The Battle for Moscow

Written by David Stahel

Narrated by John Lee

In November 1941, Hitler ordered German forces to complete the final drive on the Soviet capital, now less than 100 kilometers away. Army Group Center was pressed into the attack for one last attempt to break Soviet resistance before the onset of winter. From the German perspective, the final drive on Moscow had all the ingredients of a dramatic final battle in the east, which, according to previous accounts, only failed at the gates of Moscow. David Stahel challenges this well-established narrative by demonstrating that the last German offensive of 1941 was a forlorn effort, undermined by operational weakness and poor logistics and driven forward by what he identifies as National Socialist military thinking. With unparalleled research from previously undocumented army files and soldiers' letters, Stahel takes a fresh look at the battle for Moscow, which even before the Soviet winter offensive, threatened disaster for Germany's war in the east.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798855503364

David Stahel

David Stahel is the author of over a half dozen books about World War II, several focusing on Nazi Germany’s war against the Soviet Union (including Operation Typhoon and The Battle for Moscow). He completed an MA in war studies at King’s College London in 2000 and a PhD at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2009. In his research he has concentrated primarily on the German military in World War II. Dr. Stahel is a senior lecturer in European history at the University of New South Wales, and he teaches at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Reviews for The Battle for Moscow

[shrike58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To a large degree, as has been noted in other reviews, this is not so much an operational analysis as a study in "friction," both on the battlefield as Stahel considers the lurching restart of Operation Typhoon and as the effort is made to trawl the depths of the German military mind as Stahel seeks to understand the almost maniacal pursuit of a victory that was not available to the Third Reich. And make no mistake, the start of the Soviet counter-offensive came at roughly the same time as the Japan unleashing its Pacific offensive against the Western colonial power and creating a full-fledged American commitment to the war and the sort of war of material that Berlin could never win, as opposed to the war of maneuver that one could at least make the argument that the Third Reich had an outside chance of success.

Besides that, returning to the operational side of things, Stahel also emphasizes that for all the narratives that suggest the fall of Moscow was in Germany's grasp, all that was really available was a chance to invest the city, meaning that Army Group Center was right where the Russian high command wanted before unleashing its hammer blow.

Finally, there is an accounting of the misery and atrocity of it all, as apart from the German campaign of annihilation against the Jews there was also the unofficial campaign of annihilation against the Soviet populace as the German military looted every resource possible to even survive the onset of the Russian winter. Stahel muses that in the twisted working of the Nazi mind a dead hero was almost more useful than living soldiers; until the loses could no longer be replaced.