No Further — The Battle for Naro-Fominsk, 20-31 October and 1-3 December 1941

About the authors:

Jack Radey, Military Historian (Eugene, Oregon, USA); radey.zhukov.jack@gmail.com

Charles Sharp, Military Historian (University Place, Washington, USA); ccsfort@earthlink.net

Elena G. Brunova, Dr. Sci. (Philol.), Professor, Department of the English Language, Military Historian, University of Tyumen; egbrunova@mail.ru; ORCID: 0000-0002-8493-5932

Abstract:

This article is a part of a much bigger project. Two of the authors (Jack Radey and Charles Sharp) are writing a book on the fighting west of Moscow from about 9 October to 31 October 1941. Our purpose is to examine why the German offensive against Moscow was stopped by the end of October.

There are no studies in English that convincingly explain this. Our approach is operational and tactical analysis, based on extensive use of Soviet and German archival documents, as well as memoirs, and secondary historical books and articles in all languages. We have found that nearly all the documents are contradictory or omit important information, sometimes deliberately, sometimes because accurate data was lacking.

Our method has been to compare them critically to determine what actually happened. This is challenging work, but we are confident that our analysis explains and clarifies the data from the raw documents. Our conclusions so far point to the outcome of these battles being the result of several factors, the most important being: incompetent German planning and logistics, an absence of clear and obtainable German objectives, and effective Soviet resistance.

This research was done to clarify our understanding of the fighting around Naro-Fominsk and because the Naro-Fominsk fighting reflects these factors in microcosm.

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