Initially, the Soviet forces conducted a strategic defence of the Moscow Oblast by constructing three defensive belts, deploying newly raised reserve armies, and bringing troops from the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts.

[17] As a result of the failed offensive, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was dismissed as supreme commander of the German Army on 19 December, with Hitler replacing him in the position.

In part to address these risks, and to attempt to secure Ukraine's food and mineral resources, Hitler ordered the attack to turn north and south to eliminate Soviet forces at Leningrad and Kiev.

[25] The attack relied on standard blitzkrieg tactics, using Panzer groups rushing deep into Soviet formations and executing double-pincer movements, pocketing Red Army divisions and destroying them.

For example, on 6 October the 4th Panzer Division fell into an ambush set by Dmitri Leliushenko's hastily formed 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps, including Mikhail Katukov's 4th Tank Brigade, near the city of Mtsensk.

[42] On 9 October, Otto Dietrich of the German Ministry of Propaganda, quoting Hitler himself, forecast in a press conference the imminent destruction of the armies defending Moscow.

On 15 October, Stalin ordered the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and various civil government offices from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now Samara), leaving only a limited number of officials behind.

According to Zhukov, 250,000 women and teenagers worked building trenches and anti-tank moats around Moscow, moving almost three million cubic meters of earth with no mechanical help.

However, bad weather, fuel problems, and damaged roads and bridges eventually slowed the German army, and Guderian did not reach the outskirts of Tula until 26 October.

[57] On 31 October, the German Army high command ordered a halt to all offensive operations until increasingly severe logistical problems were resolved and the rasputitsa subsided.

[citation needed] By late October, the German forces were worn out, with only a third of their motor vehicles still functioning, infantry divisions at third- to half-strength, and serious logistics issues preventing the delivery of warm clothing and other winter equipment to the front.

Even Hitler seemed to surrender to the idea of a long struggle, since the prospect of sending tanks into such a large city without heavy infantry support seemed risky after the costly capture of Warsaw in 1939.

To achieve this objective, the German Third and Fourth Panzer Groups needed to concentrate their forces between the Volga Reservoir and Mozhaysk, then proceed past the Soviet 30th Army to Klin and Solnechnogorsk, encircling the capital from the north.

[61] By 27 November, the German 7th Panzer Division had seized a bridgehead across the Moscow-Volga Canal—the last major obstacle before Moscow—and stood less than 35 km (22 mi) from the Kremlin;[58] but a powerful counterattack by the 1st Shock Army drove them back.

Guderian nevertheless was able to pursue the offensive, spreading his forces in a star-like attack, taking Stalinogorsk on 22 November 1941 and surrounding a Soviet rifle division stationed there.

After much vicious fighting, the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps was able to repel the armoured forces of Guderian and subsequently drove them back by 40 kilometres to the town of Mordves.

Because of the resistance on both the northern and southern sides of Moscow, on 1 December the Wehrmacht attempted a direct offensive from the west along the Minsk-Moscow highway near the city of Naro-Fominsk.

[67] On 2 December, a reconnaissance battalion came to the town of Khimki—some 30 km (19 mi) away from the Kremlin in central Moscow reaching its bridge over the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as its railway station.

This estimate proved wrong, as Stalin transferred over 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East after learning that Imperial Japan had no plans to invade the USSR in the near future from Richard Sorge.

Guderian wrote that discussions with Hans Schmidt and Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen took place the same day, and both commanders agreed the current front line could not be held.

[22] On 14 December, Halder and Günther von Kluge finally gave permission for a limited withdrawal to the west of the Oka river, without Hitler's approval.

[85][86] On 20 December, during a meeting with German senior officers, Hitler cancelled the withdrawal and ordered his soldiers to defend every patch of ground, "digging trenches with howitzer shells if needed".

In the meantime, the Luftwaffe had virtually vanished from the skies over Moscow, while the Red Air Force, operating from better prepared bases and benefiting from interior lines, grew stronger.

Soviet reserves ran low, and the offensive halted on 7 January 1942, after having pushed the exhausted and freezing German armies back 100–250 km (62–155 mi) from Moscow.

[101] On 5 January 1942, during a meeting in the Kremlin, Stalin announced that he was planning a general spring offensive, which would be staged simultaneously near Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, and the Crimea.

[103] As well as the Moscow parade and battle scenes, the film included images of German atrocities committed during the occupation, "the naked and slaughtered children stretched out in ghastly rows, the youths dangling limply in the cold from gallows that were rickety, but strong enough".

The parade includes troops of the Moscow Garrison and the Western Military District, which usually numbers to close to 3,000 soldiers, cadets, and Red Army reenactors.

[105] The parade commands are always given by a high ranking veteran of the armed forces (usually with a billet of a Colonel) who gives the orders for the march past from the grandstand near the Lenin Mausoleum.

NKVD squads went to field hospitals in search of soldiers with self-inflicted injuries, the so-called 'self shooters' - those who shot themselves in the left hand to escape fighting.

A surgeon in a field hospital of the Red Army admitted to amputating the hands of boys who tried this 'self-shooting' idea to escape fighting, to protect them from immediate execution via punishment squad.