Last time we spoke about the German capture of Tikhvin. In the cold dawns of 1941, the eastern front was a chessboard where hunger and ice ruled as cruel players. The Germans, imagining a swift coup toward Tikhvin and Moscow, pressed with a steel-sinew of tanks and planes, only to be slowed by Rasputitsa—mud turning roads to treacle and fuel to memory. The Soviet line, stubborn as ruined churches and brave civilians, held fast from Sitomlia to the Volkhov, a stubborn, glistening refusal to yield. On rivers that froze overnight, trains coughed and steam rose from broken pipes; German locomotives wept ice. Yet the Wehrmacht pressed, swallowing 20,000 prisoners and countless tanks, while Soviet artillery and dogged infantry bore the weight of the front, sometimes breaking through, sometimes retreating, always learning. Across Kalinin to Rostov and Sevastopol, plans frayed under weather, supply gaps, and stubborn resistance. The myth of unstoppable blitzkrieg cracked against the cold, the mud, and the stubborn endurance of both sides. In the hush before winter, the front stood as a stubborn monument to endurance, where logistics and courage outpaced any promised victory.

This episode is the Winter Arrives

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.

Winter tightens its grip over the USSR. In the frozen north, the Red Army is regrouping and reorganizing, preparing to push back Leeb’s overextended forces. Across the approaches to Moscow, Soviet troops intensify their efforts against German lines, aiming to blunt the offensive that they know is coming. To the west, around Rostov, German and Soviet forces are poised to strike at one another, while siege lines close in around Sevastopol in the south. In this episode, we cover the week of November 9th through November 15th, 1941, focusing on the tense dynamics inside Halder’s headquarters as he argues with his staff officers.

Winter’s setback at Tikhvin on the eighth day sealed a grim warning for Leningrad and Oranienbaum: the supply lines to Lake Ladoga were suddenly cut. The German panzers now threaten to seize Volkhov and encircle the 54th Army. In Moscow, Stalin’s patience with Iakovlev’s failures finally ends, and General Meretskov is named to take command of the 4th Army. Meretskov had just been released from a gulag in September and, until now, had been commanding the 7th Separate Army facing the Finns at Lake Svir. Stalin also cancels the 54th Army’s attacks against Sinyavino; in truth, the Army had only put roughly one division into the effort last week due to the weakness of many units from prior offensives. The right flank of the 4th Army is handed to the 54th, as the 4th Army is tasked with defeating the Germans at Tikhvin, while the 54th counters the attempt to seize Volkhov. The 52nd Army is set to strike northward. Together, these three formations field about 192,950 soldiers—a rise from 135,700 at the start of the Tikhvin offensive. They muster 17 rifle divisions, 2 tank divisions, and 1 cavalry division, plus 3 rifle brigades and 2 tank brigades for this operation. The plan is to crush roughly 10 infantry divisions, 2 motorized divisions, and 2 panzer divisions that have driven into the 350-kilometer salient. On the German side, roughly 120,000 men, about 100 tanks, and around 1,000 artillery pieces are in play.

Winterfront confusion and the need to build up and reorganize forces prevented any simultaneous offensives. On the 12th, the 52nd Army began a push toward Malaia Vishera, with four rifle divisions striking the overstretched 126th Infantry Division. Yet the German unit held the line for the rest of the week, as Klukov pressed mindless frontal assaults aided by limited artillery and scant reconnaissance, failing to leverage concentrated effort against the division’s strongpoints. The 52nd Army had not massed its four divisions for a focused attack, instead striking along the entire 48-kilometer frontage of the 126th Infantry Division. The result was only modest gains and persistent rigidity on the front. In response, the OKH redirected a regiment from the 61st Infantry Division, pulled from Army Group Center’s reserve—to bolster this sector of the line. Nearby, the Novgorod Army Group mounted its own small offensive to the southwest, but it, too, failed for the same reasons: lack of concentration, insufficient supporting fires, and weak reconnaissance.

