3rd Panzer Group

Hoth's 3rd Panzer Group formed the northern pincer of Operation Typhoon, striking from the Smolensk land bridge toward Bely and then wheeling southeast to help seal the Vyazma pocket in early October 1941. Released from the pocket fighting, it drove northeast, seized Kalinin on 14 October, and threatened to cut the Moscow to Leningrad railway. In November it pushed down the Leningrad highway toward Klin and the Moscow reservoir system, reaching its farthest advance in early December. Hit by the Soviet counteroffensive from 6 December, it was driven back through Klin and Kalinin country and spent the winter retreating toward Rzhev. Reinhardt succeeded Hoth in early October, and the group's two motorised corps fought at the end of a single muddy road, with fuel arriving by airlift on the worst days; its failure to close the Torzhok gap left the Kalinin Front an escape corridor that would haunt the Germans in December. The tracks recorded here are schematic headquarters-area positions, not surveyed front lines.