2nd Panzer Army

Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army, recalled from the Kyiv encirclement, opened Operation Typhoon on 30 September 1941 with a thrust that seized nearly undefended Orel on 3 October and closed the Bryansk pocket from the south. It then drove northeast toward Tula, the armaments city guarding Moscow's southern approach, reaching its suburbs in late October. Repeated assaults through November failed to take Tula; a final lunge toward Kashira and the Oka crossings in early December was stopped by the 50th Army and fresh Soviet reserves. Driven back in the December counteroffensive, Guderian was dismissed for conducting an unauthorised withdrawal. Its exposed southern flank stretched over 400 kilometres, guarded by thin allied contingents of the kind that would later collapse at Stalingrad; when the counteroffensive broke through at Livny and Yelets, Guderian ordered a withdrawal to the Oka line, and Hitler dismissed him on 26 December for disobedience. The tracks recorded here are schematic headquarters-area positions, not surveyed front lines.