Last time we spoke about the accumulation of mud and continued sieges on the eastern front. In the autumn of 1941, a winter-thin road stretched from Leningrad to Moscow, watched over by two immense armies. On one side, the Germans, Panzer power blazing, hunger for a swift victory, pushed from Ukrainian plains toward a hoped-for triumph. On the other, the Soviets, led by Zhukov, then hastily recalled to defend the capital, laid brick by brick a stubborn defense, rebuilding lines and bracing for the storm. The Rasputitsa arrived like a living obstacle. Mud swallowed wheels, bridges sighed under strain, and supply lines twisted into knots. Yet the air carried more than fuel and fear; it carried a stubborn resolve. Across the front, pockets formed and dissolved in a dance of encirclement. Bryansk and Vyazma blazed with brutal fights; attempts to seal the gaps faltered as weather, logistics, and tenacious Soviet resistance frustrated even the boldest panzers. By October’s end, the battlefield wore a quiet, haunted truth: endurance, unity, and a city’s stubborn heartbeat could hold against a siege. The roads remained muddy, but hope steeled the spine of a defense that would echo through the winter to come.

This episode is Mud and Blood

Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.

City after city falls on the road to Moscow. Zhukov’s new defensive line has already been breached through by the panzers. From the map tables of the Wolf’s Lair, it is clear that Hitler’s army is only days from capturing the Soviet capital. Yet what the map tables cannot show is the mud. It drags men, machines, and beasts into a sucking morass that cannot be bypassed. The Red Army has endured the worst streak of defeats in military history, but they are far from defeated. Soviet soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder with Soviet civilians, willing to defend their capital with their lives. As the second week of October ended, Operation Typhoon could still be considered a success. Yet it was clear that the Red Army would not yield. Next, we approach the third week. Zhukov and Bock will again face off as time runs out on the German offensive.

First I want to talk about how the Soviet Union managed to rebuild its field forces in the face of devastating losses during the early months of the campaign. On June 22, the Red Army had 303 divisions on its rolls, of which 81 were cadre formations still in the process of organization. As discussed in previous podcasts, during the early stages of Operation Barbarossa most, if not all, Red Army divisions were under strength. This weakness stemmed largely from a peace-time organizational framework, in which units were kept weaker to conserve manpower and resources. After the invasion began, Stalin mobilized the classes of 1905–1918, producing five million three hundred thousand men by July 1. By the end of the year, 3,544,000 were brought into the active army, forming 291 new divisions. These numbers dwarfed the German high command’s pre-invasion understanding of Soviet manpower capabilities. In Halder’s diary, he estimated roughly 200 divisions in the Red Army, and believed that once these were gone, there would be little left worth fighting. The falsity of this perception was evident to Halder even before August ended. By mid-October, there seemed to be no end in sight for the Wehrmacht. The reality of the Red Army’s manpower in 1941 was not captured by the Wehrmacht’s shifting opinions. They had begun the war underestimating Soviet potential, and by October this had evolved into fantastical notions of endless Red Army hordes. In truth, the Red Army was developing an effective replacement system based on creating new units from veterans and new recruits. This system had both positives and negatives. On the positive side, it allowed rest and refit for veterans and enabled them to pass on knowledge to newcomers. On the negative side, many half-formed units were rushed into battle to meet emergencies requiring immediate action. These cadre forces would be built up in the field, if they survived long enough; often they did not.

The Stavka had planned a large offensive from both sides of the Shisselburg Corridor to begin on October 20. The Germans had also been planning a renewed attack under Hitler’s direction to seize Tikhvin. The city was an important rail junction with significant mineral resources. There were reasonably productive bauxite mines in the area. Sources are unclear whether they were still producing as the Germans approached. The aluminum plants had been relocated earlier in the year as part of the mass industrial migration. The mining equipment had been evacuated at some point, though the timing remains uncertain. The rail head offered a convenient base for the Stavka to build up supplies and units on the exposed flanks of Army Groups North and Center. Army Group North struck first on October 16. Though under-resourced and little more than a diversion from the campaign’s main effort, the direction of this attack drew Hitler’s attention. The impact of Nazi ideology is neatly reflected in this attack. To the regime, any objective could be achieved with enough willpower. The dictator’s personal involvement was meant as both a blessing and a reminder that he embodied the ultimate expression of the Nazi will. He sought to direct the counter-offensive with limited resources, even in the face of his generals’ objections, as a demonstration of that will. The assault was supervised by him directly, though the chain of command remained nominally in place.

