Despite his doubts about how much farther Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' could advance, von Bock had tried to retain his option for a thrust to penetrate deeply past Moscow. He had pulled his armour inward toward Moscow to a degree, but still had it arching well round and to the east of the city. He aimed the 3^rd Panzergruppe to the south of the Volga Reservoir in the direction of the Moscow-Volga Canal, the 4^th Panzergruppe toward this canal via Knin, and the 2^nd Panzerarmee toward Kashira and Ryazan via Tula. These axes would bring the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe out on the Moscow-Volga Canal to strike in the direction of Rybinsk and Yaroslavl, give the 2^nd Panzerarmee the option of heading to the north from Kashira toward Moscow or to the east across the Oka river toward Gorky, and leave the close-in encirclement of the city of the Moscow to the 4^th Army. As the time for the renewal of the 'Taifun' (i) offensive decreased, however, the doubts in von Bock’s mind increased, and he told Halder and his subordinate army and group commanders that he believed that the army group had insufficient troops, tanks and supplies to get beyond the Moscow-Volga Canal in the north and the Moscow river in the south. Even so, von Bock left unchanged the armies' and groups' original orders and thus, as the 3^rd Panzergruppe asserted, made their tasks 'unclear'.

On 14 November, Zhukov intervened with some reluctance in what so far had been seen by each side as a German initiative. Reinforced with a cavalry corps of two divisions each of 3,000 men, one infantry division, one tank division and two tank brigades, the 49^th Army fell on the 4^th Army's right flank in the area to the east of Serpukhov. At the last minute, because Zhukov expected the renewed German offensive any day, Stalin had insisted on counterblows, which Zhukov believed could accomplish nothing but complicate the defence. During the morning on 15 November, one infantry corps of the 9^th Army, which was only supernumerary in the 'Taifun' (i) offensive, started to advance in the area to the south of Kalinin and experienced what up to this was a novelty in the war on the Eastern Front: the 30^th Army fell back without offering an opposition. Although the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe faced opposition when they resumed their offensives on the following day, the Soviet forces facing them nonetheless fared badly. A counterblow by the 16^th Army’s right flank, reinforced with one tank division and five cavalry divisions, ran straight into the 4^th Panzergruppe's attack in the area to the east of Volokolamsk and collapsed. On 18 November the 2^nd Panzerarmee began its attack in the area to the south of Tula, and one of its corps advanced almost 25 miles (40 km) during the day. On the following day, Stalin asked Zhukov if he was sure that his forces would be able to hold Moscow, to which Zhukov replied that Moscow would be held, but added that to do so he would require at least two more armies and 200 additional tanks. Stalin agreed to the provision of the two armies, though not before the end of the month, but not of the tanks. For the Soviets this meant that the situation outside Moscow was not likely to improve in the near future unless relief was provided by the operations which the Soviets were about to launch on other parts of the Eastern Front.

To the west and north of Rostov-na-Donu, Timoshenko had doubled the strength of the South Front in the course of the month’s first two weeks by the deployment of two fresh formations in the form of the 37^th Army and the 56^th Independent Army. On 17 November, the 37^th Army and elements of the 9^th and 18^th Armies attacked the shoulder of von Kleist’s 1^st Panzerarmee across the lower reaches on the Donets river in an area about 50 miles (80 km) to the north of Rostov-na-Donu at the start of the 'Rostov-na-Donu Strategic Offensive Operation'. Timoshenko’s objective was to satisfy the Stavka’s requirement for a diversion and at the same time to block German access to the Caucasus, but the results of the offensive’s first days were not encouraging: General Gustav von Wietersheim’s XIV Corps (mot.) checked the Soviet forces in the north while General Eberhard von Mackensen’s III Corps (mot.) diverged to the south-east in the direction of Rostov-na-Donu.

The outlook for an effective Soviet diversion at Tikhvin in the north seemed even less promising. Here Meretskov had assumed command of the shattered 4^th Independent Army on 9 November, just as Tikhvin was being lost, and just one day later, in response to urgent demands from the Stavka, went onto the attack in the 'Tikhvin Strategic Offensive Operation' with the reinforcement of just one infantry division and two tank battalions the 4^th Independent Army had received so far. These forces were actually enough, in view of the difficult conditions in which Heeresgruppe 'Nord' was now operating, to sway the balance toward the Soviets, but the offensive was not likely to produce swift, let alone devastating, results.

The armour of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' had made good progress in the first three days of the renewed 'Taifun' (i) offensive, for the increasing cold had frozen the ground, which was covered only with a powdering of dry snow ground. Thus the going was good, and the Germans had aided their own cause by camouflaging their tanks, trucks, and guns with white paint. Even so, the combination of fewer daylight hours, low cloud and snow flurries limited the number of air support sorties which could be flown, and temperatures now well below freezing were new to and hard on men who had hitherto fought only in warmer locations and conditions. However, the German armour could now move across country without any fear of becoming bogged down in the rasputitsa, and the summer-time irritants of dust and insects, especially mosquitoes, were for this season at least things of the past. The situation in which the German forces were now operating was also better: the forests, marshes and swamps of Belorussia had now been replaced by the upland terrain of the Moscow area, which was characterised by villages of prosperous and clean appearance. However, as the Germans were all too aware, the current weather was merely the harbinger of the real Russian winter, in which operations would be altogether different and considerably more difficult.

