The Decision That Cost German High Command Its Shot at Moscow

On 22 June 1941, three German army groups crossed the Soviet border with orders to end the war in a single campaign. By August, the tanks of Army Group Centre were sitting on the highway east of Smolensk, roughly 220 miles from Moscow, with the Red Army still reeling and the best campaigning weather of the year still ahead of them. Then the argument started inside the German high command. Heinz Guderian flew to headquarters to make his case in person, Franz Halder put the same warning in writing, and on 21 August 1941 Hitler overruled both of them. Within weeks the strongest armored force in the German army was being pulled apart and sent in directions nobody at the army headquarters had asked for. This is the full story of the order that shaped the Battle of Moscow months before the first shot was fired outside the city.