Tanks and Armour in the Battle for Moscow

Ian Baxter

• Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781036122782
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

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 freezing to death, the offensive ground to a halt before the gates of the capital.

Tanks and Armour in the Battle for Moscow offers a compelling visual account of the Panzerwaffe’s doomed advance on Moscow, drawing on over 130 rare and unpublished wartime photographs. Through detailed captions and expert narrative, it follows the campaign from its faltering restart in the spring of 1942 to the bloody Rzhev-Sychyovka offensive and beyond, charting how the Germans lost the initiative on the Eastern Front. By early 1943, any hope of capturing Moscow had vanished, and a protracted retreat westward had begun – one that would not end until the Reich itself lay in ruins.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Author
• Chapter One: Invasion Unleashed
• Chapter Two: Operation Typhoon
• Chapter Three: Road to Disaster
• Chapter Four: First Rzhev–Sychyovka Offensive
• Chapter Five: Aftermath
• Appendix One: German Order of Battle
• Appendix Two: Russian Order of Battle