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  “The same problem,” said von Bock, “lack of good infantry. If Manstein continues east now, his left flank is the Don, but he has nothing to hold it.”

  “I thought he wanted to move the Rumanians there until his infantry came up from Kharkov.”

  “They aren’t ready, and what good would they be in any case? So instead, he called off Kleist’s drive on Kursk, as it has no support from either side, and so now he is moving all of 1st Panzergruppe down to support the SS Korps. Once they get there, he plans to resume his attack.”

  “Yes,” said Halder with just the edge of sarcasm in his voice. “So he can shake hands with Ivan Volkov and claim his laurels. Well, that won’t be enough. Sergei Kirov will fight for Volgograd, you’ll see. He’ll fight for that as tenaciously as he would Moscow, which is where we should have the SS now. Only the capture of Moscow in 1941 will bring about conditions that might lead to Soviet capitulation.”

  “That may be so, but don’t forget Volkov’s oil fields. Unless we link up with him, how does the Führer get his oil? And not so fast concerning Moscow, Herr General. You want to storm into Red Square before winter? Yes, Napoleon had the same idea, but look what happened to his Grand Armee. If we do take Moscow, I have a mind that says Sergei Kirov will simply relocate his government apparatus to Leningrad. After all, that was the historical capital of the Romanov Dynasty, old Saint Petersburg, and it is just where Czar Nicholas left it, largely untouched by this war. We have no operation threatening that city.”

  “That was another mistake,” said Halder. “And it was all Manstein’s doing. He poisoned the Fuhrer’s mind with this talk of a southern strategy. Yes, Volgograd is a worthy objective, but we should have both Moscow and Leningrad under our heels if we are to ever win this war.”

  “First things first,” said von Bock flatly. “The situation has changed. This massive cauldron forming around Kirov will likely be the decisive battle of the war. Hitler has seen the reports, and he wants those forces annihilated.”

  “Very well,” said Halder with a shrug. “It seems we have little recourse now. Order Hoth to change the axis of his advance and he will now form the right pincer to operate with Hoepner on the left.”

  “What about Guderian?” asked von Bock.

  “What about him?”

  “He’s run into a new army south of Tula—Siberians.”

  “Yes… I’ve heard his bellyaching all the way from the front. He took Orel as ordered, and now moves north for a drive on Moscow through Tula. I finally get Hitler’s permission for that, and Guderian is stopped cold by this new army.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Where else?” said Halder. “Intelligence reported that the Siberian airship fleet visited Moscow recently, and then went north to Murmansk. Kolchak was assassinated in the far east, and the situation in the Free Siberian State is very confused. A new figure has stepped forward—this Admiral Karpov with his fleet of obsolete balloons! Yet he has apparently thrown in with the Soviets, and troops have been moving west from Siberia for some weeks now. Guderian must get moving!”

  “He has only 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions in his Schwerpunkt,” said von Bock. “The rest of his mobile divisions are strung out all the way back to Orel, and further south. It’s the lack of infantry again. That is hurting us more than anything else now. The Russians have managed to find divisions to put on Guderian’s right flank as he moved north, and every mile he goes is another mile someone has to hold behind him. His advance was losing steam with every gain it made. Now this new Siberian Army is simply too much to brush aside.”

  “If Hoth were behind him, as he should be…” Halder gave von Bock a frustrated look.

  “Yes, if wishes were horses,” said von Bock. “Hoepner has forced our hand. He’s punched right through the northern segment of the Kirov Defense line. We simply must support his envelopment operation now.”

  And this is what the Germans did.

  When the Smolensk Group collapsed, the infantry that had been mopping up then became available to hold the northern shoulder of Hoepner’s push east. This in turn allowed him to feed one mobile division after another into his advance, which gathered strength in spite of a tenacious Russian defense.

  The Soviet’s stripped the machinegun battalions from the outer fortifications around Kirov and sent them north. They used service troops, bridging units, railroad repair crews, all in a desperate attempt to stop the German drive. Moscow sent Militia units, and then finally ordered its last reserve army, the 33rd to move down and stop the German encirclement operation.

