In the winter of 1941, 78 choice nazi divisions, 1,700 tanks and over 1000 planes were deployed to carry out Operation Typhoon. The German advance was so close to Moscow that German voices could be heard on the radio, and the very air was polluted by enemy breath. Leningrad, the second largest city in the Soviet Union, was besieged, and the noose of the enemy blockade had tightened around it. The Wehrmacht commanders were planning the capture of Stalingrad on the Volga, the country’s main route for grain and oil supplies.
It was in those days and months, in the early period of the Great Patriotic War, that the Soviet people suffered serious defeats. About half a million German soldiers and officers were killed in the battle for Moscow alone. The offensive launched by the Red Army in December 1941 recaptured enemy-occupied territory with a pre-war population of approximately 5,000,000. Leningrad held out, and soon the whole world was to hear of the heroic battle of Stalingrad.
This book tells about the battle for Moscow and other major events in the first period of the Great Patriotic War. The articles and stories are by Marshals Zhukov, Vassilevsky, and Rokossovsky, and by such well-known authors as Alexander Fadeyev, Konstantin Simonov, Vassily Grossman, and Alexander Bek.
Compiled by Vladimir Sevruk
Translated from the Russian
Edited by Bryan Bean
Designed by Victor Korolkov
Foreword
Alexander Vassilevsky – The Turning Point of the War 9
Georgi Zhukov – The Battle of Moscow 29
Konstantin Rokossovsky – The Volokolamsk Direction 73
Ivan Strelbitsky – Twelve Days of One Year 93
Pyotr Lidov – Tanya 119
Konstantin Simonov – June-December 129
Pyotr Pavlenko – Last Wish 139
Alexander Krivitsky – Dubosekovo Halt 141
Alexander Bek – The Map 149
Alexander Fadeyev – Named After Kirov 153
Olga Bergholtz – This Is Radio Leningrad 163
Nikolai Chukovsky – A Girl Who Was Life 179
Vassily Grossman – In the Line of the Main Attack 203
Vassily Roslyakov – One of Us 217
Yuri Zhukov – The Birth of the Tank Guards 249
Original scan by servants of knowledge, this is a cleaned optimised scan.
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