What was the strategic importance of Moscow to the Soviet Union in Dec 1941?
score:11
Transportation Hub
Moscow was the major railway transport center:
Losing Moscow would have made moving fuel to the already besieged Leningrad even harder.
In this regard, Moscow was even more important than Stalingrad (which controlled the flow of oil from Baku along Volga).
Industrial Center
Before the war, about 30% of Soviet defense industry was in Moscow. Despite evacuations, a lot of it still remained in the city.
Population Center
There were 4-5M people in Moscow, and population is a critical military resource. One of the reasons USSR won despite the losses of 1941/42 was Перманентная мобилизация ("Permanent/Continuous mobilization") that the Soviet leadership learned to practice during the Civil War and again during WW2.
Psychology
Moscow was extremely important to the Soviet "central control" mentality. ("как реки встречаются в море, Так встречаются люди в Москве")
PS. Note that when Napoleon took Moscow in 1812 it was not the capital (and transport and industry were not as important then).
Upvote:2
Moscow was the center of the country. Both geographical and psychological.
Geographical: If you take European Russia (up to the Urals), Moscow is close to the center of this land mass, on a North-South axis, and also East and West. For instance, Moscow is 600 air miles from Archangelsk in the north and 700 air miles from Odessa in the south. It is 750 miles from Lublin in occupied Poland to the west, and 1000 miles from Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinberg).
Most north-south road and rail lines went through Moscow. If the Germans had captured the city, the country would have effectively been split in half, with Leningrad and Archangelsk in the north isolated from the rest of the country in the south. Hitler's stated priorities were 1) Leningrad 2) Donbass and 3) Moscow, but German possession of Moscow would have meant that the fall of Leningrad was just a matter of time.
Pyschological: The Germans eventually occupied 700,000 square miles of the country, versus 1.5 million of for European Russia, that is, almost half. If you add Moscow and its environs to the German "bag," it would have been more than half of European Russia by land area, and more than two thirds by industrial capacity. That would have been a psychological advantage for the Germans, because it would have been a "tipping point" for with more than "half" of European Russia under control, it would have been downhill from there. Also, Moscow (formerly Muscovy) was the "core" from which modern Russia was founded. Take away Moscow, and you take away Russia's "heart."
Actually, the Russians lost more men defending Kiev (about 700,000) than the 534,000 for Moscow in your question. But having lost Kiev, the Soviet Union could not afford to lose Moscow as well.
More post
- 📝 Why were crusaders called "Latins"?
- 📝 How much cheaper were flintlocks than wheellocks?
- 📝 What hard, physical evidence is there that Davy Crockett actually died at the Alamo?
- 📝 How much armor did elephant units wear?
- 📝 Did Frederick Douglass affect British policy during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Did Heydrich actually take orders from Himmler?
- 📝 Would Korea have divided, without the influence of external powers?
- 📝 How were Cumans physically?
- 📝 Was it not clear to the WWI allies that they were over-reaching with the treaty of Sevres?
- 📝 As newly independent countries after WWI, why didn't Baltic states have sovereignty dispute and war each other like other Eastern European countries?
- 📝 Did Marduk-balassu-iqbi help Assur-Danin-Pal?
- 📝 Does O Henry's story "Georgia's Ruling" describe history?
- 📝 Good books on Kievan Rus era?
- 📝 When was the earliest recorded battle with the usage of gunpowder as an offensive weapon?
- 📝 Have the Pyramid Texts been translated into German?
- 📝 What is under the Great Sphinx of Giza?
- 📝 Why Didn't Hitler order an immediate attack on Moscow in August 1941?
- 📝 What are the dates of these panoramas of Paris?
- 📝 Who was Déū Singh Baru, final raja of Nuwakot, Kakani?
- 📝 Which bank was the oldest surviving bank in the world prior to MPS getting that status?
- 📝 When was the idea of a unified India conceived?
- 📝 What were Lord Macartney's original words about Chinese under the Qianlong Emperor's brutal regime in 18th century?
- 📝 Why did Argentina seize South Georgia immediately prior to the Falklands invasion?
- 📝 Were there any recorded accidents in the USSR (after 1945) involving gas pipelines?
- 📝 Where is the Hindu law/instruction of Cremation?
- 📝 How long would it take for a young lady in victorian England to walk this distance?
- 📝 Did Joseph Stalin kill anyone personally?
- 📝 Why did the United States not invade North Vietnam?
- 📝 What is the difference between the union free state and the territories controlled by the federal government?
- 📝 What other war crimes trials, besides those of Nazi war criminals, were held after WWII?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What was the strategic importance of Moscow to the Soviet Union in Dec 1941?
- 📝 What was the ratio women to men after World War 2 in the Soviet Union
- 📝 What determined which companies went to which post-Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union as everything was centralized in Moscow?
- 📝 What was the lowest available population to the Soviet Union in WW2?
- 📝 What kind of heating did Moscow have in the early Soviet Union (1917 - 1930)?
- 📝 What was the strategic importance of Judea?
- 📝 What was the basis for the Nazis to support various ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union and elsewhere over the majority populations?
- 📝 Why did Hitler attack the Soviet Union when he was still busy fighting the United Kingdom?
- 📝 During the breakup of the Soviet Union, on what basis was citizenship granted or withheld for each of the fifteen new republics?
- 📝 What was the internal Soviet reaction to the moon landing?
- 📝 What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
- 📝 What was the role of the Soviet Navy during WWII?
- 📝 What was the ratio of German to Soviet losses on Eastern front during different stages of the war?
- 📝 How close was the Soviet Union to collapsing during WW2?
- 📝 What was the situation of h*m*sexuals in the early Soviet Union?
- 📝 What was the importance of the patrician class in the Roman Empire?
- 📝 What was the ethnic composition of Soviet government?
- 📝 Was the Soviet Union in 1945 seeking to capture German soldiers and civilians, or drive them west?
- 📝 What was the Nove / Millar debate, how is it important to the historiography of the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What was the Soviet role in Syria during the Cold-War?
- 📝 What was the role of the Russian Orthodox church in Soviet Russia?
- 📝 What proportion of the population of Soviet Union were taken into custody by the state during Stalin's time?
- 📝 What was the maximum percent of the Soviet territory that was under Nazi control?
- 📝 Was there a constant 'fear of the bomb' in the Soviet Union and America during the Cold War?
- 📝 What alternate north-south supply routes did the Soviet Union have when the Volga and Stalingrad were under attack?
- 📝 What was the impact of Fischer vs. Spassky 1972 on the relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What was the Soviet reasoning for developing their Airborne Forces (VDV) into a powerful military branch?
- 📝 What are some major military successes the Soviet Union achieved against the Western World?
- 📝 What was the Soviet response to accusations surrounding the Lin Biao incident?
- 📝 What was the Soviet plan to respond to a nuclear first strike post WW 2?