The Moscow Option Read Online Free PDF Page B

yet uncommitted against the Germans - the thirty-division-strong Far Eastern Army - could not be withdrawn from its positions in the Maritime Provinces and along the Manchurian border until Stavka’s agent in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, had confirmation of the rumoured Japanese intention to strike south rather than north in the coming months.
    So, proverbially inexhaustible or not, the Red Army was outnumbered in front of Moscow. Through August Stavka waited. For the strength at its disposal to grow, for a message from Sorge, for the first welcome signs of autumn. And for the Germans to renew their attack along the road to Moscow.
     
    III
    As the sun rose slowly above the pines on 23 August, the strengthened 56th Panzer Corps moved forward from its starting line south of Lake Ilmen. There were no roads to speak of, and 8th Panzer struck east along the railway line towards Lychkovo. Some ten miles to the north 6th Panzer and 3rd Motorised Division were directed along marshy forest tracks towards Kresttsy on the main Leningrad-Moscow road. A similar distance to the south the motorised SS division ‘Totenkopf’ covered the Corps’ southern flank against the strong enemy formations in the Demyansk-Lake Seliger area. Progress was slow but steady, the terrain offering considerably more opposition than the enemy, who was still struggling to fill the gap left by Thirty-fourth Army’s recent destruction.
    By nightfall on 24 August 6th Panzer was astride the main road and 8th Panzer, after a short bitter engagement with a company of Soviet T-34 tanks, had taken Lychkovo and was rolling on towards Valdai. An improvised Soviet counter-attack along the eastern shore of Lake Ilmen was beaten off without difficulty by 3rd Motorised.
    The following day 8th Panzer crashed into Valdai. The town, despite some recent attention from the Stukas, looked relatively normal. There was the obligatory statue of Lenin, the small cluster of administration buildings, the lines of wooden houses stretching from the centre out to the forest. Barely an hour later the leading units of 6th Panzer appeared along the road from the north. This division was directed east to take and hold the important railway junction of Bologoye; 8th Panzer was to continue south-eastwards along the main road towards Vyshniy Volochek.
    In the Kremlin the threat posed by Manstein’s Corps was underestimated. For days an argument had been raging as to the most probable point of the enemy’s forthcoming breakthrough attempt. Opinions were divided fairly evenly between the Moscow highway and Bryansk-Orel sectors; all eyes were watching to see which it would be. Reports of a major armoured attack south of Lake Ilmen were discounted. It was only the enemy making the most of his victory over the unfortunate Thirty-fourth Army; the local Red Army commander was clearly exaggerating the scale of the attack.
    By 25 August the danger was too visible to brush off so lightly, but by this time Stavka was otherwise occupied. At dawn on that day the rest of Army Group Centre, close on a million men and two thousand tanks, moved into the attack. In the Belyy area and on the main Moscow road Hoth’s tanks burst through the Soviet line with all the concentrated power of long practice. 57th Panzer Corps attacked northeast towards its intended junction with Manstein, 39th Panzer Corps motored east towards Vyazma for a rendezvous with Guderian. The latter’s tanks had broken through the Soviet positions on the Roslavl-Yukhnov road, with one corps punching deep into the rear of the Soviet concentrations around Yelna. The largely immobile Red Army units continued to fight hard against the slow push of Fourth Army against their front, but could do little to affect the pincers closing behind them. By 28 August Model’s 3rd Panzer Division had made contact with the leading elements of 7th Panzer at Losimo and the ring was closed. Inside the pocket were the major parts of three Soviet armies.
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