  For his part, Hermann Hoth had turned west as ordered, but he found increasing resistance as he did so. The Russians did have 50 divisions in the huge cauldron that was now being formed, the remnants of five separate armies, the 11th, 13th, 24th Siberian, 28th and 32nd. Leaving the Bryansk fortified zone garrisoned by engineers, flak units, AT regiments and service troops, they then pulled five to seven rifle divisions from that sector, and moved them north through the woods to put pressure on Hoth as he drove to link up with Hoepner. On Hoth’s right, the Russians were sending anything they could scrape up in Moscow by rail through Kaluga, and these units, anti-tank regiments, small independent brigades, cavalry and NKVD battalions, were all building up on Hoth’s right. Soon his two Motorized Korps were all well engaged, and he had given his strategic reserve to Guderian.

  “There goes the 101st,” he said , watching the units roll out past his army HQ on the road to Orel. “And the Big Cats all go with them.”

  “You were too generous, Herr General,” said his Operations Officer Oberstleutnant von Elverfeldt. “If you want to renege on your offer to Guderian, now is the time. Once those units get engaged, it may not be so easy to call them home.”

  “True,” said Hoth, “but given the fact that Guderian lost his entire 46th Panzer Korps when Manstein revised the invasion plans, he will need these units more than we will. Otherwise, with my Panzergruppe on this new operation, Guderian’s entire thrust north will be a wasted effort. And in spite of the jubilant mood at OKW, I think we will have little margin for error or waste in this war.”

  It was a very prophetic statement, for these events were all in prelude to the one great battle that would truly decide the course of the entire war—the battle for Moscow in 1941.

  Chapter 12

  The footsteps on the polished tile floor were hard and sharp as Berzin walked quickly down the long hallway. Ahead, two guards stiffened, heels clicking as each extended an arm, quickly opening the tall door. Their movements were precise, mechanical, as though the flesh and bone of men had become a part of the building itself. Beyond those doors lay the outer chamber of the Red Archives. There, standing stolidly by the window, the General Secretary was waiting, his eyes seemingly transfixed on something outside, far off in the wide stone square. He said nothing, did not even turn to greet the man now entering the room, and Berzin waited, saying nothing until the doors closed quietly behind him, standing there like a carved statue.

  Something in both men knew that the moment they moved, the moment they broke the frozen stillness of that hour, everything would change. Everything would move with them, slipping, shifting, whirling wildly in the chaos that was all around them, the wild spinning gyre of war. Yet for now, with Sergei Kirov standing at the window, and Berzin by the door, all seemed to be held in breathless suspension, as if events demanding this urgent meeting were also frozen, the whole world motionless, static, unmoving in the stony quiet. There they stood, in the eye of the storm, and as long as neither man moved, as long as they stood there, each might believe that the situation on the front lines still remained as it was just days ago, resolved by decisions made in that long lost hour, still stable, still manageable, still bearable.

  “Mister General Secretary…”

  Berzin’s voice broke the silence with calm formality, but no matter how gracious and restrained his tone, the words fell like broken glass on the lacquered wood floor.
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  Slowly, as if he too were some mechanical part of the massive apparatus of government all around them in the Kremlin complex, Sergei Kirov turned. His eyes saw Berzin, hat in hand, a map tucked neatly under his arm, and he knew by the look on his face that he was not the bearer of any good news that morning. And he saw one other thing, something another man might have completely overlooked, though it was immediately apparent to Kirov’s well studied eye. The well polished sheen on Berzin’s high leather boots was marred, a hasty moment of oversight that spoke volumes.

  “There’s a scuff on your left boot,” said Kirov. “So it seems you were in some haste to bring me that map.”

  Berzin smiled, the last time he would do that for a good many days, and then walked slowly to the conference table. He set his hat quietly on the corner, laid the map there, waiting.

  “So now it begins,” said Kirov. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Grishin. What will I see when you unroll that map?”

