The Defense of Moscow 1941: The Northern Flank

There was only one point in the Second World War when Nazi Germany had a chance of winning. That point was October 1941, when most of the Red Army’s forces before Moscow had been smashed or encircled, and no reserves were available to defend the capital. All that stood in Hitler's way were a handful of Soviet rifle divisions, tank brigades and hastily assembled militia.

According to German accounts, their spearheads were stopped by the mud, but a close examination of German records shows this was not so. Instead it is clear that it was the resistance of the Red Army and bad, arrogant planning that halted the Wehrmacht. This is the dramatic story that Jack Radey and Charles Sharp tell in this compelling study of a previously unknown part of the Battle of Moscow. Using archival records from both sides, they reveal how the Soviets inflicted a stunning defeat on a German plan to encircle six Soviet armies the middle of October 1941.

Jack Radey has researched deeply into the history of the Second World War in general and has made a particular study of the conflict on the Eastern Front. He has written many games, articles and film scripts on subjects as wide ranging as the Korsun Pocket, Borodino ’41, American Civil War battlefields, D-Day, Iwo Jima, and Barbarossa.

Charles Sharp has a long-standing interest in military history. He spent twenty years in the US Army from the Vietnam War. He served in the army through the end of the Cold War and the first Iraq War, retiring in 1992. Since then he has written fifteen books on the Soviet and German armies in the Second World War, published in the Soviet Order of Battle series, and lectured on military history.

David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Glantz holds degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College.

He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969 and served in various assignments in the United States and Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.

After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly formed Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of several former German participants in the operations and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings.

Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel. In 1993 he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.

In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history. Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II. He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Charles Sharp has a long-standing interest in military history. He spent twenty years in the US Army from the Vietnam War. He served in the army through the end of the Cold War and the first Iraq War, retiring in 1992. Since then he has written fifteen books on the Soviet and German armies in the Second World War, published in the Soviet Order of Battle series, and lectured on military history. Jack Radey has researched deeply into the history of the Second World War in general and has made a particular study of the conflict on the Eastern Front. He has written many games, articles and film scripts on subjects as wide ranging as the Korsun Pocket, Borodino ’41, American Civil War battlefields, D-Day, Iwo Jima, and Barbarossa.