As the saying goes, the ruler is short and the inch is long, which means that things are not absolutely correct or not. In the Soviet-German battlefield of World War II, around the Typhoon operation of the German army attacking Moscow, Guderian's armored forces were originally superior, but in the second phase of the offensive operation, it caught the Soviet cavalry unit by surprise, so that Guderian's attempt to occupy Tula on the southern front was frustrated. In addition to the impact of climatic factors and muddy roads on the armored forces, the Soviets struck a combination of hot and cold weapons, which Guderian probably did not expect.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" >01 The German offensive against Moscow was a misjudgment of Zhukov's determination to defend. </h1>
It should be said that when the German army attacked Moscow on September 30, 1941, 1.8 million troops completely crushed the Soviet army, which was also the first and only time that the German army had absolute superiority in the Eastern Front, but this battle was too much for the German army to fight too much and too surprised.
If operation Typhoon is divided into three stages, then, in the first phase of the attack, the three armored groups and three armies of the German army are like autumn winds sweeping away the leaves, the 3rd and 4th panzer groups are in the north, Guderian's 2nd panzer group is in the south, the 3 armies are moving forward in parallel in the rear, and in the two encirclement battles of Vyazma and Bryansk, the Soviet losses are almost the same as the losses of the Siege of Kiev, and 580,000 people are all annihilated, resulting in the opening of moscow's western gateway.
But in the second phase of the operation, Zhukov was sent to the center line to command the defense of Moscow, and at this time, he had less than 100,000 combat troops in charge of guarding Moscow, and it was still a patchwork of second-line troops. And it was precisely the key month of Zhukov's adjustment of combat deployment in October, the German army did not continue the results of the first phase of the battle, under the control of the idea of taking a breath and waiting for supplies, Zhukov quickly deployed counterattack forces, including the close cooperation between traditional play and mechanized operations, the assault team was reduced to zero, specifically on the German flank to fight ambushes, so that the German armored tanks parked on the main road could not find opponents; militia and military cadets were mobilized for air defense operations. 600,000 citizens were organized to build fortifications and fortifications in the area. More importantly, Stalin mobilized a large number of reserves, including 13 elite divisions from Siberia, and the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Corps of the Guards also quickly assembled on the Moscow front.
Therefore, in the process of boosting the morale of the Soviet army on Red Square on November 7, Zhukov had already deployed a defensive front around Moscow, and it can be said that the German army did not make any progress in adjusting the defensive forces while fighting this month, on the contrary, Zhukov took advantage of the opportunity that the German army did not form a second wave of offensive superiority and launched a powerful counterattack.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="23" >02 Traditional cavalry attacks and powerful snipers of mechanized troops, the Soviets blocked the German advance. </h1>
Since in the second phase of the operation, the German 3rd and 4th panzer groups, in addition to attacking Moscow's northern front, they also had to bear the security between the northern army group attacking Leningrad and the passage, so the German army occupied Tula as the main direction of Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group from the southern front to attack Moscow, to a certain extent, Guderian occupied Tula, and the Battle of Moscow was won in half.
But the Soviets and Zhukov also seem to have spotted the Germans' intentions to fight, so ordered the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps to snipe Guderian's armored forces near Casilla. In this battle, Guderian sent the main force of the 17th Panzer Division to meet the battle. What Guderian did not expect was that the Soviet cavalry units adopted various strategies to break through, the muddy road affected the German armored troops marching, but there was no impact on the Soviet cavalry units, the cavalry came from different directions to the flank of the 17th Panzer Division, and then the Soviet artillery and tank units attacked from the front, forcing the 17th Panzer Division to retreat backwards, the result of which directly led to Guderian's attempt to detour from the southern front to attack Moscow, and also made him find that continuing to attack could only be a waste of armored tanks. There was a wave of ideological wavering, and the idea of proposing a moratorium on the offensive began.
With the success of sniping Guderian, Zhukov began to make extensive use of combination punches, and on 5 December, during the Soviet counteroffensive, the newly formed Kalinin Front also used the same method on the northern front to snipe the German attack in the direction of Kling. This time, in addition to ordering the 2nd Cavalry Corps of the Guards to be responsible for the first echelon of attack, several infantry divisions and tank divisions were also concentrated to form assault clusters, with cavalry units disrupting the German positions in the front and mobile operations in assault clusters in the back, which made the Fixed Mode of Armored Rapid Attack, which made the Germans accustomed to the fixed mode of armored rapid attack completely disrupted, the battlefield was chaotic, and some soviet assault battle groups even advanced to the depth of the German army, forcing the German command to order the stop of the attack.
From this point of view, the German army in the Battle of Moscow was not enough to have the superiority of troops, and it was still relatively conservative in terms of playing style and pinned its hopes on the 3 armored groups, while the Soviet Army and Zhukov were precisely on the basis of strictly doing a good job of defensive positions, distributing limited troops in various combat units, giving full play to the subjective initiative of each combat force. Therefore, in the Battle of Moscow, the German armored forces did not lose to the frontal confrontation, but let the Soviet guerrilla warfare and mobile operations collapse.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" >03 Why can't the Armored Units of Goodery stop the Soviet cavalry attack? The battlefield environment helped a lot. </h1>
On December 1, 1941, the German 4th Army made a frontal attack from Minsk to Moscow, and since most of the armored forces were deployed on the north and south sides, they encountered Soviet minefields and anti-tank defensive positions, and their advance was stalled, and the Soviet 33rd Army attacked from the flank, forcing the 4th Army to return without success.
The reason why the German army made such a mistake was because it did not understand Zhukov's strategic deployment. Objectively speaking, the German army still adopted the pincer-shaped play of the three armored units, so that Zhukov found an opportunity to take advantage of it, he organized multiple defensive depths on the central line, so that the German attack did not dare to go deep, and in the flanks, a large number of guerrilla operations were adopted, resulting in the German armored forces could not leave the main road, and could only extend the road to Moscow to deploy, which was exactly the result that Zhukov wanted to see most.
On the one hand, the geographical environment of the Moscow region was not conducive to the offensive of the German armored forces. Since the war zone was either swampy or forest, there were only a few roads leading to Moscow, and the Soviet army was often haunted, and a large number of anti-tankers were ambushed in the forests and bunkers on both sides of the avenue, causing a large amount of damage to the German armored forces.
On the other hand, the German armored forces loaded with too few tracked vehicles and stopped on the road became a living target. Since only more than 350 of the more than 3,500 armored tanks were tracked loads during the attack on the Soviet Union, and the rest were all wheeled loads for maneuverability, after the arrival of the muddy climate in November, the German armored tanks became a pile of scrap iron, unable to move, and could only be beaten in situ.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that Zhukov has found out the lifeblood of the German army, taking the cavalry unit and a large number of combat groups to pieces, and after the first wave of disturbing the German deployment, he quickly let the mechanized troops and tank clusters attack, and this combination of fists quickly disintegrated Guderian's offensive advantage. In fact, this style of play did not have much technical content, but it was completely unexpected by Guderian, coupled with the influence of climatic factors and the hard wounds of German armored tanks that could not run, it was not difficult to understand the defeat of the German army in the Battle of Moscow.
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