Impact of potential fall of Moscow on Soviet war effort in fall of 1941- transportation aspect

I’ll skip the crutial part how Moscow was simply unreachable and moreover if reached would lead to even greater German overextending and probably to even bigger disaster later.

Arguments about effects on the Soviet war effort fall into several categories- impact on moral, political situation, loss of industry and transportational implications. I will focus here on the letter and just briefly mention the rest. Stalinist political system was nothing if not stable and monolithic. There was no political turmoil even in most troubled times and no viable potential alternative was even present. Indeed political decision was allready reached to continue the fight and government, state officces, ambassies and so on were allready evacuated. Moral of the army and population was relatively high considering the situation. There was recorded sense of relief and pride in the army when in autumn finally German advance slowed and first reversals began to happen. So soldiers and people who survived the terrible summer could now finally see things change for better. In the same time people became aware of massive, systematic criminal nature of nazi war and its goals- extermination and lasting slavery of ‘subhuman’ Slavs. This maybe above all steeled the resolve of the people not only to save their lives and family but also powerful spite was awoken. There was to be no surrender, this was fight to the death. Lastly but also not negligible for morale it was in that time that help from old allies began to arrive and new powerful ones joined to their side.

Considering Moscow industries, key ones were as thoroughly evacuated as any. As much as 80 000 rail cars were used to evacuate 500 factories from the area, including 75 000 lathe machines (about 80% of total number).

What about transport? Some analysis claim that loss of Moscow transport hub would be the direst consequence of the city’s fall and would actually cripple Soviet communications, especially toward the north of the country. To what extent is this true? SU had huge rail network and many transport hubs, parallel and alternative railway venues. Not to underestimate importance of Moscow of course. It was main hub in the centralized state and its loss would impact Soviet communications badly, there is no doubt about that, only doubt is weather it would be only an aggravating factor or debilitating one?

Communications to the south were actually plentiful and well resourced. Two main venues from potential(and actually formal) new capital at Kuybishev toward south were going via Saratov, than toward Stalingrad and on to Rostov(venue 1 on the map), and second was via Penza in direction toward Voronez (marked 2 on the map)with multiple lateral connections. The latter was even double track railway which was above standards for that time.

Northern connections would be a bit less comfortable in case Moscow was lost, but still connected via at least two main lines and other lesser. One was via Kirov toward Volgoda, then Tikhvin (marked 4) and second Gorki- Ivanovo- Yaroslav(marked 3). These venues connected north of the country from hubs east of Moscow comfortably.

Finally where did claims about collapse of Soviet transport systems originate from? From the analysis of the OKH as transport isolation was one of benefits they expected from operation Typhoon. But what should have Typhoon encompassed? It was never about Moscow, not once was Moscow by itself set as final goal of Typhoon. Even in mid November as it was clear that Red Army wasn’t broken, that Wehrmacht was exhausted and that elements turned for worse OKH still issued an order to advance if anyway possible 400 km beyond Moscow and capture Volgoda and Gorki. Were these cities chosen to be final line of advance before winter by chance? Knowing that these were exact transport hubs that could still provide communications toward north and Leningrad. Hardly. Even ‘minimal’ required line of advance was set some 250 km east of Moscow and aimed at transport hubs at Yaroslav and Ivanovo, which still wouldn’t completely cut off the north but would further isolate it. As it was crumbling German effort couldn’t even reach Moscow but Moscow alone wasn’t what OKH wanted. It seems that later some assessments just arbitrarily translated effect on transport system OKH expected to achieve if they could reached Typhoon’s full goals (capture of junctions at Gorky and Volgoda) to that which to some seemed as aim of the Typhoon in the end because it was seemingly close- Moscow. Yet it wasn’t really close at all (metaphorically) and transport shut down was only possible the way OKH originally wanted all along.

Below are the maps. First is synoptic map with overview of 4 main directions I mention in thread. Then there are close up maps with more details with attached number of direction each one depicts. Finally maps are in original in tempered state.

by Luka Bilić