The staff of the3^rd Panzergruppe had already informed the Oberkommando des Heeres that while its infantry could be made mobile in the coldest weather and the deepest snow, its tanks and trucks could not merely be ordered to operate under conditions for which they had never been designed. But commanders and staff officers took a measure of comfort from examination of meteorological statistics, extending as far back as the 19^th century, which suggested that there was no reason to expect heavy falls of snow and very low temperatures before the middle of December.

For the moment the weather was the least of the troubles facing Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' on 18 November. In three days of combat, the 4^th Army had only just managed to defeat the Soviet counterblow at Serpukhov. When a second counterblow, This time including some Siberian troops fully experienced and equipped for winter fighting, fell on it at the same place on 18 November, von Kluge talked about a tactical withdrawal of some 9.25 to 15.5 miles (15 to 25 km) behind the Protva river. As some of his regiments had been reduced to as few as 400 to 500 men under the command of senior lieutenants, von Bock said that his right flank would probably not be to complete the southern advance of the encirclement of Moscow. Late on 18 November, von Bock and Halder discussed the prospects still possessed by 'Taifun' (i), and came to the conclusion that each side was close to the limit of its strength and endurance, and therefore that victory would go to the side possessing the greater will and determination. Two days later, von Bock travelled in his headquarters train into the area behind the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe, and once again arrived at a further revision of the plan, now ordering the 4^th Panzergruppe to bear to the east, in the area to the south of Klin, and thereby add weight to the 4^th Army's left flank. von Bock ordered the 3^rd Panzergruppe to take Klin and then veer to the south-east along the road and the railway linking Klin and Moscow toward Solnechnogorsk. Them after the 3^rd Panzergruppe had taken Klin on 23 November, von Bock changed his mind one again. The 4^th Panzergruppe's left-flank units were already in Solnechnogorsk, and von Bock now responded to a proposal from Reinhardt to turn his 3^rd Panzergruppe to the south-east in the direction of Moscow with an order to cover 4^th Panzergruppe's flank but also to drive straight to the east as far as he could.

From 23 November, as the 3^rd Panzergruppe headed to the east away from Klin, the German offensive tactics worked excellently. The Soviets fell back steadily and, for once, did not torch whole villages as they retreated, a fact which the group’s intelligence staff construed as an indication of either increasing demoralisation or intention to return, though the latter seemed less likely. The group’s leading formation, Generalmajor Hans Freiherr von Funck’s 7^th Panzerdivision, currently under the temporary command of Oberst Nikolaus von Vormann, seized a deserting NKVD lieutenant, who under interrogation indicated that the Soviets were undertaking the evacuation of the area to the west of the Moscow-Volga Canal and were readying fresh troops off the group’s open northern flank for a counterattack toward Klin. The interrogation report did not reach the group’s headquarters until the second week of December.

On 27 November the 7^th Panzerdivision reached the Moscow-Volga Canal and on the morning of the following day, on the assumption that its task was still to push to the east, the 3^rd Panzergruppe seized a bridgehead on the eastern bank of the canal at Yakhroma. During the day the spearhead of the 4^th Panzergruppe, von Langermann und Erlencamp’s 2^nd Panzerdivision, came almost to a halt some 18.5 miles (30 km) farther to the south in the area to the west of Krasnaya Polyana, and 12.5 miles (20 km) to the north of Moscow. Echeloned in a 15.5-mile (25-km) line on the 2^nd Panzerdivision's right, Hoepner’s 4^th Panzergruppe now had Generalmajor Walther Scheller’s 11^th Panzerdivision, Generalmajor Gustav Fehn’s 5^th Panzerdivision, Generalmajor Wolfgang Fischer’s 10^th Panzerdivision and SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS Wilhelm Bittrich’s SS Division 'Das Reich', all directed toward toward Moscow but making almost no headway as they ran into the minefields and fiercely defended earthwork fortifications ringing the city. The left flank of von Kluge’s 4^th Army was making progress, albeit slow and very limited, but not enough to keep Hoepner’s forces from having to stretch to maintain contact. The 2^nd Panzerarmee had eliminated the major Soviet bulge to the south of Tula, but the 50^th Army continued to hold grimly around the city, and a raid by one of 2^nd Panzerarmee's divisions to the north in the direction of Kashira was attracting large quantities of Soviet cavalry and armour tanks onto Generalleutnant Hans-Jürgen von Arnim’s 17^th Panzerdivision.