Infantrymen from the 21st and 126th Infantry Divisions crossed the Volhkov River early on the morning of the sixteenth. They trudged through several centimeters of snow, but they managed to breach the defending 4th Army in several sectors. However, two of the three divisions involved were able to pull back in good order. The withdrawal opened a substantial gap between the 52nd and 4th Armies. The Germans were prepared to exploit this, and the Red Army did not have the resources to close the gap before the 20th Motorized Infantry and 12th Panzer Divisions pushed through. They were followed by the 21st and 126th Infantry. They struggled through minefields and encountered deserters. Some of these deserters claimed to be Ukrainian. This is notable because it highlights how the Ukrainian people still held hopes of independence from the Soviet Union. Many greeted the Wehrmacht as liberators, but as time would prove, this was a mistake. The Nazi war machine regarded nothing but extermination and deportation for the Ukrainian people.

On the 20th, late in the evening, the 52nd Army attempted a counter-attack. Broadly speaking, this failed to accomplish much, but the next day was still miserable for the advancing Germans. They managed to push through the gap and fan out, creating a large bulge before the end of the day on the twenty-first, but it was clear that there would be no rapid exploitation. They were blocked everywhere by obstinate Red Army infantry units. The fighting for the city of Tikhvin was not easy as the weather continued to alternate between drenching rains, freezing mud, and light snow. The few tanks the Germans possessed were forced to run continuously through the night, or they would freeze up and become hard or impossible to start in the mornings. This aggravated the already short fuel situation even more. The attack began to falter, but Army Group North was not ready to call it off. They would fight well into November attempting to take Tikhvin.

Operation Typhoon continued to expand in a mimic of the reverse funnel the entire campaign was undergoing. During the morning of the 14th, the 1st Panzer Division started probing the suburbs of Kalinin. Helmut Pabst, who took part in the advance to Kalinin, wrote home in a letter: “The going’s good on the frozen roads of this country of hills crowed with villages. But fifty-five kilometres is a lot. It took us from eight in the morning till 2:00 the next day. And then we didn’t find billets. The few houses in our rest area had been allocated long before. But the boys wormed themselves into the overcrowded rooms, determined to get warm even if it meant standing.” The Northwestern Front was responsible for the city’s defense, but there was not much in place when the panzers arrived. Vatutin was still serving as the chief of staff for the Front and promptly organized a force to counterattack. Two rifle and two cavalry divisions were put together in an operational group and marched out. They were spearheaded by the 8th Tank Brigade. Before the end of the day, they had marched over two hundred and fifty kilometers to reach the city. They were too late.

Early on 13 October, Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division rolled into Kalinin, having carved more than 70 kilometres from Staritsa and about 150 from Sychevka. Like Orel ten days earlier, streetcars clattered on, and the stunned inhabitants watched as German tanks threaded through their streets. The moment of surreal spectacle did not endure; soon brutal street fighting erupted, with civilians joining in. As in Mogilev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Leningrad , reaching the city was only the prelude to capture, not the end of the campaign. Only the division’s vanguard confronted the costly urban combat, while the rest stretched along the 150-kilometre route. To complicate matters, Bock had ordered Reinhardt to push on to Torzhok, highlighting Panzer Group 3’s overextension, which had proved costly at Smolensk and was unfolding again.

Colonel Rotmistrov wisely chose not to assault blindly into the city without support. Instead, he parked the brigade with some straggling rifle battalions northwest of the city and waited for the rest of Vatutin’s operational group. Before they arrived, the Germans decided to continue the advance. They blundered into the waiting Soviet tanks sometime around noon on the fifteenth. Rotmistrov managed to ambush the Germans from both sides. His men succeeded in knocking out three tanks and at least eight half-tracks. Overwhelmed by the ambush, the panzers managed to pull back. They regrouped and came back out looking for a fight before the day was over. After some back and forth, Rotmistrov had to hold his tankers in place for lack of fuel. The ad-hoc nature of the Red Army in this stage of the war was understandable, but it continually haunted them. Here, they had achieved a tactical victory and managed to hold back the tip of the spear. Yet, the institutional army was unable to support them, either with fuel or reinforcements. Vatutin was still on the way, but could do nothing for the 8th Tank Brigade. On the 16th, Rotmistrov was outmaneuvered. The Luftwaffe bombed his positions and then a company of German tanks managed to find his command post. He was forced to abandon several of his best tanks for lack of fuel as he retreated. The 1st Panzer was able to send elements twenty kilometers further down the road and seize a crucial bridge over the Tversta.

