Before Moscow: stand fast or retreat?

Adolf Hitler receives, on that day, the resignation of Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, broken by the thunderbolt Soviet counteroffensive launched by General Georgy Zhukov. Since mid-November, Soviet armoured columns have punched through the central front to within 30 kilometres of Moscow, and temperatures have plummeted to minus 35 degrees Celsius. Several panzer commanders, including Heinz Guderian and Erich Hoepner, are pressing the High Command to authorise a flexible withdrawal to prepared rear positions; they invoke the ghost of 1812 and the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée in the Russian snows.

Hitler, however, is convinced that any voluntary retreat would tear the front apart and trigger an uncontrollable rout. 3 paths confront him: assume personal command of the OKH and order every division to stand fast, yielding not a metre of ground, even at the risk of encirclement rather than a broken line; grant the generals their elastic retreat, pulling back to defensive positions 80 or 100 kilometres to the west, at the cost of losing the initiative and exposing open flanks; or appoint a single commander with full authority to organise an orderly withdrawal across the entire central arc — a solution that would mean delegating a decision Hitler regards as vital to the survival of the regime itself.

Deep inside the Wolfsschanze conference room, surrounded by maps marking gaps of 20 to 40 kilometres, he must decide before the spring thaw renders the choice moot.