The 4th Army was scheduled to open its offensive on November 19th, with its forces divided into three operational groups. The 54th Army, originally slated to attack on November 25th, faced a disruption as Group Boeckmann renewed its attempt to reach Lake Ladoga. The newly arrived 254th Division moved toward Voibokalo Station, driving into the rear of the 54th Army. Fediuninsky quickly reacted, repositioning the 285th Rifle Division, backed by the 122nd Tank Brigade, toward Voibokalo Station. The remainder of Group Boeckmann, supported by a battlegroup from the 8th Panzer, renewed its efforts to seize Volkhov. By week’s end, temperatures had fallen to the point that both the Neva and Volkhov rivers were icebound strong enough to bear even KV-1 tanks. Lake Ladoga had also begun to freeze, hindering the movement of river barges carrying supplies around the German blockade. However, the ice on Ladoga had not yet become capable of supporting vehicle weights.

The reorientation of the 54th Army against Group Boekmann triggered a new round of organizational changes. The 8th Army assumed command of the forces on the eastern side of the Shlisselburg corridor, while the Coastal Operational Group took control of the 8th Army’s former forces at Oranienbaum. The Neva Operational Group returned to single control of the forces on the Leningrad side of the Shlisselburg corridor. The German command also saw a small shake-up. General Weichs, who had been commanding the Second Army, was relieved due to serious illness. He was replaced by Schmidt, and Von Arnim would take over command of the 39th Panzer Corps from Schmidt.These units were ordered to resume attacks to sever the Shlisselburg corridor and restore a land connection to Leningrad.

On the 11th, the 8th Army attacked with five rifle divisions, and the 227th Infantry Division required reinforcement from elements of the 223rd Rifle Division and the 7th Flieger Division before it could halt the Soviet offensive. There’s some dispute over whether the Flieger Division was present. The 233rd Infantry Division formed part of the latest wave of infantry mobilization and, as a result, was among the least well trained and least well equipped units in the army. It likely lacked many of its anti-tank weapons and heavy artillery. Complicating matters, this division appears to have been split between the Shlisselburg corridor, supporting Group Boekmann, and the southern sector around Malaia Vishera, where it helped guard the line. Regardless, Khozin attributed the failure to poor command and control by the 8th Army’s commander, Shevaldin. Nonetheless, this effort proved more effective than the offensives launched by the newly raised Volunteer Shock Groups. The Neva Operational Group’s three Shock Groups attempted to break out from the Dubrovka bridgehead against the 96th and 227th Infantry Divisions. On the 9th, 11th, and 13th, each group led a new offensive from the bridgehead, but all three ended the attacks on the same day, suffering extreme losses for essentially no gains against well-entrenched German infantry. The 55th Army carried on offensives across the Tosna River. Their shock groups managed to cross the river but failed to seize the town of Tosno from the 122nd Infantry and could not establish bridgeheads suitable for exploitation. In response, the 55th Army escalated the fighting by committing four rifle divisions and two tank battalions, but these efforts remained fruitless. By the 19th, Halder summarized the Leningrad front in his diary, dismissively noting, “On the Leningrad front, the usual attack was repelled.” At best, these offensives pinned German divisions around Leningrad, preventing their redeployment to bolster the forces at Tikhvin or Volkhov, but they inflicted horrendous casualties on Red Army units.

This week, Leeb sought to bolster the flanks of the Tikhvin offensive by obtaining more troops. He pressed the commander of the 18th Army to consider crushing either the Oranienbaum Pocket or the Kronshtadt fortress to free up divisions for the line. Von Küchler refused to launch an attack, arguing his army was too weak to concentrate for a meaningful assault, and suggested that any alternative would incur substantial casualties. Corps and divisional commanders likewise resisted attacking the strong fortifications with their current strengths. Undeterred, Leeb insisted that an attack would be ordered if Soviet forces appeared to be withdrawing from the pocket. He attempted to persuade OKH to send reinforcements for a plan against Oranienbaum and to lobby Hitler to lift an earlier prohibition on such an attack. Hitler remained unmoved, as he believed such an offensive would be prohibitively costly in material and casualties especially when other options would starve them out. As a result, Leeb left the four divisions in place, though he did withdraw a significant portion of their artillery. In parallel, Leeb’s chief of staff managed to persuade Halder to quietly drop the Army Group’s earlier requirement to capture Vologda. Despite that concession, there remained some hope that the Army Group might still press toward the Finnish lines.