  “The Kirov Line has been breached along a sixty kilometer front,” said Berzin, knowing there was no other way but the truth.

  “Where?”

  “In the woodland between Vyazma and Spas-Demensk—Hoepner’s 4th Panzer Group. The enemy push towards Tula was stopped, but half of that force turned northwest. They broke through and linked up with Hoepner.”

  Kirov walked slowly to the table. “Show me,” he said with the reluctance obvious in his voice, and Berzin unrolled the map, using two of the secret books Kirov had obtained, the material, to hold the new history in place beneath the old. Yet what he was showing the General Secretary now was very much like that older history, where large forces comprising nearly seven armies had been encircled near Bryansk and southwest of Vyazma. This time the pocket was centered on the city that bore the General Secretary’s own name—Kirov.

  “How bad is it?” he asked.

  “The entire Western front is now encircled—five armies, including Karpov’s 24th Siberian—about 50 divisions.”

  “Can they get out?”

  “Not likely. We’ve pulled the 24th Siberian off the western edge of the pocket while still maintaining a credible defense there. That army is in very good shape, six good rifle divisions and a tank brigade. We can use them to attempt a breakout if you so order, but the wisdom of this may be in doubt after what just happened to the Smolensk Group.”

  Now Kirov looked at the map, the positions freshly drawn by staffers and delivered to Berzin less than an hour earlier. “What’s happening east of Vyazma on the rail line to Kaluga?”

  “A small penetration, mostly by infantry. We do not believe they have anything that can exploit it.”

  “And this segment here?”

  “A gap has formed southwest of Kaluga. We’re trying to close it near Babyino on the rail line, but there’s very little we can send. Between that point and Kaluga, there are only two anti tank regiments, and the entire line from Kaluga to Mozhaisk is manned by militias.”

  “So it’s happened again,” said Kirov sullenly.

  “It was inevitable,” said Berzin. “If we fight for the cities, the Germans will just go around those defenses, and this is the result.”

  “Then we fight where we are,” said Kirov, mustering a measure of resolve.

  “The Vyazma pocket lasted only seven days in the material,” Berzin warned.

  “This isn’t the Vyazma catastrophe,” said Kirov.

  “No sir, it’s a brand new catastrophe, and one of our own making this time.” Berzin would not mince words.

  Kirov nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation now. Everything would depend on how long those troops could hold out. A force of that size could take a very long time to reduce. The Germans had used 22 divisions in the old history, all troops that they might have otherwise thrown at Moscow. This time, Kirov hoped things would be different, though the shadow of the old history still lay heavily on this hour.

  “Yet we won,” he said, taking heart. “We lost over half a million men and we still won.”

  “We had four armies on the Mozhaisk Line,” said Berzin. “At least according to the material. This time we have only two armies in the vicinity of Moscow. We sent the 33rd to try and stop what just happened, but it could not get there in time. That leaves us only the troops of the Moscow military district to defend the capital.”

  “What about Zakharin’s 49th Army?”

  “It is still forming east of Ryazan, but should be available soon.”

  “Make it available now. Tell him to come directly to Moscow, and without delay.”

  “We’ll be a day getting rolling stock up there from the south. We just delivered the 50th Army to the Don sector, and in the nick of time. The Germans have reinforced their SS Korps with Kleist’s 1st Panzer Group, and they are renewing their offensive south and east.”

  Sergei Kirov had finally seen the danger Zhukov had tried to warn him of long ago, the very operation Manstein was now conducting. He had already given Berzin instructions to plan a phased withdrawal from the will ’o the wisp oil wells of Maykop. Now he needed troops to stop the SS, and the only forces available were in the Caucasus. As the drive on Armavir had been called off, he ordered all available forces north, culled into the 4th and 9th Armies building a defense to the south of the SS. There was one more Army he could tap, the 50th, which had been languidly holding the long open country from Abganerovo south of Volgograd, through Kotelnikovo and Zimovinki, following the rail all the way to Salsk on the Manych River.