On the night of 28/29 November, while changing his plan once again, von Bock committed his symbolic 'last regiment' when he allocated to the 3^rd Panzergruppe Oberst Walther Krause’s 900^th Lehrbrigade (mot.), the only reserve he still possessed but comprising only one battalion, and ordered Reinhardt to forget the Yakhroma bridgehead, turn to the south along the west bank of the canal, and supplement the push toward Moscow by Hoepner’s 4^th Panzergruppe.

In the past week, meanwhile, Heeresgruppe 'Süd' had suffered heavily in the area of Rostov-na-Donu. SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS Joseph Dietrich’s Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (mot.) had taken the city on 21 November in a notable but dangerous action. In and around Rostov-na-Donu, von Mackensen’s III Corps (mot/) was attacked from the south across the frozen Don river and from the north across the open steppe, and on its left elements of three Soviet armies struck von Wietersheim’s XIV Corps (mot.). Several days earlier, von Kleist, commanding the 1^st Panzerarmee, had started to appreciate that this onslaught was altogether more serious than he had anticipated, and on 22 November ordered the III Corps (mot.) to evacuate Rostov-na-Donu and fall back behind to the west into the area behind the Mius river. von Kleist was compelled to cancel this order only one day later, however, after von Rundstedt, commander of Heeresgruppe 'Süd', told him that while he personally approved of the evacuation, von Brauchitsch, in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the army, had demanded that the city be held because its abandonment would possess not only directly military but also far-reaching political consequences. The timing of this whole episode was indeed problematical as Hitler was readying a highly publicised spectacle for the renewal of the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, which was the cornerstone of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.

With Rostov-na-Donu lost, Leningrad cut off and Moscow under direct threat, the Soviet strategic position now seemed worse than ever. But Stalin seemed to believe, as strongly as did von Bock and Hitler, that the struggle was one of the will as much as of the military, and on 22 November the Stavka told Timoshenko that the loss of Rostov-na-Donu in no way meant that the counter-offensive against the 1^st Panzerarmee was to be called off. Two days later a new directive gave Cherevichenko’s South Front the mission of destroying the 1^st Panzerarmee and retaking the area of Taganrog and Rostov-na-Donu at the north-eastern end of the Sea of Azov. Apparently aware by then that he could not defeat the entire Panzer army, however, Cherevichenko opted for a smaller but more promising approach and in three days shifted the weight of his forces from his northern front to the line at Rostov-na-Donu.

Clearly the Soviets were feeling under enormous pressure, but the same was also true of the Germans at this time late in November. Not yet recovered from a heart attack earlier in the month, von Brauchitsch became ever more querulous, for he was impatient for the type of success which might smooth his interviews with Hitler. von Bock developed acute diarrhoea. von Rundstedt became haughtily silent, letting his chief-of-staff, General Georg von Sodenstern, conduct all business with the Oberkommando des Heeres.

Meanwhile Hitler moved between Berlin and his 'Wolfsschanze' headquarters in East Prussia on politico-military matters possessing ominous undertones. On 21 November, he was in Berlin for the funeral of Generaloberst Ernst Udet, the air force’s chief of aircraft development, whose death was a suicide but being reported as an aeroplane accident. Four days later the German leader was back in Berlin to sign the Anti-Comintern Pact and to welcome two new but reluctant members, Finland and Denmark. He spent the next two days in ceremonies and festivities associated with the signing of the enlarged Anti-Comintern Pact and, on 28 November attended the funeral of Germany’s leading air ace, Oberst Werner Mölders, who had been killed in the crash of the aeroplane in which he was travelling to attend Udet’s funeral. Hitler spent the rest of the day in talks with visiting diplomats.

On returning to the 'Wolfsschanze' early on 29 November, Hitler found awaiting him the news that German troops were retreating on the Eastern Front. By 28 November, Cherevichenko had committed 21 divisions against the III Corps (mot.) at Rostov-na-Donu. von Mackensen had reported several weeks earlier, before the start of the last advance, that his two divisions, Dietrich’s Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (mot.) and Generalmajor Walther Düvert’s 13^th Panzerdivision, were exhausted, short of every item of personal and vehicle kit, and down to between 50% and 67% of its of their normal strengths. During 28 November, as indeed he had expected to have to do, von Kleist ordered von Mackensen to abandon Rostov-na-Donu. When Hitler reached the 'Wolfsschanze', the III Corps (mot.) had left Rostov-na-Donu, and the tactical and numerical factors strongly favoured the Soviets.

During the morning of 30 November, just as he had attempted to do one week earlier, von Kleist ordered his whole right flank, including the III Corps (mot.), to retire behind the Mius river, some 45 miles (70 km) to the west of Rostov-na-Donu. von Kleist had taken what was, in tactical terms, entirely the right decision, for there was no advantage to be won from a prolonged stand in open terrain, and the short but relatively straight Mius river provided a good line on which to stand through the winter. On the other hand, a retreat of this length in a strategically important sector of the front at this stage of the campaign would inevitably take on the appearance, at the psychological and political levels, of a Soviet victory, and no one was more sensitive to any implication of this type than Hitler. In an interview with von Brauchitsch during the afternoon of 30 November, Hitler browbeat von Brauchitsch into trying to get von Rundstedt to delay the execution of von Kleist’s order. When von Rundstedt refused to do so and offered his resignation, Hitler dismissed him early on the following day and named Generalfeldmarschall Walter von Reichenau, commander of the 6^th Army, to succeed him at the head of Heeresgruppe 'Süd'. Even so, after insisting through the day that his forces could hold a line somewhere to the east of the Mius river, von Reichenau finally had to accept the reality of the situation and allow the withdrawal to the Mius be completed that same night.