From Moscow came another attempt to take Kalinin back. The 21st Tank Brigade under Colonel Lesovoi had just arrived in the capital from the east. On the seventeenth, the brigade was about thirty kilometers to the south of the city. The man who ordered the 21st into action was Lieutenant General Fedorenko. The general did not let Vatutin know he was giving him support, and did not attempt to coordinate its actions. They started their advance on Kalinin before dawn on the seventeenth. The brigade was split into two columns, each led by an experienced tank commander. The two commanders were Major Lukin and Major Agribalova, both non-political recipients of the highest award in the country, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Both earned their decorations for combat at Khalkhin Gol in 1939. As they advanced, the first column stumbled into the 36th Infantry Division, which was moving up to support the panzers. Almost immediately the column was wrecked, and its commander was killed in a hectic retreat. The second column made it to the south side of the city before being picked off by an organized counterattack. Before the day was over, almost the entire 21st Tank Brigade was wiped out. The only notable accomplishment from this action was that several fuel trucks from the 1st Panzer Division were knocked out. There were precious few trucks on the eastern front, and even fewer tanker trucks. Losing these was a serious blow to the advance, even if they had not been intentionally targeted.

At this point, the Panzers were being starved for fuel and ammunition. There simply hadn’t been enough supplies stockpiled before the offensive began. Further losses to trucks and the worsening weather only made things worse. A soldier’s diary entry for 7 October reveals the stark contradiction between hopeful expectations for an end to the war and the grim reality if it did not end: “We’ve not much petrol, and none will come for quite a while because our tankers are standing way back and it’ll take them a long time to get through all the mud. Tomorrow we’re to storm the town of Dmitriev, five kilometres in front of us. Everyone is saying that this is to be our last job … It would be the best thing too for all the companies are thoroughly beaten up, and many of the vehicles are already knocked out. If it really does go on though, it would be better to create a battalion out of the regiment; then it could be properly equipped with men and machines and would be ready for battle.”

Rain continued to turn the barely navigable roads into little more than mud trails. Even the Luftwaffe was struggling to provide aerial resupply, due to their own supply issues and the continuing threat from VVS fighters. Aside from the disaster of the 21st Tank Brigade, Zhukov was not going to allow the Germans to walk away with Kalinin. He sent Konev with three new armies and an order to create the Kalinin Front on October 17th. Between these forces and Vatutin, Reinhardt’s 3rd Panzer Army was hard pressed. The 1st Panzer had regrouped and started to advance towards Torzhok. The Red Army was waiting. In a series of bold moves, they managed to outflank the 1st Panzer and cut them off from the city. Simultaneously Soviet forces took Kalinin under attack. Konev was fighting for his life, and maneuvered deftly with the resources he had. Konev had only been saved from the executioner’s pistol in early October by the direct intervention of Zhukov. Stalin had not been happy with the former’s poor showing in the opening moves of Operation Typhoon. Without Zhukov, there is no doubt that Konev would have been executed, as Pavlov and others had been in July. Eventually the 1st Panzer was able to get back to friendly lines, but the cost was steep.

Kirchner’s 31st Panzer Corps was almost completely encircled as attacks by Konev’s Kalinin Front pressed in from all sides. Reinhardt’s other corps, Schaall’s 56th Panzer Corps, had been delayed much longer at the battle of Viaz’ma and was now struggling north on the bad roads to assist Kirchner with a battle group formed from Landgraf’s 6th Panzer Division. An even smaller advanced detachment had left for Kalinin on about 13 October and arrived in the city on 16 October. Yet the battle group’s progress was hardly much faster than that of the marching infantry. Gerhard vom Bruch, who took part in the march, wrote on 20 October: “More and more time is being lost – and we are suffering endless halts. During the day the snow thaws somewhat; in the night it freezes again, and fresh snow sweeps over the flat countryside. Was it merely an illusion that we would be able to defeat this Russian colossus in just a few months?”

