Zhukov Strikes Back at Moscow: Wehrmacht Reels

General Georgy Zhukov unleashed a massive Soviet counteroffensive against the frozen, exhausted Wehrmacht on December 5, 1941, shattering Adolf Hitler's assumption that the Soviet Union would collapse before winter. Over one million fresh Soviet troops, many of them Siberian divisions equipped for arctic warfare, slammed into German lines stretched across a 600-mile front around Moscow. The attack threw the Germans back between 100 and 250 kilometers and marked the first major defeat of Hitler's army in World War II. Operation Barbarossa, launched on June 22, 1941, had driven deep into Soviet territory through the summer and fall. By early December, German advance units could see the spires of the Kremlin through their binoculars. But the Wehrmacht had outrun its supply lines. Soldiers lacked winter clothing. Tanks and trucks refused to start in temperatures that plunged below minus 30 degrees Celsius. Frostbite casualties exceeded combat losses in many units. Zhukov had been gathering reserves from Siberia and Central Asia after intelligence from spy Richard Sorge confirmed that Japan would strike south toward the Pacific rather than attack the Soviet Far East. Stalin, trusting Zhukov's judgment after months of disastrous interference, gave him operational freedom. The counterattack launched along the entire front simultaneously, catching German commanders who believed the Soviets had no reserves left to commit. The German retreat was chaotic. Hitler issued a "no retreat" order, firing generals who pulled back and demanding that every position be held to the last man. The order may have prevented a complete rout, but it also locked German forces into positions where they took devastating casualties. Moscow was saved, and the myth of German invincibility was broken. The war in the East would grind on for three and a half more years, but after December 1941, no serious military analyst believed the Soviet Union would fall.