, it initially profited from Soviet communication and intelligence shortcomings. By the end of the day, spearheads from the Forty-seventh and Twenty-fourth Motorized Corps had driven a twelve-mile wedge into the defending Soviets, whose commander, Eremenko, assumed that this was only a local offensive. The next day, the Soviets launched piecemeal counterattacks without adequate air or armored support to close the gap, but Guderian’s forces brushed them aside and continued the advance. By day’s end, Geyr’s Twenty-fourth Motorized Corps had penetrated nearly fifty miles in the direction of Orel. Since the rest of the front was quiet, Eremenko still did not see the situation as critical and, thus, allowed counterattacks to continue. Early on the morning of 2 October, however, following a short artillery bombardment, Bock’s main force sprang into action to the north. Hoth’s Third Panzergruppe shattered the Soviet defenses facing it, while, by day’s end, units of Hoepner’s Fourth Panzergruppe had advanced nearly twenty-five miles to the rear. The Stavka, however, preoccupied by the threat in the south, failed to realize that a disaster greater than Kiev was looming in the north. On the fifth, in fact, nobody would believe reports from a Soviet reconnaissance pilot who spotted a German armored column some fourteen miles long advancing unopposed toward Yukhnov, to the west of Moscow. Even as second and third flights confirmed the initial report, the Stavka had difficulty accepting that German spearheads were only one hundred miles from the capital. Only belatedly were ad hoc forces assembled and sent to block the German advance.31
The Germans, however, faced problems of their own that prevented them from taking full advantage of their initial successes. Over the first few days, spearheads from the Third and Fourth Panzergruppen drove deep into Soviet positions, captured the city of Kholm, and pushed across the Dnieper in hopes of encircling strong enemy forces near Vyazma. On the fourth, however, with its supply columns stuck on unpaved roads, the Third Panzergruppe ran out of fuel, and its rapid advance came to a sudden halt. Twenty-four hours were lost while the Luftwaffe transported supplies to the front, time that the Soviets used to good advantage to withdraw troops from the threatening encirclement. Not until the seventh did the Germans manage to close the pocket east of Vyazma, but, by that time, aerial reconnaissance indicated that large numbers of the enemy had already escaped eastward. To the south, Guderian’s panzers pushed through heavy resistance and seized Orel, a key road and rail junction 120 miles to the east, on 3 October. “Our seizure of the town took the enemy so completely by surprise,” Guderian noted, “that the electric trams were still running as our tanks drove in.” The Soviets, however, reacted swiftly and launched furious counterattacks with a tank brigade equipped with new T-34s, trapping the Fourth Panzer Division as it approached Mtsensk. Unable to break out of the ambush with its under-gunned and underarmored Pz IVs, the Fourth Panzer saw many of its tanks reduced to smoking hulks. These rapid countermeasures forced the Germans to abandon their advance on Tula for a week. The “vast superiority” of the Soviet tanks caused such shock and “grievous casualties” that Guderian admitted, “The exhaustion that was now noticeable was less physical than spiritual. It was indeed startling to see how deeply our best officers had been affected by the latest battles.”32
Nonetheless, German success was such that Army Group Center concluded on the seventh, after the capture of Bryansk, that the destruction of the bulk of the enemy forces was imminent. Halder thought that with “moderately good weather” the encirclement of Moscow was certain to succeed. Bock, usually more cautious, also brimmed with optimism. As opposed to earlier encirclements, where the enemy had succeeded in tying down large German forces and delaying their advance, this time, he believed, he had sufficient force simultaneously to clear the pockets and to push on to Moscow. The Stavka, too, was thunderstruck by the rapid encirclement and imminent destruction of its forward forces. Zhukov, hastily recalled from Leningrad, recognized the danger immediately: virtually all routes to Moscow lay open, while available reserves had been sent south to deal with the consequences of the Kiev disaster.33