Before the break of day on 2 December, Hitler departed East Prussia by air for von Kleist’s headquarters in Mariupol farther to the west on the north coast of the Sea of Azov. Hitler stopped at Poltava later in the morning to collect von Reichenau and change from his comfortable but vulnerable Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor four-engined transport aeroplane to a faster and better defended Heinkel He 111 two-engined bomber. The weather was unusually cold for December in Ukraine, and to the east of Mariupol band of ice, 5 miles (8 km) wide and 1 ft (0.3 m) thick, was already edging the Gulf of Taganrog. At Mariupol, Hitler and von Reichenau spoke with von Kleist and Dietrich. The whole event was distinctly unpleasant and in fact basically pointless as events had by now overtaken decisions. It seems that Hitler wished to obtain an assurance from Dietrich, one of his oldest party cronies and former bodyguard, that Rostov-na-Donu could not have been held, and assurances from all three generals that the line of the Mius river would indeed be held. After receiving the assurances he wanted, Hitler switched to talk about restarting the offensive in the new year, promising von Kleist everything from tanks and self-propelled assault guns to airborne troops and fresh divisions.

When he returned to the 'Wolfsschanze' at a time early on 4 December, after an overnight stop in Poltava because of adverse weather, Hitler found a prediction of another retreat awaiting him. von Leeb, commander of Heeresgruppe 'Nord', believed that the Soviets were beginning to see an opportunity not only to retake Tikhvin but also to secure the liberation of Leningrad: the latter would constitute a substantial political and military success for the Soviets. A German push to the north out of the Tikhvin salient toward Lake Ladoga had been stopped on 1 December at Volkhov, some 35 miles (55 km) to the south of the lake. Should the Soviets recapture Tikhvin and reopen the railway to Volkhov, they would be in a position to accelerate the flow of the reinforcements they were bringing from the south-east for an attack on the Flaschenhals: German air reconnaissance had reported 29 trains heading to the north-west on the line lining Vologda and Tikhvin on 2 December. What was of the greatest concern to von Leeb was not so much the situation of his own Heeresgruppe 'Nord' but that of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte'. As von Leeb saw it, in the event that a strong threat to Moscow could not be maintained, the Soviets would inevitably be in the position to release reserves in large enough quantities to make possible an offensive against Tikhvin and Leningrad.

On 27 November there was a major crisis in the Soviet defence of Moscow. To the north of the city, the advances of the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe past Klin and Solnechnogorsk had ripped a gap, some 28 miles (45 km) wide, between Dimitrov, on the Moscow-Volga Canal, and Krasnaya Polyana, only 12.5 miles (20 km) to the north of Moscow. Lelyushenko, who had assumed command of the 30^th Army on 18 November, had brought his formation back under control, but not in time to prevent it from being driven into a corner in the angle of the Volga river and the Moscow-Volga Canal and there, at least in the short term, the army could do nothing to block the German progress to the east and the south. Since the front had broken open between Klin and Solnechnogorsk, Rokossovsky’s 16^th Army had been compelled to extend its flank to the east to cover Moscow and to take the whole shock of the German sweep toward the city. The 17^th Panzerdivision's thrust toward Kashira was starting to create a deep pocket around Tula and was putting a spearhead of the 2^nd Panzerarmee within some 65 miles (105 km) of Moscow on its southern side.

The problem suffered by the 30^th Army had had only useful result to the Soviets, for its had given the Stavka an early indication of the difficulty to come and therefore, when this crisis did eventuate, the means to cope with it were already being assembled. Unlike von Bock, Stalin seemed not to be ready to commit his 'last regiment' in the battle for Moscow, but he also possessed sufficient resources to remain in the fight for one more round. Late in November, he gave the West Front a significant reinforcement in the form of nine infantry divisions, two cavalry divisions, eight rifle brigades, six tank brigades and 10 independent tank battalions. Of these, three infantry divisions were allocated to the 30^th Army, one infantry division, the two cavalry divisions formed into General Major Pavel A. Belov’s I Guards Cavalry Corps and some of the armour to the Kashira area, and the rest to the 16^th, 5^th and 50^th Armies as well as the front reserve.