The Soviet withdrawal from Hanko continued, though convoys on the 3rd and 9th suffered heavy losses due to extensive German and Finnish naval mine barrages. The 1,200 survivors from these convoys reinforced the Leningrad front. The high losses among these large convoys convinced Soviet Naval Command to switch to smaller vessels operating in smaller groups rather than large, single convoys. Using this revised approach, they evacuated 9,000 men with their equipment from Hanko by the 28th. An additional 4,000 men and their equipment reinforced the garrison at Kronstadt on the 3rd in a much more successful convoy. Leeb was unable to secure the desired reinforcements because events across the front opposite Moscow demanded attention elsewhere. On the 13th, Halder summoned the chiefs of staff from all Army Groups to a conference at Orsha. The gathering was less about exchanging ideas and more an effort by Halder to browbeat the officers into rubber-stamping his preexisting offensive plans from the prior week. This is the exact opposite of how a general staff should operate. The purpose of a general staff is to create a forum for discussing what’s possible with a wide range of viewpoints, and then set goals based on those possibilities. It should also maintain a connection across command levels, ensuring frontline reality is understood at the highest levels. Instead, under Halder the General Staff was asked to achieve goals dictated from above, regardless of feasibility. The armies’ staff and High Command lived in a different reality. Halder’s authority had been amplified after Brauchitsch suffered a heart attack on the 10th, and Halder was now functioning as Commander-in-Chief of the Army in addition to his duties as Chief of the General Staff.

However, there was pushback. Army and divisional staff officers rejected the possibility of preparing for an offensive next year by continuing the winter advance to more strategically valuable starting positions. They warned of the extreme need for replacements, supplies, and rest to stave off physical and psychological collapse among the soldiers. In addition, the protests over the sheer distances Halder was forcing them to cover in awful conditions can be summed up by Liebenstein, the chief of staff of the Second Army: “This was not the month of May, and we were not fighting in France.” In the end, Halder agreed to a direct thrust toward Moscow, moving away from the broad encirclement that had been the initial plan. Some sources indicate that Halder did not believe such a maneuvre was realistically achievable. His concern centered on Army Group Center’s supply constraints, which seemed insufficient for an intensified direct assault. Nevertheless, he was persuaded by Major Eckstein, the staff officer responsible for supply and administration, who argued that success would hinge on trust in the soldiers’ luck: “One just has to trust in the soldiers’ good fortune.”

It is far more likely that both Bock and Halder knew the offensive could not be supplied, yet they could not bring themselves to call off the operation, as the records of their conversations show. Halder still believed it was possible to destroy the Red Army’s vital fighting strength in front of Moscow, despite the failure of previous attempts. Halder claimed that the Red Army’s fighting strength had been reduced by about 50 percent, yet he insisted the army was on the verge of collapse. He framed the new offensive as the pursuit of a broken foe, requiring only six to ten more weeks of maximum effort. This juxtaposition, confidence in victory paired with a persistent doubt about the enemy’s resilience, highlights a clear cognitive dissonance in his assessments. His plan for a full-scale offensive would be pared back to Bock’s more limited vision: a straightforward frontal attack to seize Moscow. Even as frontline units faced signs that new Soviet formations were being raised and experienced divisions were being transported from the East, OKH still doubted that these forces were enough to stop the Germans’ assumed superiority.

The conference also featured a speech by a representative from the Foreign Army East. He reported that the Red Army had grown from 140 divisions to 190 between July and October. But recent victories had reduced that estimate to about 160 divisions. Kinzel countered, saying the training level meant their effective strength was closer to 75 divisions. He added that the Soviets were believed to have strong domestic artillery production and about 40 well-supplied tank brigades. A following speech from the Quartermaster General argued that the German Army would need to disband 15 divisions to free manpower for replenishing the remaining divisions in the east. There would be no new production of replacement motor vehicles, so each panzer division would lose about 500 trucks. All infantry divisions were to be demotorised, and the logistical service would become one-third horse-drawn. He also warned of a major ammunition shortfall expected in early 1942 because of earlier shifts in industrial priority. Although those priorities had been reversed, they had cost weeks or months of production. The speech concluded that winter supplies could only be delivered by February due to bottlenecks in delivering combat supplies to the front.

