The Wehrmacht offensive was slowed by stiff Soviet resistance around Mozhaisk, and also by the rasputitsa, the season of rain and mud in Central Russia.

[2] Bock, his second wife, and his stepdaughter were killed by a strafing Royal New Zealand Air Force fighter-bomber on 4 May 1945 as they traveled by car towards Hamburg.

Fedor von Bock was born into an old Prussian military family in Cüstrin, Germany (now Kostrzyn, Poland), a fortress city on the banks of the Oder River in the Province of Brandenburg.

[7] At an early age, and largely due to his father, Bock developed an unquestioning loyalty to the state and dedication to the military profession.

By the time World War I began in 1914, Bock had reached the rank of captain; he served as a battalion commander in January and February 1916.

In the early 1920s, General Hans von Seeckt, chief of the Army Command, named Bock head of a group tasked with building up what came to be known as the Black Reichswehr.

[10] The Black Reichswehr under Buchrucker became infamous for its practice of using Feme murders to punish "traitors" who, for example, revealed the locations of weapons' stockpiles or names of members.

Bock was one of the officers not removed from his position when Hitler reorganized the armed forces during the phase of German rearmament before the outbreak of the Second World War.

[citation needed] On 10 September Bock ordered the forces under his command to burn Polish villages located behind the front line to the ground if they were fired upon from the settlement and "if it proves impossible to identify the house from which the shots came".

On 11 September, Bock relinquished command of his occupation area in France to Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb.

[citation needed] On 2 February, Bock met with Hitler and questioned whether the Russians could be forced to make peace even if the Red Army was brought to battle and defeated.

[citation needed] The main objective of Army Group Center was to follow the route north of the Pripyat Marshes to Moscow.

[citation needed] At 03:15 on 22 June 1941, the first shots of Operation Barbarossa were fired; Germany invaded the Soviet Union with a timed declaration of war.

[citation needed] On the second day of Barbarossa, Bock crossed the Bug River escorted by Major General Gustav Schmidt.

Hoth's army advanced so quickly that Bock immediately contacted Walter von Brauchitsch, requesting the bypassing of Minsk in favour of attacking toward Vitebsk so that a drive could be made for Moscow.

Initially, the change in plan was accepted but it was soon overruled by Hitler, who favoured the encirclement and destruction of the large Soviet armies near Minsk.

Bock continued to favour a direct drive toward Moscow, bypassing Soviet armies and leaving them to be destroyed by infantry, which advanced on foot, well behind tank columns.

[citation needed] Bock, enraged by this decision, was quoted as saying: "We are permitting our greatest chance of success to escape us by this restriction placed on our armour!

[28] On 29 September, Bock held a conference with his senior commanders Strauss, Hoth, Kluge, Weichs, Hoepner, Guderian, and Kesselring.

During the meeting the main operational plan was reviewed, with Bock again stressing that Moscow must be taken by 7 November, before the onset of winter, and to coincide with the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

On 3 October, Guderian's forces captured Orel and subsequently gained access to a paved highway which led to Moscow, some 180 mi (290 km) away.

[citation needed] Cold rain soon began to fall over the northern sectors of Army Group Center's front, and the roads soon turned into quagmires as part of the Rasputitsa.

[2] Slight improvements in the weather soon made it possible for Bock's forces to continue to seal the pockets around Bryansk and Vyazma.

[2] Bock was one of the few German officers to protest against the systematic maltreatment of Soviet prisoners of war, but took few steps to improve the conditions of those being held in the areas under his command.

Since 30 September, Bock had lost some 35,000 men, 250 tanks and artillery pieces, and several hundred other vehicles, many of which were mired in the mud.

While the ground hardened sufficiently enough to support vehicles, the cold weather added to the miseries of the German soldiers as many had not received winter clothing.

[33] Several days later, German forces crossed the Moscow-Volga Canal and reached Khimki but soon fell back due to Soviet resistance.

The high military leadership of the Fatherland made a terrible mistake when it forced my army group to adopt a position of defense last August.

[2] He was reassigned to lead Army Group South on 20 January 1942, after the death of Generalfeldmarshall Walter von Reichenau from a stroke.

Bock wanted to eliminate Vatutin's forces before extending his own flank too deeply into the void created by the strength and speed of the German offensive.