Zhukov Facing the Void Before Moscow

Western Front, October 1941. The Vyazma pocket has just closed: several Soviet armies are encircled inside it, and the center of the formation that covered the road to Moscow has collapsed in a matter of days. The capital, some hundred kilometers away, now rests on uncertain means, and a new commander has just been recalled from another sector to take the front in hand.

Before him, the German armored groups are seeking the decisive breakthrough before winter and are advancing toward the city's approaches. The Stavka demands that Moscow be held at all costs, but the intelligence is fragmentary: the staffs themselves often have no idea what is still holding, and the command must decide quickly, without a clear view of the enemy or of its own reserves.

A new factor weighs on the calculation: the autumn rains turn the roads into rivers of mud, the rasputitsa, whose effects bear on both camps. Time, the available men, the state of the roads, the depth to be defended: everything must be weighed at once, while the enemy will not stop to wait. The command must decide within a few hours.