Major-General Erhard Raus, a brigade commander in the 6th Panzer Division, wrote of the autumn conditions: “Motor vehicles broke down with clutch or motor trouble. Horses became exhausted and collapsed. Roads were littered with dead draft animals. Few tanks were serviceable. Trucks and horse-drawn wagons bogged down.” Schaall’s 56th Panzer Corps also commanded Funck’s 7th Panzer Division, which sent at least one of its grenadier regiments north to Kalinin, but the bulk of the division, including the panzer regiment, remained resting and refitting at Vyazma until 25 October. When at last the division did depart for the north it found the roads extremely hard going, and a letter from Karl Fuchs, a tanker in the division’s panzer regiment, indicates just how hard movement was. Writing on 26 October Fuchs explained: “Rain, rain, nothing but rain! The countryside looks like an endless grey swamp. The roads, at least what’s left of them, have become totally impassable. Even walking has become a feat. It is very difficult to stay on your feet – that’s how slippery it is.”

By 27 October an entry in the war diary of Panzer Group 3 stated that no less than 50 percent of the 25th Panzer Regiment belonging to the 7th Panzer Division had already fallen out as a result of the roads and conditions. While Schaall’s panzer corps played almost no role in the fighting at Kalinin until the very end of the month, by 20 October Kirchner’s 41st Panzer Corps had been in uninterrupted battle for seventeen days, and with Soviet pressure increasing there was no sign of relief. On 21 October Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division was still on the northern bank of the Volga some 10 kilometers from Kalinin and was fighting its way back to the city after being cut off during its abortive advance on Torzhok. The divisional war diary noted that the condition of the men gave cause for “serious worries” and that the division was attempting to get back over the Volga “without too many material losses.”

Yet Krüger’s division had been devastated in the fighting. On 14 October the 1st Panzer Division had seventy-nine serviceable tanks, but by 21 October that figure had shrunk to just twenty-four. Two days later it was reported that a further eight tanks had been lost, four to enemy action and four blown up to avoid capture after breaking down. At the same time the division reported having lost 765 men and 45 officers between 13 and 20 October. Losing more than 800 men in just one week was serious enough, but since 22 June 1941 the division had lost 265 officers, from a starting complement of 387 and 4,935 non-commissioned officers and men. Hans Röttiger, the chief of staff of the 41st Panzer Corps, noted: “Due to the heavy Russian pressure against the road Mednoye–Kalinin, the [1st Panzer] Division had to confine its withdrawal to a very narrow strip along the northern bank of the Volga. As a result, a great number of men and particularly materiel was lost.” The defensive perimeter around Kalinin was held by Gollnick’s 36th Motorised Infantry Division, the withdrawn remnants of Krüger’s 1st Panzer Division and Krause’s “Lehrbrigade 900”, which had also taken part in the drive to Torzhok, an advanced detachment from the 6th Panzer Division and a newly arrived advanced detachment from Major-General Stephan Rittau’s 129th Infantry Division.

Helmut Pabst, whose unit reached Kalinin on 23 October, wrote in a letter the following day: “Since last night we have been in Kalinin. It was a tough march, but we made it. We’re the first infantry division here … We marched up the road which stretches into this bridgehead like a long arm, without much covering on either flank. The bridgehead must be held for strategic and propaganda purposes. The road bears the stamp of war: destroyed and abandoned equipment, tattered and burnt-out houses, enormous bomb craters, the pitiful remains of men and animals.” The situation was frequently desperate, as Konev’s Kalinin Front launched relentless assaults and carried them out, according to Hans Röttiger, “without regard to casualties.” One captured Soviet officer claimed Stalin had demanded the retaking of Kalinin by 27 October or else the commanding officer, presumably Konev, would be shot. Earlier in the month Stalin had considered having Konev shot for the debacle at Viaz’ma, making such a threat not beyond the realm of possibility, but Kalinin was not retaken by the stated date and Konev was not shot. However, if true, it says much about Stalin’s method of “motivation.” By 22 October Ninth Army reported to Army Group Centre that, unless Soviet forces to the south and southeast of the city could be pushed back, Kalinin could not be held indefinitely, and certainly no further offensives could be undertaken. This, however, conflicted with Hitler’s latest thinking, which Kesselring had expressed to Bock the day before, 21 October. Not only was Hitler still envisaging an offensive from Kalinin, but rather than the 60-kilometer advance to Torzhok, which had in any case proved beyond Kirchner’s corps, the dictator was now proposing an advance to the northeast town of Bezhetsk some 110 kilometers away. Bock was flabbergasted. “We are pushed back to Kalinin; first we must hold Kalinin! I have always remarked that this will be the bloody wound of the Ninth Army.” On 23 October Bock discussed his orders for the Ninth Army with Halder at the OKH. The army group headquarters had not yet received instructions from Hitler demanding an advance towards Bezhetsk, so Bock insisted his first priority was to eliminate Soviet forces striking across the Volga and secure Kalinin from the south. Bock, however, then reiterated his desire for another offensive towards Torzhok. By 25 October Soviet attacks south of Kalinin, far from abating, were striking with renewed vigor across the Volga from the west. Bock, on the other hand, took some heart from the fact that two corps from Ninth Army, General of Engineers Otto-Wilhelm Förster’s 6th Army Corps and General of Infantry Albrecht Schubert’s 23rd Army Corpswere making some progress towards Torzhok from the south. Yet these were still some 40 kilometers from the town, and Schubert’s corps reported on the following day that even its horse-drawn vehicles were now stuck in mud up to 1 meter deep.

