ABSTRACT
To Stalin the situation must have appeared much as it had before 22 June. That Hitler could mount an operation against Moscow while the battle for Kiev was at its height or think of making an attempt so late in the season would have seemed most unlikely. On the other hand, he could have come to the comforting conclusion that Hitler, having succumbed to the lure of the resources of the Ukraine and Caucasus, like Denikin and Vrangel, would leave the strategically decisive prize, the Great Russian heartland, to him. Moreover, as before 22 June, he was not unprepared. West Front, under Konev, had six armies on a 180-mile line 125 miles west of the Mozhaysk Line. Its left boundary was at the level of Yelnya. There three of Budennyy’s Reserve Front armies extended the line 80 miles south to a junction with Eremenko’s Bryansk Front, which, with three armies, extended south 185 miles to the area in which the Second Panzer Group was operating. Reserve Front also had three armies deployed behind West Front. The total strengths are given as 1.25 million troops, 990 tanks, and 677 aircraft.3 The troop and tank strengths
have probably later been reduced to create an impression that the Soviet fronts were fighting against heavy odds – the Germans subsequently captured or destroyed 1,224 tanks.4 The real source of the odds, however, was Stalin’s continued insistence on a rigid linear defense. The figure for aircraft may actually be somewhat inflated: by 29 September, the Air Force had lost 8,166 planes, by far the greater part of its inventory at the beginning of the war.5 Although it cannot be said that the Soviet fronts were ‘enjoying’ the benefits of their interior lines, the odds against them were being reduced by the disadvantages exterior lines were progressively imposing on Army Group Center.