Moreover, as the German forces were passing Klin, Stalin and the Stavka had begun to create two reserve armies to cover the gap that would be developing farther to the east. On 23 November Kuznetsov took command of one of these, the 1^st Shock Army, on the line of the Moscow-Volga Canal to the south of Dimitrov. The shock armies were conceived on the basis of above-average strengths of armour, artillery, automatic weapons and motor transport, but the 1^st Shock Army (others were created in the winter of 1941/42) was not so well equipped. When Kuznetsov arrived in Dimitrov on 23 November, the 1^st Shock Army comprised just one infantry brigade, but by the end of the month it had one infantry division, nine infantry brigades, 10 separate battalions, one regiment of artillery, and a contingent of rocket launchers. About 70% of its men were more than 30 years old. The second of the two new reserve armies was the 20^th Army, which was created in what, by 27 November, had become the most critical spot on the entire front, namely the sector between the right flank of the 16^th Army and the Moscow-Volga Canal, and included the much-contested village of Krasnaya Polyana. Because of the subsequent behaviour of its commander, General Major Andrei A. Vlasov, who turned against the USSR after his capture in 1942, Soviet histories were reticent in dealing with the role of the 20^th Army in the battle for Moscow. Late in 1941, though, Vlasov was regarded within the Soviet army as one of its most brilliant younger generals. He had commanded the 37^th Army, which had been destroyed in the Kiev pocket, but had escaped with some of his staff. Like Kuznetsov, Vlasov initially had only a mixture of miscellaneous units, possibly only one Siberian infantry brigade, some 10,000 criminal prisoners, and 15 tanks, but it seems probable that the 20^th Army, which was also in position to take over some of the 16^th Army''s right-flank elements, was quickly brought up to a strength at least equal to that of the 1^st Shock Army.

During the last week of November, the Stavka started to bring five of the newly formed reserve armies forward from the line of the Volga river. The 24^th, 26^th and 60^th Armies were positioned to the east of Moscow, the 61^st Army was deployed behind the South-West Front’s right flank, and the 10^th Army was located to the west of the Oka river below Kashira in position to block the thrusts of the 2^nd Panzerarmee toward Kolomna and Ryazan. Commanded by General Leytenant Filipp I. Golikov, the 10^th Army was probably typical of these armies: it was based on seven reserve infantry divisions recruited in the Moscow region, and had about 100,000 men. After receiving its movement order on 24 November, the 10^th Army had to travel more than 300 miles (485 km) from its original station at Syzran on the Volga river by rail and on foot as it had almost no motor vehicles.

During 29 November, the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe came into contact with elements of 1^st Shock Army and 20^th Army at Yakhroma and at a point to the west of Krasnaya Polyana. Late in the day, after Zhukov had assured him that no fresh forces of any size would be committed by the Germans in the immediate future, Stalin allocated control of the 1^st Shock Army, 20^th Army and 10^th Army to Zhukov for a counterattack. On this same day the 3^rd Panzergruppe made the turn to the south as it had been ordered, and the 4^th Panzergruppe made slight advances. Talking to Halder, von Bock said he was concerned that unless the attack from the north succeeded the battle would rapidly disintegrate into a head-on battle of attrition comparable to the Battle of Verdun in World War I.

On the night of 30 November/1 December, while von Leeb worried about what might happen at Leningrad once the pressure on Moscow had come to an end and von Rundstedt was a merely hours away from dismissal, von Bock came to the conclusion the situation of his army group made little sense. During the day, while two Panzer groups were again reporting advances, albeit only very small, Heusinger, the chief of the operations branch of the Oberkommando des Heeres, had spoken by telephone with von Bock along the lines that the encirclement of Moscow was only a precursor to major thrusts in the direction of Voronezh and Yaroslavl. When von Bock later spoke with von Brauchitsch to tell him that Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' did not have enough strength to encircle at Moscow much less to do anything more, he had to ask several times if von Brauchitsch was still listening. Early the morning of the following day, and concerned about whether or not von Brauchitsch had listened, von Bock repeated by teletype what he had said the day before, and added that the high command’s apparent belief in an impending Soviet collapse was nothing more than fantasy; the men of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' were totally exhausted, the offensive no longer made any strategic sense, and the army group would soon be brought to a halt 'before the gates of Moscow'. von Bock ended with the very pertinent question of what was then to be done.

