NOBODY AND NOTHING... “WE WILL STAND TO THE DEATH”

 Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

From the V Kontakte page of THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

three hours ago · from Sergey Veter

NOBODY AND NOTHING......

“WE WILL STAND TO THE DEATH”

In memory of those who defended Moscow in all directions

The situation in the main strategic direction, to the west of Moscow, was expressed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief in his radiogram,sent on October 8, 1941 to the surrounded troops, but essentially nowhere, as follows: “...There is no one and nothing to defend Moscow. I repeat: there is no one and nothing.”

The Red Army in this direction ceased to exist. She was - and she is not! Moscow was left without protection. It would seem that’s it! Catastrophe! Twice in Russian history of the 17th - 19th centuries, foreign hordes visited Moscow. But these, as they say, were flowers. Moscow was revived again and again, and its shrines were preserved. Now, according to Hitler's directive, Moscow and its population had to be wiped off the face of the earth - flooded. Fortunately (for the Germans, of course), German engineers participated in the creation of the Moscow “Big Volga” Hydraulic System in the 30s. They may have suggested this sacramental thought to the Fuhrer.

And now Moscow stands on the brink of destruction. It would have been enough for the 41st Motorized Corps from Reinhardt’s Third Tank Group, which was not busy blocking the Soviet troops surrounded in the “cauldron,” to move along the Volokolamsk Highway to Moscow, and it would have entered it. Even before the liquidation of the “cauldron”, this corps captured Sychevka on October 10th. From there, in principle, there were two ways: one - to Staritsa and then through Zubtsov to Kalinin. the other - to Pogoreloye Gorodishche, Shakhovskaya, Volokolamsk and Moscow.

Let's imagine this scenario for a moment. From Sychevka the Germans moved to Pogoreloe Gorodishche, then through Shakhovskaya they reached Volokolamsk. The unfinished Volokolamsk Fortified Region (UR) was at that time still, essentially, under the control of the Moscow Military District. On October 10, the order to create the 5th Army, intended to fill the Mozhaisk defense line, was still being prepared. General Rokossovsky had just, on October 9, been flown out from near Gzhatsk. His headquarters, that is, the headquarters left in the encirclement of the 16th Army, continued to emerge from the encirclement, and he only emerged from the encirclement on October 12th. For three days Rokossovsky was an army commander without a headquarters. On the 13th, after the headquarters of the 16th Army left the encirclement, Zhukov assigned the Volokolamsk UR to the 16th Army. And only on the 14th the formation of the new 16th Army began. In Volokolamsk, the 316th Infantry Division, arriving here from the Northwestern Front, was unloading from its trains. She fully arrived in Volokolamsk on October 12th. And she still had to urgently equip at least field fortifications in the unfinished fortified area. And there was no 16th Army here yet - it had to be created anew.

The German 41st Motorized Corps is a corps with tank and motorized divisions moving in front.

And he, quite possibly, could unexpectedly appear in Moscow in a day or two. The commander of the Moscow Military District, General Artemyev, sent an infantry school regiment, a battalion of the 108th reserve regiment, and two batteries of anti-aircraft guns to the Volokolamsk UR. He had nothing else. Could they have been a serious obstacle to the German motorized corps? In Moscow, German tanks could appear as unexpectedly as they appeared in Yukhnov and Vyazma. Further, the German corps could act according to circumstances. Could get a foothold on the highway. And two days later, having completed the liquidation of the “cauldron”, more reinforcements would arrive - tanks, first from the 6th, 7th tank divisions of the 3rd tank group, and then from the 2nd, 5th, 10th. 11th. divisions. Well, I don’t even want to imagine what’s next. But the disaster did not happen!

There was such a case in our history. In October 1812, Napoleonic hordes settled in Moscow. When there was no longer anything to plunder in the capital, they remembered the Trinity-Sergius Lavra. Napoleon instructed his chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, to send a detachment there. There were no Russian troops at the Lavra. On October 1 (!) the detachment of Colonel Duke de Montemar moved towards the Lavra. Twice the French went to capture the monastery - and did not reach it. The first time we walked about 10 miles and got lost. We returned to Moscow. Napoleon was very unhappy. A week later we were on our way again. But such a thick fog fell that nothing could be seen two steps away. The further we walked, the thicker the fog became. The fog stayed all day and the next. This time Napoleon, only with sarcasm, spoke about the Russian climate. That was the end of the matter.