In the center of Operation Typhoon, Bock was starting to realize that he had to concentrate his dwindling combat power if he was going to take Moscow. Zhukov was still desperately scraping together a rebuilt western front, and his lines were not well established. As the battle of Vyazma was more or less concluded on the fourteenth, Vietinghoff’s 46th Panzer Corps was released from the 4th Army and told to march on the new Western Front’s defensive lines. The 11th Panzer Division was the lead element of the advance. They struggled under the triple burdens of poor supply, bad weather and stiff resistance. Still, they advanced. Zhukov had essentially abandoned everything but his main centers of resistance at Mozhaisk, Volokolamsk and Maloyaroslavets. This allowed him to concentrate his fighting strength, but allowed the Germans free rein elsewhere. By October 15th, the 10th Panzer and SS-Division Reich were prepared to launch a set piece battle at Borodino, in front of Mozhaisk. This was the location of the infamous Battle of Borodino between Napoleon and Kutuzov. That battle had been fought almost exactly 129 years prior to 1941 and had lasted a single day, costing 68,000 dead and wounded on both sides.

Lieutenant General Lelyushenko had prepared a defense that included the 32nd Rifle Division and the 121st Anti-Tank Regiment. This regiment was armed with 76.2mm F-22 guns. These proved excellent weapons that destroyed several German panzers in the ensuing back and forth. The 5th Army was the main defensive command, but like many other field armies, it had been severely reduced. Lelyushenko also had the 20th Tank Brigade. On October 16th, the Germans began to break through the prepared defenses of the city proper. However, just as the SS troops started to stream through the lines, the 20th Tank Brigade organized a brilliant counterattack that struck the SS men, many of whom ran in fear at the sight of the T-34’s and KV-1’s. However, on the morning of the seventeenth, the 10th Panzer concentrated all their forces and managed to break through, brushing off the Soviet counterattacks. The SS followed through and started to envelop the remaining defenders. On the 18th, Mozhaisk fell. All across the front, town after town fell to the invaders: Kaluga, Maloyaroslavets, Detschino. But with each town came a fight. Each fight drained the Wehrmacht of men and material it could not afford to lose. Infantry battalions had started Operation Barbarossa with something like 800 men. Yet by the middle of October, some battalions were down to less than two hundred. The Red Army was in worse shape in many places, but they were not trying to carry on an offensive almost two thousand kilometers from their base of operations. Zhukov had been using every minute gained from the defense of the outer positions to build yet another line. This was the true reason the Germans couldn’t win. The Red Army just refused to give up. Behind every defensive line lay another army digging trenches and preparing to fight to the death. The Germans had steamrolled dozens of positions just like this. Now they stood at the gates of Moscow, only 90 kilometers away from the city center. However, the fighting had taken its toll.

In the southern sector of Operation Typhoon, Guderian was struggling to wrap up the destruction of the Bryansk pocket. He had his forces split roughly in half, with one group handling the pocket and the other trying to push east. There was little progress in the push east, but the Bryansk pocket was steadily reduced, bit by bit. As the third week of October came to an end, this task was about complete. Even as this was being done, it was slowly dawning on the professional officers of the Wehrmacht that the offensive could not carry on in the torrential rains. The infantry were averaging only one kilometer per hour under forced-march conditions. One of Army Group Center’s quartermasters estimated that up to one thousand horses were dying every day under the conditions. Most of these animal casualties were from being literally worked to death. The draft horses of western and central Europe were not up to the combination of poor fodder, extremely hard work, and pitiful care. Examples abound of the poor care of the draft animals. Notably, at this time there was an absence of winter shoes for the horses. Because of this, they often lost their traction, resulting in slips and falls and preventable injuries. The situation was growing ever darker for the Wehrmacht in the east. One soldier wrote in his memoir after the war: “Tempers were high because everybody was starving and dead tired besides being soaked to the skin; and the Russian artillery kept pumping shells in our direction, which of course did not help our morale … We not only lost men and materials, even things like trucks, but most of all we lost a great deal of hope of ever getting out of such a darned mess.” Like the soldiers and their horses, Operation Typhoon was dying in the mud of late October.