During the morning of 30 November, Zhukov submitted to the Stavka a plan for his West Front to launch a counter-offensive to the north and south of Moscow. The idea was far from new for, as Zhukov himself later put it, the counter-offensive had been under preparation all through the defensive actions. Since June, the three primary and unwavering objects of Soviet strategy had been to let the Germans exhaust themselves, to bring them to a halt, and to create the conditions for a subsequent shift to the counter-offensive. Counter-offensives had been launched by the Soviet forces on the frontiers during June and on the line of the Dniepr and Dvina river during July, and the both the Stavka and the general staff had considered other counter-offensives throughout the period in which 'Barbarossa' and 'Taifun' (i) had swept to the east, most recently at the time when the Germans had been stopped on the approaches to Moscow early in November. However, neither the plan Zhukov submitted on 30 November in response to earlier instructions from the general staff, nor the circumstances under which the plan was expected to be executed conformed with any exactitude to previous strategic thinking. This had envisaged a counter-offensive against German forces which had been driven to a halt. The current plan was conceived as a last-ditch effort in a battle which would probably turn against the Soviets. Zhukov later wrote that he told Stalin on the night of 29/30 November that the Germans had been bled white and that the core of his plan was to attack past Klin and Solnechnogorsk some 60 miles (100 km) to Teryaeva Sloboda and Volokolamsk in the north, and about the same distance past Stalinogorsk to the Upa river in the south. On the other hand, when briefing Konev, the commander of the Kalinin Front, two of whose armies were to be included in the counter-offensive, Vasilevsky, the acting chief of the general staff, said that the Soviets could only halt the German attack toward Moscow and thus establish the situation for the start of the process of inflicting a major defeat on the Germans by active operations with a decisive aim, and if they failed to do so in the next few days, it would be too late. The order for the counter-offensive which Kuznetsov, the commander of the 1^st Shock Army, received on the morning of 2 December was to have General Major Fyedor D. Zakharov’s group of forces (elements of three infantry divisions and one tank brigade) attack toward Dednevo and Fedorovka, and in the longer term advance toward Klin. Dednevo and Fedorovka were villages directly opposite the army’s left flank, and the Zakharov group had been the rearguard at Klin and was currently pinned to the west of the Moscow-Volga Canal by the spearhead of the 3^rd Panzergruppe.

General Leytenant Vasili D. Sokolovsky, who was currently Zhukov’s chief-of-staff, later wrote that the primary objective of the Soviet counter-offensive was to inflict decisive destruction on the German attack and give the Germans no opportunity to regroup and entrench themselves close to Moscow. Zhukov also qualified his own statement of the objectives by saying that the Soviet forces' first task was to be the removal of the immediate threat to Moscow, and that they would need more forces before farther-ranging and more decisive tasks could be allocated. However, Stalin, who had been willing during the summer to commit reserve armies into counterattacks as swiftly as they could be established, was now being very cautious in allocating them to this counter-offensive. The reserve armies based to the east of Moscow were earmarked for used in the defence, if necessary, or if they were not required, in developing a counter-offensive. The decision about how and when the armies would be committed was reserved to the Stavka, which meant to Stalin, who had not yet come to any decision.

In the first two days of December, it seemed that von Bock might have been overly pessimistic, and that the Soviet counter-offensive might be attempted at a time too late to save the Soviet situation. To the surprise of the Germans as much as of the Soviets, Generalmajor Karl Pflaum’s 258^th Division of the 4^th Army broke through the Soviet line to the south of the highway linking Smolensk and Moscow on 1 December. To the north-east of Tula, on the following day, the 2^nd Panzerarmee began a hook to the west which, had it been successful in pinching off the city, could have brought the right flank of the 4^th Army into motion. von Bock had reverted to fighting what he assumed to be the battle of the 'last regiments', and now wavered between desperate hope and gloomy apprehension. Early on 2 December, von Bock informed von Kluge, Reinhardt and Hoepner that the Soviets were finally close to breaking point. Talking to Halder later in the same day, though, he said that as a result of the declining strength of Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', the cold and the stiffening resistance of the Soviet defence, doubts about success were starting to take a definite form.

On 3 December, despite still more causes for doubt, the level of von Bock’s determination actually increased to a slight degree. In the morning, when von Kluge proposed to end the 4^th Army's attack because it would not get through to Moscow, von Bock decided to wait for another two or three days to see what effect the pressure of the 3^rd Panzergruppe could have. By a time late in afternoon, the 258^th Division was fighting its way to the west out of a Soviet encirclement; the 4^th Panzergruppe had reported its offensive strength almost totally exhausted; and the 3^rd Panzergruppe was fighting the 1^st Shock Army at Yakhroma. Farther to the south, the 2^nd Panzerarmee was still advancing to the north-east of Tula but in the face of a blizzard which was heaping snow all along the army group’s front. von Bock now informed General Alfred Jodl, the chief of operations in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, that although his troop strength was almost at an end, he would continue the offensive, and that the reason he was doing so was because keeping the initiative was preferable to going over to the defensive with weakened forces in exposed positions.

During the previous two weeks the weather had been getting colder, with temperatures ranging between 0° and 20° F (-18° and -7° C). On the morning of 4 December, after heavy falls of snow on the previous day, the temperature was -4° F (-20° C), and during the day the 4^th Army went over to the defensive with its front quiet. The 4^th Panzergruppe repelled several Soviet armour-led counterattacks in the area to the south-west of Krasnaya Polyana, but said that it could not advance until 3^rd Panzergruppe came fully abreast of it. The 3^rd Panzergruppe was meanwhile attempting to bring three panzer divisions to bear in the area to the south-west of Yakhroma, but was coming under pressure on its front to the north-west of Yakhroma from Soviet reinforcements, some of which Reinhardt, the group’s commander, believed to be Siberian units. And the 2^nd Panzerarmee was regrouping before making another attempt to pinch off Tula. Again von Bock had decided to remain on the offensive. Apparently only slightly disturbed by a report of some six fresh Soviet divisions, well provided with tanks and rocket launchers, on the front to the north-west of Moscow, he concluded that they were probably not new strength but formations redeployed from nearby quiet sectors, and reported in his last report of the day to the Oberkommando des Heeres that a counter-offensive was unlikely as the Soviets did not have enough forces.

