Joe Shearer
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The point of all this is that no external reserves were brought in, not from Mongolia, not from Siberia. While notorious_eagle has taken the wind out of my sails by summarising my second part into one Laconic sentence, it was clearly not time, not in October 1941, to remove troops from the eastern front. Which way the Japanese would jump was still not known. Zhukov had been ordered to halt the German advance on Moscow. His problem was that he had few forces with which to do so. To repeat, not only had the Soviets lost heavily at Minsk and Kiev, losing 43 divisions and 750,000 men, but they had also lost at Vyazhma and Briansk, losing another 500,000 men. A loss of 1,250,000 is not a minor setback. These recent losses outside Moscow were of 64 Rifle Divisions, 11 tank brigades and 50 artillery regiments. Zhukov was left with 900,000 men to defend Moscow.
The dates do not permit this to have been a factor.
Soviet spy Ricahrd Sorge informed Stalin that Japan wont attack Soviet Union from east
The dates do not permit this to have been a factor.