Those winter supplies were urgently needed as winter arrived in the central USSR this week. Many German soldiers were still in denim summer uniforms. Nighttime temperatures plunged to below -22°C by week’s end. Frostbite cases rose, and so did mechanical failures across German equipment. Telescopic sights failed. Tanks could only be started after a fire was lit beneath them to warm the engines. German fuel was found to contain water droplets that froze in the cold. It turned the fuel into a crystal foam, clogging pipes and other parts of the vehicles. The full list of cold-weather problems on German equipment is long, and it wreaked havoc everywhere. High-command directives on how to cope with the cold were summarized as utterly impractical, insane, or as assuming access to supplies that simply didn’t exist. Similarly, Army Group Center’s trains faced the same issues as those further north, with water in exposed pipes freezing solid and bursting. Just as the Germans were preparing a new offensive, their logistical system collapsed. General Bock had asked for 30 trains a day to stockpile for the offensive; he was promised 23 trains, but received an average of only 16. While all this was unfolding, OKH told Bock that several trains would be arriving to transport Jews from Germany into his army’s rear area. That move would divert supplies away from Army Group, adding to the already chaotic situation of supply trains being hijacked by other commands or simply going missing.

The plan lined up the Ninth Army and the 3rd Panzer Group to seize the Moskva-Volga Canal, then turn south toward Moscow. The Fourth Army and the 4th Panzer Group would march straight to Moscow. The Second Panzer Army was tasked with taking Kashira and Kolomna, though the original route via Ryazan was quickly dropped. The army’s chief of staff believed that, given the severe shortages and terrible roads, Venyov was the farthest they could hope to reach. The offensives would begin individually as soon as their supply situations permitted and once permanent frost arrived. This staggered approach was a practical concession to the supply crisis, reducing the overall demand for supplies. Bock himself conceded the offensive could not be a masterpiece under these conditions. The plan was to concentrate force into spearpoints and strike at the enemy’s weak points.

An increasing number of divisional and even corps-level commanders were beginning to show critical thinking. Protests about shortages and the worn-down conditions in various formations were growing. 11th November comment by Staff Officer Stieff of the 4th Army. “Our high command continues to issue wholly unrealistic orders, and we have not yet been properly resupplied with ammunition and fuel . . . For us, their attitude is utterly incomprehensible. They devise their objectives in the map room, as if the Russian winter did not exist, and our troops’ strength is still the same as when the campaign started in June. However, winter is now on our doorstep, and our units are so burnt out that one’s heart bleeds for them. Soon we will be unable to attack anything at all – the men desperately need rest. “ Yet, no one was willing to risk their career by voicing strong opposition to the offensive. While the halt allowed some recovery, constant Soviet attacks, the cold, and poor living conditions prevented any real revival among frontline troops. Hans-Heinrich Ludwig’s letter home November 12th. “Deep snow. Many vehicle losses . . . We are done. There are constant slogans about relief, but it goes on. The mood is indescribably low. Russian bombers by day, no accommodation by night. Frozen bread, sausage and butter.”

Many soldiers grew so desperate they used telegraph poles, doors, or even whole buildings as fuel to keep warm. Individual efforts to live off the land meant there was little organized food support from local areas, and there was little regard for the needs of the local population. Some Panzer commanders, like Stumme of the 40th Panzer Corps, began to doubt that infantry could attack or hold ground without armored support. At the same time, many officers urged their subordinates not to question orders, treating them as achievable from the start. Geyer, 9th Army Corp commander. “The positive aspects of every situation must first and foremost be recognized and emphasized. It is well known that the enemy invariably has problems too. It is also well known that all is not lost if all is not given up for lost. It is precisely in difficult situations that a soldier can do more than his best, even if it seems to be more than is humanly possible. Success often only comes at the last minute and hangs upon a single thread. Often one only realizes later that, given a little push, the enemy would have fallen over”. In other words, sheer willpower was used to ignore the limits of reality.