Stalin remained in close touch with Zhukov right through the first days of December, speaking to him several times a day as the Soviets' leadership appreciated the fact that in this complex situation it was very important to time the shift from the defence to the counter-offensive at the right moment and place, and the Soviets believed that the best moment for the shift to the counter-offensive would present itself when the Germans had been compelled to stop their attack but could not immediately go onto the defensive because their formations and units were not properly regrouped, had created no reserves, and had prepared no defence lines. While most Soviet accounts did not specify a particular day, according to Sokolovsky the decision was made to shift to the counter-offensive on 4 December when the formations of the West Front troops had brought the Germans to a halt in the Moscow region and the time was fully ripe to go over to the immediate counteroffensive. Vasilevsky later wrote that the Stavka set the date for the counterattack as 5 and 6 December.

On the night of 4/5 December, Vasilevsky went to the headquarters of the Kalinin Front to deliver the directive from the general staff to start the counter-offensive, and possibly to ensure that it began on 5 December. Claiming he had neither the armour nor the infantry to attack, Konev had opposed the launch of the counter-offensive when Vasilevsky had spoken to him three days earlier. The task of the Kalinin Front was to strike the 9^th Army on the sector of the front to the south-east of Kalinin with the 29^th Army and 31^st Army and push to the south and west in the general direction of Minkulino-Gorodishche, some 25 miles (40 km) to the east of Klin.

Timoshenko, at the South-West Front, received his orders on 4 December to strike the 2^nd Army on 6 December with his 3^rd Army and 13^th Army, and to aim for Yefremov and past Yelets toward Livny. Yefremov lay just behind the front on the 2^nd Army's northern flank, and Yelets, in the centre, was then still in Soviet hands.

Vasilevsky’s account indicated that the Stavka’s orders to begin the counter-offensive on 5 and 6 December applied to the West Front as well as to the Kalinin Front and the South-West Front. However, Zhukov later described his telephone conversation with Stalin late on 4 December in which they talked about air and armour reinforcements for the West Front and which Stalin closed by reminding Zhukov to remember that that Kalinin Front was going over to the counter-offensive on 5 December and that the South-West Front would follow on 6 December.

During the night of 4/5 December, the temperature dropped to -25° F (-32° C), and the severity of the cold was such that during the night in question one German regiment suffered more than 300 frostbite casualties, and several of its wounded froze to death. On the following morning, tanks would not start, artillery and machine guns would not fire because their lubricants and the oil in their recoil mechanisms had congealed, and large numbers of frostbite cases were reported by all the German divisions. In this paralysing cold, the 29^th Army attacked across the ice-covered Volga river to the west of Kalinin during the morning and broke into the 9^th Army's line to a depth of about 1 mile (1.6 km) before being brought to a halt. Reinhardt and Hoepner each reported more fresh Soviet troops on their fronts, and also that their own offensive capabilities were fast disappearing. Even so, Reinhardt’s 3^rd Panzergruppe attempted to drive a wedge to the south between the left flank of Hoepner’s 4^th Panzergruppe at Krasnaya Polyana and the Moscow-Volga Canal, but his formations' and units' automatic weapons did not work, the cold rapidly sapped the men’s energy, and the attack had barely started before it had to be recalled.

In this same morning, Guderian still believed that his 2^nd Panzerarmee could take Tula, but by evening his confidence had faded to the extent that he proposed a gradual withdrawal from the whole bulge to the east of Tula as far back as the lines of the Don and Shat rivers. His tanks, Guderian reported, were breaking down in the cold, while those of the Soviet continued to run.

Zhukov’s order for the start of the counter-offensive on 6 December was delivered to the armies of the West Front on 5 December, and the Germans soon came to believe that the drastic temperature drop on the night of 4/5 December had triggered Zhukov’s precise timing. Early in 1942, too late to be of use, the German intelligence service circulated to the commands on the Eastern Front a partial transcript of statements apparently made by Timoshenko and Zhukov at a conference late in November urging a counter-offensive round Moscow. Timoshenko, the forces of whose South-West Front were at the time of the conference approaching victory at Rostov-na-Donu, recommended that priority should be to Zhukov’s West Front on the grounds that the great danger for the Germans was that the first big change in the weather would immobilise all of their motorised equipment, and that the Soviets must therefore hold out for as long as possible and in any way possible but then immediately go over to the attack after the first few days of cold had broken the operational capabilities of the German forces. Timoshenko categorised the backbone of the of the German effort as its armour and motorised artillery, which would become inoperative as soon as the temperature fell to -20° F (-29° C). According to the intelligence report, Zhukov added that he proposed to let the start and the course of the offensive be determined by the weather, and expected its success to be proportional to the degree to which the cold immobilised the German equipment.

