Battle of Moscow
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The Battle of Moscow was a World War II military campaign on the Eastern Front, consisting of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km sector between October 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defense thwarted Germany's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union and a primary Axis objective in the invasion of the USSR. The German offensive, Operation Typhoon, planned two pincer attacks: one north of Moscow against the Kalinin Front by the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies, cutting the Moscow–Leningrad railway; another south against the Western Front south of Tula by the 2nd Panzer Army, while the 4th Army advanced from the west. Soviet forces defended Moscow Oblast with three defensive belts, newly raised reserve armies, and troops from the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts. After the German offensives were halted, a Soviet counter-offensive forced the German armies back to positions around Oryol, Vyazma, and Vitebsk, nearly surrounding three German armies. This was a major German setback and ended the belief in a swift victory over the USSR. Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was dismissed as supreme commander of the German Army on 19 December, with Hitler replacing him. Operation Barbarossa had aimed to capture Moscow within four months, but Hitler's diversion to Leningrad and Kiev delayed the advance, which resumed on 30 September 1941. In the initial advance, the 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups met at Vyazma on 10 October, encircling four Soviet armies. Soviet resistance, mud, and counterattacks such as at Mtsensk slowed the Germans. Georgy Zhukov took charge of Moscow's defense on 10 October, and on 15 October Stalin ordered government evacuation to Kuibyshev, causing panic.