The successes of the Red Army in defending Moscow through December 1941 led Stalin and the Soviet leadership to stumble into the same overconfidence that had plagued the German high command during Operation Barbarossa. As dangerous as Stalin’s demands for attack were, the perception of invincible German invaders was also dangerous. Soviet Chief of Staff Boris Shaposhnikov drew up plans for a general offensive from Leningrad to the Crimea. General Georgy Zhukov and others protested, but to no avail. Later, the official Soviet history of the war written in the post-Stalin era would be critical of the “overambitious” offensive given the condition of the Red Army entering 1942.

Around Moscow, the Kalinin Front (named for the city now known as Tver northwest of Moscow) under Ivan Konev was tasked with assaulting the city of Vyazma on the western approaches to the Soviet capital. Meanwhile, the Western Front under Zhukov would exploit a hole in the German defenses south of Kaluga, 93 miles southwest of Moscow. Zhukov would then support Konev’s attack on Vyazma. In this, they would be aided by Pavel Belov’s First Guards Cavalry Corps, with Soviet mounted infantry harassing the German lines from the rear. The objective was to essentially encircle and destroy the armies and panzer groups that had tried to take Moscow. These belonged primarily to Army Group Center under Günther von Kluge, who had replaced Feodor von Bock as commander in late 1941. More modestly, Zhukov and other commanders hoped to force the German units back to their pre-Operation Typhoon positions.

Further supplementing these forces were the airborne troops of Fourth an Fifth Airborne Corps, the sole surviving Soviet airborne units after Operation Barbarossa. Multiple regiments parachuted behind German lines and captured important roads and highways before linking up with regular forces. By the end of January, the Soviet counteroffensive stalled, hindered by the winter weather and weakened units. Zhukov planned a large air drop west of Vyazma to help in capturing the city. The operation, however, exposed the damaged nature of the Red Army. There were not enough transport planes to parachute all the troops at once and river crossings were required to reach forward airfields. In the end, the operation was aborted after the first drops resulted in little more than the loss of valuable men and equipment dispersed across deep snow with no major gains.

On January 8, Erich Hoepner, the commander of the Fourth Panzer Army (formerly the Fourth Panzer Group), disobeyed orders to stand-fast and pulled out a corps threatened by the advancing Soviets. For this he earned the ire of Hitler, was relieved of command, and dishonorably discharged from the army. When the Fourth Army came under similar heavy pressure, however, with supply lines threatened, Hitler relented and permitted greater flexibility to his generals in defensive operations. This shift, coupled with the clarity that came when the Soviet goal of encircling Army Group Center became obvious, ensured the Germans would be able to push back the Soviet offensive despite setbacks.

By late January, German Ninth Army under Walter Model succeeded in reconnecting with Third Panzer Army west of the major rail junction at Rzhev. Elements of the German Fifth and Eleventh panzer divisions persisted in holding on to Vyazma. Encircled German troops at Sukhinichi, a railway junction connecting Moscow with Kiev, were rescued, and soon were on the counterattack, causing the Red Army to send valuable reinforcements. The German front line, however, remained a mess of encircled pockets and persistent gaps and holes, with salients of both sides jutting out east and west. This further convinced the German commanders of the need to shorten their lines, conserve manpower, and better protect supply routes.

With the Soviet offensive in a stalemate, Zhukov responded with another attempted airborne operation launched overnight on February 17. The parachute troops were dropped in the swamplands of the Ugra River west of Vyazma. Of the 7,400 men who took off, no more than 70 percent reached their assembly points. German fighters shot down the corps commander and his staff, contributing to the chaos. The marshy terrain, however, provided natural defenses for the airborne soldiers. By May, the deadlock had returned as Soviet forces still lacked the strength needed to make the sort of sustained breakthroughs against the German lines to do anything more than harass their targets.

As temperatures increased, snow would melt over ground still frozen by the harsh winter cold. The ground too would thaw, the result being large watery lakes covering largely flat terrain. Of course, there would be spring storms as well. The water and mud made movement on anything but paved roads impossible. This spring rasputitsa essentially brought a halt to the Soviet offensives and gave both sides time to plan for next steps. The Soviet leadership would assume that Moscow would again be a chief target, while in reality the Germans would look elsewhere.

By the spring of 1942 the new lines had stabilized. Zhukov described the offensive of early 1941 “a Pyrrhic victory.” The Rzhev-Vyazma operation around Moscow alone would cost 272,000 lives; among veterans it would earn the nickname the “Rzhev Meat Grinder” (“Ржевская мясорубка”). From December 1941 to March 1942, Zhukov’s Western Front lost 250,000 men and Konev’s Kalinin Front around 150,000. Overall, the Red Army would lose about 620,000 men in the same period, compared to about 136,000 German casualties. They had relieved some of the pressure on Moscow, but the Soviets were essentially back to where they had started in January. The Germans, meanwhile, lacked ready reinforcements to replace the heavy losses the military was now suffering on the Eastern Front, and had lost much of their equipment. Between December 1941 and January 1942 alone, German forces had lost 974 tanks and armored assault vehicles; by the end of March 1942, the sixteen panzer divisions fighting in the Soviet Union only had 140 operational tanks. Fuel and ammunition supplies were almost exhausted.

After the grueling winter of 1941 and the spring battles of 1942, the Red Army had pushed the advancing Germans away from Moscow. The Wehrmacht remained most exposed in a salient northwest of the Soviet capital around the city of Rzhev, a strategic location among marshlands and dense woodlands. General Walter Model’s Ninth Army, which had defended the salient previously, was ordered to launch a counter-offensive in the summer, code-named Seydlitz. At the time, Model was recovering from a wound, so command of the Ninth Army initially fell to Heinrich von Vietinghoff. The plan was to split the Soviet 39th Army and encircle it. The Ninth Army stood at sixteen divisions, but even though its units were rested, they were still desperately in need of reinforcements. On July 2, 1942, shortly before dawn, Seydlitz began, but met little success, with the key panzer divisions making little progress until the fourth day, when the Germans began meeting little resistance. The Soviet 39th Army had in fact tried to withdraw but found roads in front and behind them in German hands. Ultimately, 37,000 soldiers were taken prisoner, destroying the army and resulting in a major German victory.

Sources

Bellamy, Chris. 2007. Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Fritz, Stephen. 2015. Ostkrieg: Hitler’s War of Extermination in the East. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press.

Glantz, David and Jonathan House. 1995. When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press.