Operation Typhoon: Hitler's March on Moscow, October 1941

When ever we talk about second world war, I always comes down to "D-day, Normandy, Market garden, Bulge. Most people dont realise that all the way in 1941 a much larger offensive against the USSR took place. This book and its "prequels" and "sequels" tells us about those offensives.This books tells us that the whole notion that it was the weather was the decisive factor is utter non-sense. Long before the Winter started the replacement army already informed the German army Chief of Staff that replacements cannot keep up. Also the replacements had less combat experience and was such less combat effective. It also shows that the Panzer generals wanted to fight their own seperate war and contributed to the Red Army's Survival. Most importantly It showed us that the Red Army did not take things lying down.Fantastic book, but in order to understand this, I believe you have to read the Prequels and Sequels and considering the price of the prequels and sequels, it might not always be easy.

This is the third of David Stahel's books that I've reviewed (following "Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East" and "Kiev - 1941"), and I am as impressed with this as with his earlier works. His understanding of the German-Soviet War is not unique, but he kicks it up a notch and makes clear, through detailed understanding of military realities, just how far away from final victory the German forces were even after their victories around Vyasma and Bryansk. One little quote he cited, from the German side, has inspired me to write a novel.I'm very much looking forward to his next book on the November campaign and (hopefully) the German retreat.

Another well written and researched book. I've found David Stahel to be a very good author!

A masterpiece. Stahel is amazing.

In this book, Stahel continues his narrative of the German Ostheer’s failure in Operation Barbarossa. Now, in October 1941, the Germans are attempting to break Soviet resistance around Moscow.He also continues his historical revisionism of the Eastern Front, which he did well in “Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East.” That term (“revisionism”) has a bad reputation, but here it works in its truest sense: he looks at the same body of historical evidence and comes away with different conclusions. In brief, he challenges the long-standing historical narrative about this campaign that blamed the weather or indecision in the high command, chiefly Hitler.Stahel alters that old narrative by showing that there was a serious disconnect between the front-line reality as experienced by German soldiers, and how it was perceived in the rear. Those at the front realized that the Soviets were tough fighters, and that the mud made forward progress impossible. Meanwhile, they kept getting senseless orders to advance all over the place, and their operational strength became dispersed as a result. Stahel shows that these unrealistic expectations tended to start with Bock, head of Army Group Center, and grew stronger upwards from there.Stahel relies on war diaries, personal diaries, and memoirs as his primary sources for this part of the story, and it again succeeds. Stahel impresses with his dedication to historical method and careful connecting of these various sources and viewpoints. In doing so, he builds upon the new interpretations of the Eastern Front by focusing on combat records, an approach taken by Robert Kershaw in “War Without Garlands,” among others.The fundamental problem for the Germans was perceptual: They thought that they could win a rapid campaign and knock out the Soviet Union military before the winter. These misperceptions continued in other ways. Their intelligence greatly underestimated the number of armies that the Soviets could field. Everyone seems to have ignored the possibility of bad weather; the mud caused serious problems for the Germans, who essentially fought what Stahel calls a de-modernized war by this point. At times, the infantry marched forward and the tanks were left behind.The mud also compounded German supply difficulties. Supply trucks would take longer to move from the railheads to the front because of the mud, which in turn caused the supply trucks to use more fuel and more time getting back and forth. Amazingly, the Germans started Typhoon with only enough supplies to cover the early breakout and encirclement battles; after this brief period, their units were living a hand-to-mouth existence. The mud also forced the German units to attack up the roads, which the Soviets defended well, and at several points had previously prepared defense networks. The Germans weren’t ready for any of this, and their attack on Moscow stalled.The Germans pocketed huge amounts of Soviet soldiers, but these achievements proved to be problematic in their own way. The German infantry was stretched thin, and many times the panzer divisions had to stay behind on pocket duty to prevent breakouts. Stahel relates harrowing break out attempts by the Soviet units, as told from the German perspective. What’s important to note is that the Germans themselves were fought out just trying to maintain these rings. Meanwhile, higher commanders tended to draw the wrong conclusions from their maps.As Stahel points out several times, many of them read about Napoleon’s Russian campaign, but learned nothing from it, it seems. The parallels are indeed eerie. Voices of dissent seemed to be ignored; Goebbels, for example, ignored his inner one, as recorded in his diaries. He had reason to worry, because he realized that announcing victory before the battle was truly won could negatively affect public perceptions and war support.Stahel does his best work when he focuses on the German side, and in many ways he follows a long tradition of Eastern Front story telling that does so. In this sense, he’s sort of like Paul Carrell’s doppelganger, or maybe this century’s Albert Seaton (whose book “The Battle for Moscow” reflects an older, German-focused narrative about this battle).Less impressive were Stahel’s detours from this central German story. He includes chapters on the Soviet perspective, and tries to work in their accounts throughout. However, he seems to rely on English language narratives, and Soviet sources are not his strength (if he even knows Russian). There’s also a chapter on Germany’s Axis allies, which is interesting but weaker than his focus on the German side. He includes these participants as a counterpoint to the German one.In short, the Soviets were prepared for all eventualities; Stalin’s steely determination to remain in Moscow may have helped rally the defenders, and yet the government was ready to move to an alternate capitol if necessary. The takeaway is that the Germans underestimated Soviet resolve and capacity to wage a long war.Germany’s allies had mixed reactions, and yet they continued in the fighting, albeit reluctantly. Even so, I don’t see any of these allies in the Army Group Center order of battle (prominently, if at all). Therefore, I’m not sure why Stahel included their perspectives here, which felt out of place and led me to suspect that he was padding this book a bit.Stahel may have been trying to tell a comprehensive story, like what Antony Beevor or Max Hastings do for other battles, but their style of storytelling doesn’t work for Stahel, or doesn’t work for him here. “Operation Barbarossa and Germany’s Defeat in the East,” by keeping a tight focus on the German side, worked better. Too, I would have liked this book to cover the winter fighting, which Stahel apparently covers in a follow-up volume—perhaps taking a page, or several hundred, from David Glantz’s more recent approaches to similar Eastern Front battles. That said, one has to wonder if the Germans lost the battle for Moscow by this point anyway.I read this on a Kindle White, and there were some formatting issues (not reflected in my star rating, but which you should know nonetheless). The maps were detailed but tiny and hard to read. (This was also true on the Cloud Reader). The tables were useless, as they were formatted as text, not images. A non-Kindle-related typo appeared, “duel tasks,” which is the exact same error I noted in his other book. In any event, be prepared for some editorial frustrations.