In Army Group South’s area of operations things were effectively being divided into two distinct areas of operations. The first was the main body of troops in Ukraine. The second was the 11th Army in Crimea under Manstein. Originally, he was to split his army in two and support the 1st Panzer Army in a drive on Rostov while the other half of his troops took Crimea. After the mess of the first weeks of October, this was changed. Kleist would drive on Rostov alone, while Manstein attacked Crimea with the whole of his army. This gave him a free hand to do what he wanted, but it ensured that Manstein was effectively on his own during the Crimean campaign. He would have to make do with what he had plus some reinforcements. After Kleist had taken Melitopol and finished the Battle of the Sea of Azov, Manstein was able to focus entirely on his task. However, the time taken to deal with the distraction around Melitopol had given the Soviets a respite. They used it to their full advantage. The 11th Army had to frontal-ally assault well-prepared positions to make it across the isthmus. They had broken through once, but couldn’t exploit it and had to pull back. Now they were ready for another push. Ishun lay at the bottom of the isthmus connecting Crimea to the mainland. The area around the town is dotted with large lakes and narrow strips of dry land. On august 18th, Manstein attacked. Three divisions formed his front. The 73rd Infantry Division attacked Ishun while the 46th and 22nd Infantry attacked elsewhere along the line. The first Soviet positions were quickly overran, but well-placed artillery slowed the attackers down as they attempted to cross a canal covered in barbed wire and mines.

The defending 51st Army did not have the depth of defenses behind these positions to absorb the penetration. One of their best strong points was a bromide plant that had been fortified by soldiers of the 530th Rifle Regiment. As the 46th Infantry Division attacked, they came under fire from prepared machine-gun nests. After they were pushed back, the Germans reorganized and tried again; this time they managed to take the plant. The Soviets counterattacked and regained control late in the afternoon of the eighteenth. Tactical battles like the Krasnoperekopsk Bromide Plant demonstrated that on the tactical level, the Red Army was proving its ability to fight the Germans to a standstill, even after months of devastating defeats and crippling loss of organization. This flies in the face of established narratives that the Germans were always better soldiers at the small unit level and could outfight Soviet units in every case. At 06:15 on the morning of the nineteenth, the Germans brought the full force of their combined arms team on the Soviets. The 170th Infantry Regiment, supported by close air support and assault guns, attacked the plant and the adjacent village. By noon, they had driven the defenders back and were converging on Ishun. The 51st Army brought up some men to reinforce the area, but the Germans countered with the 213th Infantry Regiment. By nightfall, Ishun was in German hands. During the remainder of the week, the German infantry conducted cleanup operations and secured a bridgehead across the Chatyrlyk River south of Ishun. Meanwhile, in the mainland of Ukraine, Kleist was continuing his drive toward Rostov. Like everywhere else on the front, he was struggling to supply his men. Still, on the 17th, two SS divisions reached the outskirts of Taganrog. After some street fighting, the city was secured. The Soviet 9th Army was pushed back. Notably, there was no encirclement, and the Soviets retreated in reasonably good order. This was vital to Stavka plans if they were ever to pull off a determined counter-offensive in the south. Everywhere in Ukraine after Melitopol had fallen had amounted to little more than delaying operations, but they had to be carried out.

I would like to take this time to remind you all that this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Please go subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry after that, give my personal channel a look over at The Pacific War Channel at Youtube, it would mean a lot to me.

In the autumn wind, mud and steel wrestled for Moscow. On the eastern front, Zhukov’s stubborn lines held fast as German panzer suns blazed toward the capital. Across the map, soldiers rebuilt and endured: divisions reformed from veterans and recruits, while logistics starved and fuel ran thin. Kalinin flickered with flashes of success and failure as encircling moves collapsed under Russian resilience. The wheel turned with each retreat and counterattack, roads turning to rivers of mud. Yet through frost and fear, unity endured: cities defended, civilians stood shoulder to shoulder with soldiers, and the dream of Moscow persisted. Mud and Blood, forever remembered.