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Patton could not have marched into Moscow.

I'm going to go a bit back in history to address many inaccuracies in this thread -

After the night of the Long Knives, Stalin viewed Hitler in terms similar to his own personality - as a dictator attempting to consolidate his personal power. Molotov, who had far more dealings with the Germans, told Stalin repeatedly that he could not trust the Nazis, that they were different from the Bolsheviks because the former were buttressed by large (corporate) capitalist interests. Stalin refused to accept Molotov's assessment. Stalin also was given the plan for Operation Barbarossa by Richard Sorge (who I referred to previously, though didn't name). He chose to believe the information was inaccurate, even turning over Sorge's identity to the Germans.

The reasons for the initial swift German advance are many. One was the lack of military officers in the Red Army. But even more than this was the fact that the Soviet people initially viewed the Germans as liberators. They were greeted with bread and salt in Ukraine. The Red Army was not willing to fight for Stalinism. They allowed themselves to be captured, believing the Germans would be less brutal than the communists who, shortly before WWII, had unleased the NKVD in Western Ukraine (the Germans discovered 10,000 corpses under NKVD headquarters in Lviv), and less than a decade before, had starved to death 10 million Ukrainian peasants, and deported millions more during the Holodomor. [It should be noted that a similar artificial famine was also unleashed in Southern Russia, a mix of Russian and Ukrainian peasants, with similar numbers of dead.]
However, it was not long before German intentions became well observed by the Soviet population. The initial Red Army POW's were treated brutally. Most starved to death in barbed wire concentration camps within spitting distance of Kyiv. Those that survived were put on marches, where many died of hunger and cold, or were shot to death. Over 3 million POW's died as a result of these actions, and those that didn't ended up in concentration camps. Tens of thousands of Red Army POW's died in concentration camps throughout German occupied territories, including Auschwitz.

Indiscriminate bombing and burning of villages, the slaughter of entire villages where a Jew was hidden (this punishment occurred only in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine), the execution of 10 innocent Soviets for every German soldier killed in Belarus and Ukraine (their bodies would hang in the public square), the removal of Soviets between ages 15 to 60 from occupied Soviet territory to Germany, where they were slave laborers, and the destruction of churches turned the occupied population against the Germans quite quickly. All these actions were used by Moscow, appearing in newspapers, to let the population know what was in store for them as the Germans advanced. In addition, Stalin turned to the great military minds of Imperial Russia - Zhukov and Shapashnikov to lead the war effort. Zhukov, in his memoirs stated that Stalin promised him free reign, and promised that there would be major changes in the USSR if they defeated the Nazis. His soldiers were very loyal to him, and Zhukov was bitter about Stalin's lies. Shapashnikov, always under watch, remained in Moscow planning Soviet war strategy. Nevertheless, it was their entrance on the Soviet stage which changed the course of the war on the Eastern front. (I do not intend to discuss other aspects, such as Paton's factory innovations, which allowed the Soviets to produce tanks and planes very quickly - about 600 T-34's a day, for example, from behind the safety of the Urals.)

Now, when the Allies had always promised the opening of a second front, recognizing the Soviets were bearing the brunt of the war. This was first discussed by British representatives sent to meet with Stalin in Moscow, and was also discussed at the Tehran Conference. However, that second front was not opened until June, 1944. By that time, the definitive Soviet battles had occurred - Stalingrad, Kursk, the siege of Leningrad, even the retaking of Kyiv, and the Red Army was advancing both west and north. Moreover, when the Battle of the Bulge occurred (the first major battle for US ground troops against the Germans in Europe - Americans had previously been involved in operations in Italy), the Americans and Brits complained to Stalin of the heavy losses, and bombarded Moscow with telegraphs , requesting Stalin "do something". Stalin called Zhukov, telling him their the Allies needed help. So, the Red Army commenced a counter operation, resulting in Germans pulling troops from the Western front to the East.

The Red Army of course took Berlin. Some historians have argued the Allies wanted the Soviets to achieve this symbolic victory but others note the remaining Allies advanced quickly, afraid that the Red Army, now very strong, would march all the way to the Atlantic, sweeping Europe for the Bolsheviks.

What also has been overlooked in these posts is that most of the Wehrmacht forces were on the Eastern front. The most hardened German divisions - 270 of them - fought in the East. Compare that to what the Brits and Americans faced in North Africa (9 to 20 German divisions), and Italy (7 to 26 divisions - largely not German), or even Western Europe (9 divisions when landing in France in 1944, and between 56 and 75 divisions in the remainder of Western Europe.

The Soviet-German front covered over 6,200 km, compared to 350 km in North Africa, 300 km in Italy, and a maximum of 800 km on the Western front. The Red Army annihilated 607 Axis divisions, the remaining Allied Forces, 176 enemy divisions. 73.5 per cent of Germany's total war casualties died on the Eastern Front.

Not a single Soviet family was unaffected by WWII. Before the release of Soviet archives, the best estimate of total Soviet casualties was 23 million. Recently, that has been increased, but, in reality, nobody knows the total number.

No country sufferened similar numbers of civilian casualties, or, for that matter, military casualties. This is why the Great Patriotic War has a different dimension in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine than in the West, and why Soviet symbols remain important to those Red Army soldiers who rightly take their place on V-Day.