"‘Retreat from Moscow’ Explores Stalin’s Messy Victory" Topic

"The Battle of Moscow, which officially lasted from September 30, 1941, to April 20, 1942, marked the first time that Hitler's armies failed to triumph with their blitzkrieg tactics. And yet most Soviet histories of World War II emphasize the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, which involved fewer troops and casualties but represented more definitive victories. The reason: any honest account of the Moscow campaign would highlight Stalin's miscalculations and outright errors that led directly to massive Red Army losses.

Military historian David Stahel's latest meticulously researched volume about the German campaign in the East, Retreat from Moscow, focuses on how the Wehrmacht withstood much of the Red Army's counterattack launched on December 6. Marshal Georgi Zhukov's troops initially succeeded in pushing the Germans back from the approaches to the capital. But they could not carry out Stalin's totally unrealistic orders to dislodge the enemy from key positions all across the front. While huge numbers of Soviet troops were slaughtered in futile assaults, Stahel claims the Germans "thwarted all the objectives of the Soviet offensive plan."…"
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