Fuel rations planned to last 100km were now only good for 15 to 25km, due to dilapidated vehicles and poor road conditions. The Panzer forces used the pause in operations to restore as many tanks as possible. For example, the 20th Division managed to get its fleet up to 74 working Panthers by the start of the week. But this was somewhat deceptive, because many of those tanks were only provisionally operational and likely to break down again in heavy use. Meanwhile, attention to repairing trucks that moved motorised infantry was neglected. The result was increasingly tank-heavy Panzer divisions that were less capable of the coordinated, combined-arms operations that had been their hallmark of success. Between 16 June 1941 and 31 October, the 19th panzer division used 4,222,680 litres of gasoline, 1,013,110 litres of diesel and 200,060 litres of oil. Only 75,000 of the initial 600,000 trucks across the German Army in the USSR were still functional.

Instead of entrenching to await a German offensive, Stalin insisted that Konev and Zhukov keep pressing the attack on the 9th and 4th Armies. Some offensives achieved limited gains, such as reclaiming Szkirminowa and Marjino on the 12th from the 10th Panzer Division, but most territorial advances were small and casualties were high. The broader impact was psychological: on the 14th, Kluge asked to delay the upcoming offensive and to set more modest objectives. His request carried more weight on the next day when a Soviet breakthrough breached the frontline of the 13th Army Corps in several sectors. Kluge warned that this Corps would no longer be capable of offensive action, and he would be glad if it could at least hold its line. Bock granted Kluge autonomy on how to proceed in support of the offensive. Given Kluge’s cautious nature, this decision could become a source of tension with other officers in the future.

Guderian’s Second Army launched a large offensive starting on the 8th, but it kept escalating through the week. Local road conditions severely limited movement, so most German units fought their own isolated battles without meaningful support. A notable disaster occurred when the machine guns of the 112th Infantry Division froze in the cold and were overrun by fresh Soviet formations attacking from multiple directions. This attack had included several T34s while the German division only had outdated 37mm anti tank guns available which proved utterly ineffective. The arrival of the 167th Infantry Division stabilized the situation and halted the panic that had even spread to Bogorodisk. As a result, Guderian lost faith in the infantry’s ability to handle difficult tasks. His tank strength was also severely depleted: three leading panzer divisions had only about 50 operational tanks when full strength would be around 600. Combined, they couldn’t form a full-strength Panzer division. The supply situation was dire as well, with trucks capable of moving only about 200 tons of supplies per day. The Army argued that it could not move farther from the supply railhead than could be reached by horse and sled. Yet somehow, the order persisted to reach Moscow, over 170km away, within weeks, even though it had not yet reached Tula. The Chief of Staff of Army Group South attended the Orsha Conference and was the most outspoken critic of Halder’s plans. There, he reiterated Runstedt’s view that the Army Group’s objectives—to reach Maykop and Stalingrad—would best destroy the Army Group through sheer exhaustion and attrition. He managed to postpone demands to reach Maykop and Stalingrad until a new summer offensive, which was the plan Hitler had originally envisioned. Halder complained in bad grace that this would just result in the Soviets being stronger while the Germans would be weaker.

Runstedt faced new challenges when the Hungarian Mobile Corps withdrew on November 11 to return to Hungary. Earlier, it had been ordered to free German infantry for the halted push on Rostov. The halted 1st Panzer Army attempted to renew its offensive on the 11th but cancelled almost immediately because of heavy rainfall. Kleist would have to wait for the winter freeze to mount a new offensive, and that wait would end soon, with the first cold snap arriving on the 13th. It is claimed that Southern Front commander Cherevichenko believed this delay marked the culmination of the German offensive, and sent his reserves to reinforce the 37th Army. Those reserves were being held at Shakhty in preparation for a counteroffensive. This move stripped the 9th and 56th Armies of their reserves and degraded their ability to conduct a defence in depth.

