Hello, and thank you for listening to the history of World War II podcast, Episode

147, The March to Moscow, Part 1.

To the north, Leningrad was surrounded, cut off from Moscow, to the south Kiev the same,

while Axis forces further south were on their way to the Crimea.

Now was the time Hitler reasoned to drive on Moscow.

Take the city from Stalin and end this phase of the war, if not the whole contest, before

winter proper said in.

That was the plan, but the Soviets had their own plans.

Still, Germany's Operation Typhoon, the seizure of Moscow, would start out with the third

largest assemblage of German might in Nazi history, just behind its invasion of France

and the low countries and Barbarossa itself.

And leading this massive, hopefully war-ending assault would be one man, Field Marshal

Fedor von Bach.

Under him would be 75 divisions, of which 47 were infantry and 14 were Panzer.

In total, three of Germany's four Panzer groups and just over two million men, supporting

those men and the more than 1,500 Panzers would be 1,000 aircraft.

The idea, the plan, the hope, was for this reinforced army group center or army group Bach

to encircle and then smash the center of the Soviet defensive line in front of Moscow

and then get in behind the city itself.

Of course, in front of the Germans were some 3 million Soviet troops.

To be sure they were less trained, less experienced, less organized, hence less professional, but

they were fighting for their homes, their families, their country.

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