Part Two
On Tuesday morning 7th October the most advanced parts of General Fischer's 10th Panzer Division penetrated through the slush into the suburbs of Vyazma and finished off Soviet resistance inside the burning town.
Beyond the northern edge of town the men of the 2nd Battalion, 69th Rifle Regiment, crawled into the abandoned Russian fox-holes. The spearheads of General Stumme's XL Panzer Corps, followed by 2nd Panzer Division and 258th Infantry Division, had thus reached the objective of the first phase of Typhoon.
Meanwhile the 6th and 7th Panzer Divisions reached the undamaged Dnieper bridges at Kholm, and likewise wheeled round towards Vyazma. On the evening of 6th October the battle-hardened 7th Panzer Division, Rommel's old division from the French campaign, was sitting on the Moscow highway behind the enemy's rear, facing west for the third time in fifteen weeks. On 7th October Hoth's tanks linked up with Hoepner's in Vyazma.
Colonel General Hermann Hoth commanded the Third Panzer Army for the first three days of the offensive, until he went to Army Group South to command Seventeenth Army and was replaced by Colonel General Reinhardt.The pocket around six Soviet Armies with 55 divisions was closed.
Simultaneously with the breakthrough towards Vyazma, von Manteuffel's combat group had also reached the Moscow highway with a stunning advance, and cut it.
At Bryansk also, Guderian's two Corps had meanwhile trapped Yeremenko's three Armies of 26 divisions in a northern and a southern pocket. Now followed difficult days for the infantry—opposing fierce Russian attempts to break out of the pockets, splitting up the pockets, reducing individual strongpoints, and dealing with prisoners as, towards the end, the Soviets surrendered in entire regiments.
The fighting continued until 17th October. Naturally, parts of the trapped forces succeeded in breaking out, especially from the southern pocket at Bryansk. Among those who succeeded were General Yeremenko and his staff. Yeremenko himself was seriously wounded and had to be flown out by aircraft.
The great battle was over. The first act of Operation Typhoon had been played out. Some 663,000 prisoners had been taken, and 1242 tanks and 5412 guns destroyed or captured.
Only three weeks after the battle of Kiev, when half a dozen Soviet Armies of Budennyy's Army Group had been crushed in the south and more than 665,000 Soviet troops taken prisoner, another vast fighting force of nine Armies with 70 to 80 divisions and brigades had now been annihilated on the Central Front.
These were the Armies which were to have protected Moscow.
In endless, pitiful columns they were now trudging into captivity over the muddy roads. Moscow had lost its shield and its sword. A wide gap had been torn in its defenses.
The German Army Group Centre had gained freedom of maneuver for the bulk of its armored and motorized formations against Stalin's capital. The second phase of Operation Typhoon could now begin—the pursuit of the enemy right into the city.
Tank rally in Red Square!
On they drove. Or, rather, they did not drive—they slid, skidded and descended into the mud.
Entire companies were pulling bogged-down lorries out of the mud of the roads. The motor-cyclists made wooden skids for their machines from boards and planks and pulled them along behind them.
Major Vogt, commanding the support units of 18th Panzer Division, was in despair.
How did the Russians manage with these muddy roads year after year? He hit on the answer. He got hold of the small tough horses he had seen the local peasants use, as well as their light farm-carts, and used them for sending his divisions' supplies forward, a few hundredweight on each cart. It worked. The motorized convoys were stuck in the mud, but the small peasant carts got through.
The prize of Moscow spurred the men to a supreme effort.
Kaluga, 100 miles south-west of Moscow, fell on 13th October. On 14th October Eckinger's advanced detachment of 1st Panzer Division took Kalinin, 93 miles north-west of Moscow, cut the Leningrad—Moscow railway, and captured the only Volga bridge that was to fall into German hands intact during the Second World War.
A small bridgehead on the eastern bank, held by 1st Panzer Division and Motorized Training Brigade 900, covered the bridge. Thus the cornerstones of the 190-mile-long first line of defenses covering Moscow had been brought down.
The centrepiece of this line, however, the barrier across the motor highway some 60 miles outside Moscow, was between Borodino and Mozhaysk. There, at Borodino, 62 miles from Moscow, the "Reich" Motorized SS Infantry Division was in position on 14th October.
It was historic ground.
Here, in 1812, Napoleon was brought to the brink of defeat. Here, in 1941, Stalin intended to bring Hitler to a halt. To do this he had hurriedly brought up the best forces he had—a crack unit from Siberia, the 32nd Siberian Rifle Division from Vladivostok, with three infantry regiments and two armored brigades newly equipped with T-34s and KV-2s. Stalin began to denude his Far Eastern frontier ruthlessly. He could afford to do so. He knew that Japan would not attack.
Japan, after all, was planning to strike at America in the Pacific. Stalin had reliable information from his spy Dr Sorge, the adviser to the German Ambassador in Tokyo. Dr Sorge was worth more than a whole army to Stalin.
To Be Continued-Part Three
"an appalling battle"
