On 5 December 1941, with German spearheads stalled in deep frost on the approaches to Moscow, the Red Army opened its winter counteroffensive. Fresh divisions, many brought from Siberia and the Far East, struck the exhausted German armies north and south of the capital and drove them back, in places by 250 kilometers or more. Operation Typhoon, Hitler's drive on Moscow, had failed.
The German advance stops
Field Marshal Bock's armies had renewed their advance on Moscow in early October and destroyed huge Soviet armies around Vyazma, but autumn mud and then deep cold slowed them to a crawl. By 4 December the Fourth Panzer Group was within about 32 kilometers of the city, according to World History Encyclopedia, and Britannica records that the German advance halted that same day. The troops had no proper winter clothing, and the frost paralyzed their vehicles and weapons.1
The counterblow
The sources differ by a day on the start. Britannica's article on the battle dates the first attack to 5 December, made by Siberian troops newly brought from the Chinese frontier, many in white snow camouflage. Its survey of the war, and World History Encyclopedia, date the general counteroffensive under General Georgy Zhukov to 6 December, with blows against the German flanks around Tula and Yelets in the south and Klin and Kalinin in the northwest. World History Encyclopedia puts Zhukov's force at 100 divisions on a front of about 320 kilometers.2 › Georgy Zhukov
Hitler forbade any general retreat. He then dismissed the army's commander in chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, and took personal command of the army. Britannica says the Germans were thrown back as much as 250 kilometers in places, and more than 150 miles by March 1942; World History Encyclopedia gives some 280 kilometers from Moscow. Loss figures vary just as widely: Britannica gives 250,000 to 400,000 German dead and wounded for the battle as a whole and 600,000 to 1,300,000 Soviet dead, wounded and captured.3
The battle is told in full in our article on the Battle of Moscow.4
Also on this day
- 1757: Battle of Leuthen. Frederick the Great's Prussian army attacked a larger Austrian army under Prince Charles of Lorraine at Leuthen, near Breslau, in the Seven Years' War.