The Soviet accounts, however, wholly ignored the possibility of the weather playing any part in the timing of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation', as the Soviets designated their counter-offensive. The Soviets responded to the German argument that the change in the weather benefited the Soviet forces by pointing out that both sides had to cope with cold and snow and that the temperatures in December 1941 were not actually as low as the figures of -25° to -50° F (-32° to -46° C) claimed by the Germans: one Soviet work claiming these two points gave the average temperature in December, as recorded by Soviet weather stations around Moscow, as -19.5° F (-28.6° C), so the differences in the temperatures claimed by the Germans and Soviets seems inconsequential. The relationship between the weather and the counter-offensive seems coincidental up to 4 December, but after that date the probability that it influenced the precise timing of the West Front’s operations increased.

As of 5 December, the 2^nd Panzerarmee and the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe were motionless as a result of the cold, regardless of whether or not the Soviet resistance could have achieved the same effect.

For the counter-offensive, the West Front was to strike toward Klin, Solnechnogorsk and Istra with the object of destroying the German left flank, and to deliver blows into the flanks and rear of the 2^nd Panzerarmee toward Uzlovaya and Bogoroditsk to smash the German right flank. The final order which Kuznetsov’s 1^st Shock Army received on 5 December once again ordered it to clear the area of Dednevo and Fedorovka, and then advance toward Klin.

Soviet post-war accounts of the Soviet switch from the defensive to the offensive treat the relative strengths of each side’s forces on the eve of the counter-offensive as a matter of major significance. The Soviets emphasised the fact that, on 5 December, the German forces outnumbered those of the Soviets in the Moscow sector: but the figures the Soviets employed vary radially from account to account, and in overall terms do not substantiate the claim of a German numerical superiority. One of the later sets of figures claimed 1.708 million German troops pitted against 1.1 million Soviet troops, but these figures seem to include for the Germans all the men (including Luftwaffe personnel) allocated to Heeresgruppe 'Mitte', but for the Soviets only those men assigned to the counter-offensive. The strengths given in other works were said to be those of the divisions and brigades in Heeresgruppe Mitte and those of the Soviet fronts, and thus reflected the combat strengths for the two sides. None of the quoted Soviet strengths, however, included the eight armies still in the Stavka reserve, representing about 800,000 men.

Even without the reserve armies, however, it is apparent that the Soviet forces opposing Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' were in relative terms somewhat stronger on 5 December than they had been on 2 October at the start of 'Taifun' (i): while Heeresgruppe 'Mitte' had not been able to replace its losses in men, weapons and equipment, the during the same period the Soviet armies in the Moscow sector had acquired 33% more rifle divisions, 500% more cavalry divisions, 200% more artillery regiments, and 250% as many tank brigades.

In front of Moscow at the break of day on 6 December, the temperature was -38° F (-39° C). During the night, von Bock had given his approval to Guderian’s proposed withdrawal of the 2^nd Panzerarmee, and had instructed Reinhardt and Hoepner to adjust their plans for the withdrawals of their 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe from Yakhroma and Krasnaya Polyana to a line covering Klin. von Bock had also called General Rudolf Schmidt to order him to halt the slow eastward drift of his 2^nd Army toward Yelets over the past few days lest his formation found itself farther to the east than any of the army group’s other major formations.

On the first day of the 'Moscow Strategic Offensive Operation', the Soviet armies had varying success: the 31^st Army joined the stalled 29^th Army of the Kalinin Front but failed to get across the Volga river to the south of Kalinin; the 30^th Army made the day’s best (and for the Germans most dangerous) start by breaking into the 3^rd Panzergruppe's flank to the north-east of Klin to a depth of some 8 miles (13 km); the 1^st Shock Army and 20^th Army struck the 3^rd Panzergruppe and 4^th Panzergruppe along a line from Yakhroma to a location to the west of Krasnaya Polyana, but only the 20^th Army advanced, and then for only a short distance, on the southern edge of Krasnaya Polyana; and the 10^th Army, most of which was still on the march from Syzran, started to attack Mikhaylov, on the eastern perimeter of the Tula bulge, with one infantry division and two motorised infantry regiments. During the day the 2^nd Army took Yelets while the South-West Front’s 13^th Army was shifting to the offensive in the same sector.

Before 12.00 on 6 December, Reinhardt informed von Bock that the 3^rd Panzergruppe would have to start pulling away on the south during the night to provide some armour to pit against the 30^th Army. This meant that the 4^th Panzergruppe, the 3^rd Panzergruppe's southern neighbour, would also have to start back in the immediate future. The Soviet pressure subsided everywhere that afternoon, and von Kluge spoke to von Bock about slowing the pace of the withdrawals so that all equipment and supplies could be evacuated. Nevertheless, in the bitter night that followed, the battle turned.

Along the line from Tikhvin to the Mius river via Moscow, the 'Barbarossa' campaign had come to an end, and with it the associated 'Taifun' (i) effort to take Moscow.