Tanks and Armour in the Battle for Moscow

From the moment Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, code-named Operation Barbarossa, Hitler was fixated on the capture of Moscow.Yet his fear of exposing the flanks of the German Central Front led to costly diversions north and south at Leningrad and Kiev, delaying the assault on the Russian capital.When the Battle of Moscow - Operation Typhoon - finally began on 30 September, the Panzerwaffe was already weakened while Soviet forces had fortified their defences and reinforced their lines. Spanning a 370-mile front, 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies in the north and 2nd Panzer Army in the south surged towards Moscow in a vast pincer movement with hundreds of tanks and assault guns in tow, relying on the familiar tactics of Blitzkrieg.But what followed was no lightning war. Instead, German tanks and infantry were dragged into a gruelling battle of attrition during the coldest recorded winter of the twentieth century.Snowbound and under-supplied, with entire units free