Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of table
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Tables of military ranks and army structures
- Introduction
- 1 Parallel wars
- 2 The idle Typhoon
- 3 Preparing the final showdown
- 4 The Orsha conference
- 5 Typhoon re-launched
- 6 The long road to Moscow
- 7 Victory at any price
- 8 The frozen offensive
- 9 Down to the wire
- 10 To the gates of Moscow
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- List of table
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- Tables of military ranks and army structures
- Introduction
- 1 Parallel wars
- 2 The idle Typhoon
- 3 Preparing the final showdown
- 4 The Orsha conference
- 5 Typhoon re-launched
- 6 The long road to Moscow
- 7 Victory at any price
- 8 The frozen offensive
- 9 Down to the wire
- 10 To the gates of Moscow
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
On 22 November the weekly German magazine Militär-Wochenblatt proclaimed the success of the Ostheer’s war in the east with a remarkable and, in most instances, roughly accurate tally of achievements:
November 22nd marks five months since the German Wehrmacht moved against the threat of a Bolshevist attack from the east. In that time, it has occupied 1.7 million square kilometres of the territory of the Soviet Union, containing three quarters of its industry and 75 million of its inhabitants. It has simultaneously taken 3,792,600 prisoners and destroyed 389 divisions; including battle casualties we may estimate total Soviet losses at over eight million soldiers. Materiel losses correspond to human ones: more than 22,000 tanks, 27,452 guns, 16,912 aircraft have been destroyed or captured . . . It is a balance sheet that represents both a proud success for the German Wehrmacht and an annihilating defeat for the enemy.
It was, without question, an extraordinary achievement on paper, but it did not change the basic fact that Germany’s war effort was doomed. As Robert Citino concluded, by the end of 1941 Germany had, in a strategic sense, gained nothing: ‘In the eastern campaign, the Germans had brought Bewegungskrieg [mobile warfare] to a destructive peak that it would never know again . . . But it had achieved precisely nothing.’
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- Information
- The Battle for Moscow , pp. 310 - 318Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015