Preparing for Typhoon, 6–30 September
After the fall of Kiev, Hitler was willing to consider an operational pause since Heeresgruppe Nord and Mitte had already shifted to a defensive posture and it appeared that little else could be accomplished in the remaining campaigning season aside from securing the Crimea and the Donbas region. While the Red Army was undefeated, Hitler and the OKH could still reasonably view Barbarossa as a partial success that left the Wehrmacht in a good position to finish off the Soviet Union in 1942. As a leader, Hitler was not inclined toward excessive risk-taking, particularly when he felt that he was ahead.
From the beginning, Hitler viewed Moscow as a symbolic objective with little military value and he had been opposed to committing the bulk of the Wehrmacht’s panzer units to seizing a geographic objective rather than carrying out their primary function as he saw it – encircling and annihilating large formations of the Red Army. Yet even before Kirponos’ Southwest Front was encircled at Kiev, Hitler came to believe that the only real Soviet combat power left lay with the Western Front defending the approaches to Moscow. Timoshenko’s Western Front had launched repeated counterattacks against Heeresgruppe Mitte in August–September, particularly against the exposed Yelnya salient, but had achieved little except inflicting a bruising battle of attrition on both sides. Consequently, Hitler believed that Timoshenko’s armies were exhausted from weeks of fighting and, if hit hard from the flanks, would collapse. On 6 September – the same day that von Bock evacuated the hard-pressed Yelnya salient – Hitler issued Führer Directive 35, which stated that German successes at Velikiye Luki and Kiev had created the ‘prerequisites for conducting a decisive operation against Army Group Timoshenko, which is conducting unsuccessful offensive operations on Heeresgruppe Mitte’s front. It must be destroyed decisively before the onset of winter.’ Hitler’s directive allowed for a pursuit along the Moscow axis after the destruction of Timoshenko’s forces, but did not explicitly task Heeresgruppe Mitte with capturing the Soviet capital. The OKH began developing an operational plan, designated Typhoon, to smash the Soviet Western and Bryansk fronts by using most of the available German armour left on the Eastern Front.
Von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte would become the battering ram that smashed through the last Soviet organized resistance. The OKH began shifting part of Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 from Heeresgruppe Nord to Heeresgruppe Mitte and von Kleist had to transfer four divisions from his command as well. This was a massive redeployment of armoured forces in a very short period of time; for example, Reinhardt’s XXXXI Armeekorps (mot.) had to move 600km in less than a week to join von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte.[92] These road marches, conducted over long distances on poor road networks, resulted in a great number of breakdowns among both tracked and wheeled vehicles. A few units, such as the 1.Panzer-Division, were fortunate enough to transfer their panzers by rail to Vitebsk, thereby preserving vehicles.[93] By late September, von Bock had Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2, Hoth’s Panzergruppe 3 and Höpner’s Panzergruppe 4 with a grand total of fourteen panzer and eight motorized infantry divisions under his control. Höpner – who had failed to pull off a single kessel battle during Barbarossa – was made the main effort and provided the two fresh panzer divisions as well as the still-capable 10.Panzer-Division. Operation Typhoon would be one of the largest German offensives of the war, involving about 1,800 tanks and sixty-nine divisions. An additional fourteen Sturmgeschütz-Abteilungen with 350 StuG III assault guns would support the three German infantry armies. By massing more than 80 per cent of their remaining armour along the Moscow axis, the Germans gained a substantial local numerical advantage over the Red Army for the first time in the campaign: Heeresgruppe Mitte would have a 1.7–1 superiority in the number of tanks and 1.5–1 in manpower over the Soviet Western Front. The Luftwaffe also massed half its remaining aircraft under Luftflotte 2 to support von Bock’s Heeresgruppe Mitte. Although von Bock gained control over most of the Wehrmacht’s remaining armour for Operation Typhoon, the army quartermasters had been unable to amass any stockpiles of fuel or ammunition in the battle zone. In particular, inter-theater fuel deliveries from Germany had been barely adequate for Heeresgruppe Mitte’s defensive operations in August-September, never mind a major offensive. There simply would not be enough fuel for all of Heeresgruppe Mitte to reach Moscow even under the best circumstances.
General-leytenant Ivan Konev took over the Western Front from Timoshenko on 12 September, when the latter went south to try and stave off defeat in the Ukraine. Konev had six armies to defend the direct approach to Moscow and Marshal Semyon Budyonny commanded the Reserve Front, with six more armies echeloned directly behind him. The southern approaches to Moscow were protected by General-leytenant Andrei Yeremenko’s Bryansk Front, with four more armies. The Red Army’s position in front of Moscow appeared to be a strong one, since they were defending in depth and had time to construct extensive field works along the front. All told, the three Soviet fronts had a total of eighty-three rifle and nine cavalry divisions, and were supported by sixteen tank brigades and two independent tank battalions with a total of 849 tanks (including 128 T-34s and forty-seven KV-1s).[94] However, appearances were deceiving. The three Soviet fronts lacked a unified command structure and there was no significant armoured force held as a mobile reserve. Nor was there much of a defense in depth, since many of the Reserve Front units had not properly entrenched themselves and key supply and communications nodes such as Vyazma and Orel were not even garrisoned. Most of the experienced Soviet divisions were reduced to half strength or less after the fighting in August and the quality of many of the new replacement divisions was shockingly poor. Even worse, Hitler’s shift toward the Ukraine had misled Stalin into believing that Moscow was no longer at great risk, so he directed the Stavka to send more replacements to Timoshenko’s new command in the southern Ukraine.
Hitler had not directed that Guderian’s Panzergruppe 2 should participate in Operation Typhoon since it was spread out between Konotop and Lokhovitsa after the closure of the Kiev kessel. Yet von Bock wanted to put every tank he could in the field to smash the Western Front in one last, mighty blow and on 15 September he ordered Guderian to reorient his forces back to the north as soon as operations around Kiev were completed, and move to assembly areas near Glukhov. The 185km road march to Glukhov put additional wear and tear on vehicles and men that were exhausted and left just two or three days for rest and refit. By 27 September Guderian had only 25 per cent of his tanks still operational, with a total of 187 tanks, including ninety-four Pz.III and thirty-six Pz.IV, between the four panzer divisions of the XXIV and XLVII Armeekorps (mot.).[95] Guderian managed to get OKH to release 149 new replacement tanks (124 Pz.III and twenty-five Pz.IV) to replenish his divisions, but these were still en route when Typhoon began and were not received until 1–2 October. Even worse, Guderian’s logistic situation was the most tenuous of any of the three Panzer-gruppen involved in Typhoon and he would start the operation with less than two V.S. of fuel on hand, enough for a 200km advance. Moscow was 550km from Guderian’s starting position.
Typhoon: Guderian’s Battle, 30 September–16 October
After the defeat of Group Ermakov in Yeremenko’s failed counter-offensive, General-major Arkadiy N. Ermakov and his surviving units were shifted to a relatively quiet sector to rebuild. Ermakov deployed his three rifle divisions and two cavalry divisions in a thin screen blocking the main road from Glukhov to Orel, with two tank brigades in reserve.
92
Franz Halder,
93
Horst Reibenstahl,
94
Maksim Kolomiets,
95
Kriegstagebuch Nr. 1, Part 2, Panzergruppe 2, August 21–October 31, 1941. NAM (National Archives Microfilm), series T-313, Roll 86.