  To hold that ground required a large force, and Petrov’s 50th Army was perhaps the largest formation in the entire Soviet State, with all of 11 Rifle Divisions, an old style armored division, and five independent brigades, with three Cavalry divisions. It was easily three times the size of a typical Soviet Army, but somehow, Petrov managed it because the Army merely had to hold in fortified positions all along its front. Now it was ordered to move, abandoning those forts and meeting long lines of trains on that rail between Salsk and Volgograd.

  It took three days, and virtually all the rolling stock available, but Zhukov was able to get the army moved, up through the steel cauldron of Volgograd, and back through the Donbass on a rail line that did not exist in Fedorov’s history books. It had been built to support the long years of fighting with Ivan Volkov, and now that enmity would prove a saving grace. Without that rail line, Petrov’s troops would not have made it north in time, and Manstein’s SS would have moved as he planned for the southern bank of the Don.

  A total of three armies were pulled from Kirov’s Caucasus operation, though he still stubbornly clung to the Kuban District with remaining forces there. Yet now, the Don itself would take the place of the massive armies that had once been mustered south of its waters, intending to drive all the way to Astrakhan and Baku. It was not to be, but instead those same armies would now move north, bringing Georgie Zhukov 30 divisions that would save the hour in more than one desperate situation.

  “Will the Germans cross the Don?” Kirov’s eyes were heavy on the map as he studied the threat in the south.

  “No sir, it appears they will drive along the south bank, and use it to shield their left as they advance.”

  “That won’t be as easy as it sounds,” said Kirov. “It’s a very long way to Volgograd, and that will be a very vulnerable flank.”

  “True,” said Berzin, “assuming we have troops to send there to pose a credible threat.”

  “What about the Siberians?”

  “Three Shock armies are still forming, but remember, those are fresh recruits. It will be some time before those men are fitted out and trained, and Zhukov wants them for the winter offensive.”

  “If we survive that long,” said Kirov. “Isn’t there anything else in the Urals?”

  “We have Teryokin’s 2nd Red Banner Army there, a reinforced Corps really, and Zhukov has moved it to STAVKA Reserve. As for the Siberians, Karpov hasn’t been heard from for weeks since he sailed out of Murmansk. We’ve tried signaling th
at ship, but we get no response. That said, there is still one more Siberian Army on the upper Volga, the 17th. Frankly, Volkov poses no offensive threat there. If necessary, we could move that army in a week.”

  “Without notifying Karpov?”

  “I think the news that Moscow has fallen would be worse than hearing we’ve moved his army. I’ve already made overtures to the army commander, and the situation looks favorable.”

  “Good,” said Kirov. “Then if they will come, we will welcome them. Anything else? What about the Leningrad District?”

  “They just completed refitting of the 52nd Army under Klykov. It’s available if we can find the trains to move it.”

  “Then it is not so desperate as you make it sound,” said Kirov. We have Klykov’s 52nd, the 2nd Red Banner Army from the Urals, Karpov’s 17th Siberian, and our own 49th east of Ryazan—four armies to defend the capital. And we already have some troops on the outer defensive line. Lelyushenko’s 5th has been fighting well there, and we’ve been reforming the 33rd and 16th.”

  “True, but we will have nothing else in reserve, unless of course you evacuate the Kuban and Black Sea Coastal District.”

  “Not yet,” said Kirov. “If they go, then the Donets Basin goes soon after. No. We’ll hold the ground we now occupy, and by god, we’ll make them fight for anything they want to take. See that message gets delivered to Zhukov. We fight now, for the life of the nation. There is no other way.”

  “I think the General will be more than willing,” said Berzin. “It’s the messages being delivered by the Germans that make him uncomfortable. He all but begged you to pull back in the south.”

  “I’ve sent him thirty divisions!” Kirov’s anger flashed.

  “True sir, and now they are fighting the SS. As we have seen, those troops are more than a cut above anything they were facing in Volkov’s army. We will have to watch the south very carefully. If the Germans were to break out there, then they might do just what Zhukov warned us about, and bag four more entire fronts.”