Even though the situation of the Fourth Army remained tenuous and Soviet partisans continued to threaten German supply lines, by the end of January both sides were spent. In some Soviet units, as few as ten men remained in companies and seventy in battalions, while artillery shells were being rationed to one or two shots per day per gun. As had the earlier German offensive, the Russian counterattack had ground to a standstill because of a shortage of men and materiel. The situation had so improved, in fact, that in mid-February Hitler could assure his army group commanders that the threat of a repeat of 1812 had been eliminated. Unfinished business remained, however, since in February German front maps showed a crazy quilt of German units (in blue) intermingled with Soviet forces (in red) in wild contortions, especially in the center, where German and Soviet salients jutted crazily to the east and west. In some sectors, front lines could not be drawn at all, while, in others, the Germans simply marked large areas partisans. Eyeing this convoluted front, with the need to shorten the line to conserve men as well as eliminate the peril to their supply routes, the Germans took action to repair the front that was self-evident.25
Soviet forces, too, were as dangerously snarled as the Germans, with some units trapped behind enemy lines, although Stalin did not view the situation pessimistically, instead seeing in it the possibility of inflicting further damaging blows on a reeling foe. Both sides were aware, moreover, that the spring rasputitsa, a much more elemental force than that in the autumn, would begin in late March. The bitter cold of the Russian winter, having frozen the earth to a depth of six or seven feet, would lock in much of the previous fall’s rain. Several feet of snow and ice would then accumulate on top of the frozen surface. The spring thaw, however, worked from the top down, so that the melting of the winter snowfall resulted in large lakes of water sitting on top of the still-frozen ground. As the subsoil began gradually to thaw, the ground became sodden to a depth of several feet, creating a progressively deepening layer of watery mud. In the generally flat terrain, the water had no place to drain until the ground completely thawed. The entire process might last as long as two months, and, for several weeks, the mud would be so deep that any movement on unpaved roads, except by Russian panje wagons, with their high wheels and light weight, would be impossible.26
As a result, both sides, locked in a deadly embrace, hammered away with increasingly ineffective body blows that served only to exhaust their remaining strength. The Stavka sought to mount offensives on either side of the central sector, with the hope of relieving the siege of Leningrad, further threatening German lines of communication, and disrupting any enemy buildup to the southwest of Moscow, which the Russians had incorrectly identified as the likely area for the main German advance in the summer. The Soviets achieved most success in the north, where they encircled considerable German forces around Kholm and Demyansk. Unlike the earlier pocket at Sukhinichi, the Germans refused to abandon Kholm and Demyansk; instead, the Luftwaffe mounted a major operation to supply the pockets by air. By holding on to these areas, not only did the Germans retain key strategic positions, but, if their forces at Demyansk and Rzhev could join hands, they would also trap many Soviet divisions in the Toropets salient. In the event, however, the Germans lacked sufficient force to unite the two pockets. Instead, they mounted a major effort to relieve Demyansk, driving a thin corridor to the pocket in early March. Ironically, the relief column was commanded by General Walter von Seydlitz, who would later be captured at Stalingrad and emerge as a key figure in a Soviet-sponsored anti-Nazi movement. Indeed, the relief of Demyansk and Kholm (achieved on 1 May) had a direct impact on the later disaster on the Volga since the successful resupply of the smaller pockets encouraged Hitler in the belief that the operation could be repeated on a much larger scale at Stalingrad.27
To the northwest of Demyansk, the Russians planned an ambitious operation in conjunction with the Volkhov Front that aimed at nothing less than cutting the lines of communication of Army Group North and raising the siege of Leningrad. Despite some success in recapturing mostly swamps and forests of little military value, the Soviets never seriously threatened the position of the army group, despite their numerical superiority. As elsewhere across the front, after an initial advance, the fighting along the Volkhov degenerated into a confusing series of battles with isolated forces of exhausted men, literally bogged down in the woods and swamps, trying to encircle each other. Eventually, as noted above, the Second Shock Army under Vlasov found itself encircled following sharp German counterattacks and was forced to surrender in late June. Despite the urgency attached by Moscow to the Leningrad operation, it failed to achieve anything of significance, a failure that meant a starvation death for hundreds of thousands of Leningraders, for the worst period of the nine-hundred-day siege was the three months from January to March 1942. Subjected to constant artillery bombardment, and cut off from fuel and food supplies, with rations that guaranteed only death by famine, an estimated 1 million civilians starved to death in the city during the course of the war, the great majority in the first months of 1942. The Soviets having failed, for a variety of reasons, to evacuate enough of the civilian inhabitants of the city, the result was the worst single demographic disaster of the war. But, as we have seen from his orders, even the surrender of Leningrad would not have averted a catastrophe, for Hitler had no intention of feeding the inhabitants in any case. The logic of a racial war of annihilation precluded such action.28
Although Hitler’s blitzkrieg failed in front of Moscow, Stalin’s effort to force a decisive result before the spring rasputitsa miscarried as well. Zhukov, in his memoirs, put it best when he observed bitterly, “If you consider our losses and what results were achieved, it will be clear that it was a Pyrrhic victory.” The most optimistic aim, the destruction of Army Group Center, had not been achieved, nor had the more pragmatic goal of Zhukov, to drive the line back to the starting point of Operation Typhoon been satisfactorily attained. Red Army losses had been staggering, the central Rzhev-Vyazma operation alone costing the Soviets some 272,000 lives. Overall, in the roughly four months of fighting between December and March, Zhukov’s West Front lost 250,000 men and Konev’s Kalinin Front some 150,000, while the battles around Demyansk cost the Soviets another 89,000 men. Red Army losses across the entire eastern front totaled 620,000 from January to March, compared with roughly 136,000 German deaths in the same period. Soviet mobility and operational effectiveness, too, were limited by the deep snow, bitter cold, and difficulties in moving supplies. Nor did the Red Army possess enough mechanized forces to block roads and railways permanently or take the villages that the Germans had fortified, Zhukov complaining that it was impossible to encircle without tanks. The Stavka had made the same mistakes as the Germans; not only had it assumed that the enemy was exhausted and shattered, but it had also attacked everywhere and, thus, dispersed its own limited forces. The Germans had mounted a remarkably successful defense, which the quality of the Landser had made possible, but the Soviets’ failure to concentrate their resources had, ultimately, allowed the Wehrmacht to escape a disaster. Stalin’s strategy of wearing down the Germans did not work; in return for huge losses, the Soviets regained little territory and now faced the task of again rebuilding their weakened forces.29