Russian soldiers parade on the Red Square before going to fight the Germans. November, 1941
Michael Peck, National Interest: The Battle for Moscow: How Russia Stopped Hitler's Military During World War II
In October 1941, the Second World War teetered on a knife edge.
There was war in China and war in North Africa, and soon there would be war between America and Japan. But in the autumn of 1941, the only war that really seemed to matter was fought in a portion of central Russia.
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, had begun brilliantly on June 22, 1941. Encirclement after encirclement had inflicted almost 4 million casualties on the huge but disorganized Soviet armies. By early October, they had advanced to within 200 miles of Moscow. Now came Operation Typhoon, the offensive to seize the Soviet capital and—or so the Germans hoped—end the campaign.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: When the Germans unleashed their death squads and extermination units onto the general population .... it truly became a battle to the death. The fall of Moscow would have been a setback .... but the fix was already in .... there were more Soviet soldiers than German soldiers, and with a population overwhelmingly hostile to the Germans it was only a question of time before the Germans were bled to death.
Posts