To the south, the 51st Corps’s attempts to storm Sevastopol last week were thwarted by two marine brigades, heavy coastal artillery, and relentless harassment from the VVS. Sevastopol’s garrison swelled as the Soviet Navy brought in reinforcements to more than 50,000 troops. They organized three defensive fortification belts around the port. The heavy cruiser Krasny Kavkaz, light cruisers Krasny Krym and Chervona Ukraina and seven destroyers remained in the harbor to provide fire support, while the rest of the fleet moved to a safer base. No further full-scale assaults on the city occurred, but small German assault groups probed the defensive lines as the 51st Corps tightened the siege around Sevastopol. They awaited the arrival of the 30th Corps from the Yalta region, which began arriving toward the end of the week with the 72nd Infantry Division. The initial German attack was immediately halted by bombardment from the battleship Parizhskaya Kommuna and two light cruisers. To Crimea’s east, the 42nd Corps pressed on in pursuit of the retreating 51st Army toward Kerch. The Soviets offered stiff defense around the port, but Kerch fell on the 16th. The 51st Army found itself trapped in Crimea and, in effect, doomed. Overall, about 100,000 Soviet troops, 700 artillery pieces, and 160 tanks were said to have fallen into German hands since Manstein’s Crimea campaign began. Aside from Sevastopol and the partisan-infested hinterlands, the peninsula remained firmly in German control.

As the war wore on, German manpower grew increasingly stretched. Sickness drained resources as much as enemy action. In the mud and cold, many soldiers struggled to maintain hygiene. Lice became endemic, infesting about 80% of German infantry by mid-October, acting as vectors for diseases such as epidemic typhus. Other body parasites posed similar risks. Many Germans attributed the lice outbreak to the poor conditions in peasant houses they used as shelter. The cold discouraged soldiers from cleaning themselves or washing clothing, and a shortage of soap meant that even with will, proper cleansing was often impossible. By November, many soldiers hadn’t changed their clothing in weeks. Dysentery, typhoid, and even cases of trench foot, among other illnesses, began to appear. While only about 1% of cases were fatal and another 6% left individuals permanently unfit for service, a large number of soldiers were medically unfit at any given time, adding to the Germans’ already overstretched manpower. Typhus also affected Soviet POW camps. The Health Department of the White Russian General Commissariat recommended executing all infected prisoners, but this was rejected as requiring too much work. On top of illness, it was so cold that frostbite began to appear in October, and by mid-November the cold was so severe that unprepared sentries froze to death overnight.

Weather conditions hindered the timely evacuation of the wounded to aid stations and then to field hospitals. Mud and transport shortages forced the Germans to triage casualties on the spot, delaying any attempt to move them back. While some Red Army soldiers were brought to German facilities for medical care, it is suspected that the vast majority were left to die on the battlefield. Soldiers often waited hours or even days to receive basic first aid. This delay caused many casualties to die from their wounds. German medical staff were overwhelmed, as each division had only two aid stations and one field hospital, underequipped and undermanned. Many wounded were evacuated to hastily converted field hospitals in Germany. By week's end, time-delayed bombs in Kharkiv city center exploded, killing General Braun and his staff from the 68th Division. Once again, the Germans attributed the attack to the city’s remaining Jewish population. About 200 civilians were randomly rounded up and publicly hanged in reprisal by troops from the 57th Infantry Division. The SS Einsatzgruppe C would arrive in December and escalate the deliberate killings of up to 20,000 Jews. The Germans also confiscated all food stored in the city. Starvation, random executions, and forced deportations reduced Kharkiv’s population from nearly 1 million to around 300,000 by January 1942.

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From Tikvin to Volkhov, supply lines frayed, tanks froze, and trains coughed steam from broken pipes. Leaders debated strategy: Halder’s grand ambitions clashed with reality at Orsha, while Stalin shuffled commanders and pressed for renewed offensives. Yet winter’s bite hardened both sides, fuel dwindled, uniforms turned denim, and soldiers fueled by sheer will fought on. The front endured, a monument to endurance amid ruin.