And now the German motorized corps did not go to Moscow, it went to Kalinin and there got stuck in battles with Vatutin’s operational group and with the 133rd Siberian Rifle Division of General Shevtsov. On October 7th the first snow fell and there were continuous rains and snow. For the attackers, bad weather became a serious obstacle, but it played into the hands of the defenders. It was no longer possible to bypass the pillboxes and bunkers covering the intersections. They had to be taken by attacking head-on. Therefore, the battle for Moscow became a battle not over the entire space, but, basically, for every crossroads on the way to it. The German tricks with detours have come to an end. Next was the Mednovsko-Maryinsky “cauldron” near Kalinin, and after 2 months Kalinin again became Soviet...

Then there was General Panfilov’s division and there were no tanks for the final assault on Moscow...

Werner von Haupt wrote in his memoirs: “Here the Germans encountered fanatical resistance from the new Siberian divisions, which did not want to take a single step back. The Russians were not afraid of tanks with crosses on the towers, they attacked them with close combat and cleared the road only with the dead. Here on the Volokolamsk Highway in the Borodino region - on the battlefield where Emperor Napoleon met his fate 130 years earlier, the 32nd Siberian and 316th Rifle Divisions of the Red Army fought to the death, until the last soldier. We have practically no tanks left for the final push on Moscow.”

On the buckles of German soldiers at all times it was written: GOTT MIT UNS - God is with us. What is noteworthy is the soldiers, not the officers. What was allowed to them by God (not the one to whom they prayed) - they received. But God didn’t allow them to go to Moscow!

German aviation activity decreased sharply due to bad weather. The maneuver capabilities of the ground forces were reduced to a minimum due to the muddy mess that the fields and roads had turned into. The confrontation between the troops went, as they say, head-on, at certain key points on paved roads. The attack on Moscow could now basically continue only in three directions: Volokolamsk, Minsk, Kaluga highways. The forward line of the Mozhaisk defense line blocked them at key points - Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk, Maloyaroslavets. Then, after the capture of Maloyaroslavets, another direction was opened for the offensive - through Narofominsk. Freed from blocking the “cauldron,” the German troops could no longer advance as quickly as before. Now, from the point of view of strategy, everything was decided by time and reserves. And Germany had practically no reserves.

Back on October 5, when the Headquarters finally realized that it was near Moscow that things were taking on threatening proportions, it gave the order to transfer troops to Moscow from the Far Eastern Front and the Transcaucasian Military District.

Paul Karel in his book “Eastern Front” cites the following characteristic episode for the actions of German troops near Moscow in new conditions: “... the commander of the 1st division of the 229th artillery regiment was seriously concerned about the pace of advance of his unit. division, was driven beyond belief, and the horses had difficulty dragging the guns through this endless mess of mud... the captain ordered his men to turn off... in order to get onto the highway... The artillerymen reached the highway... (but) in the section from Gzhatsk to Mozhaisk they were stuck from 2000 to 3000 units of various equipment. Seeing such a sad picture, the artillerymen of the 197th Infantry Division with all haste tried to return back - straight into the mud. The speed of their advance, equal to 45 kilometers per day in the summer, now often dropped to one and a half kilometers and never exceeded five kilometers per day.When night fell, exhausted from battles, exhausted from marches, covered with dirt and lice, hungry and deathly tired, they huddled around the stoves in miserable peasant huts in small villages. On the street, the horses ate the withered frozen straw from the roofs. Inside, the soldiers were drying their uniforms, and if one of them asked: “Does anyone know where we are?”, he received a soldier’s direct and rude answer: “In the very ass of Mother Europe!..”; In the morning they again walked east, day after day, forward, all the time forward behind the motorized divisions to Moscow..."

In the meantime, we will stand here to the death.....