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of food were overturned and ransacked. The approach of the Germans induced many to burn their Party cards, and handbills suddenly appeared denouncing communism and the Jews. Stalin’s portrait disappeared from many apartment walls.
    The government acted decisively to quell this premature mutiny. Moscow was pronounced a part of the military zone of operations, a State of Emergency declared. NKVD squads roamed through the city shooting ‘suspects’ with little or no compunction.
    Amidst this spreading disorder the last desperate attempts were made to provide for the capital’s defence. Women, old men and children were herded to the outskirts and told to dig; young men were pressed, some willingly and some not, into workers’ battalions for the defence of the main roads leading into the city proper. In Alexandrov Park, beneath the Kremlin wall, office-workers in suits practised bayonet charges. Commandeered cabs and buses carried regular units westward through the city towards the approaching storm.
    By 14 September the Mozhaysk ‘line’ had been pierced on all the major axes and comprehensively outflanked from the north. Even the beginning of the autumn rains, which for hours, sometimes days, immobilised the German columns, could not stem the tide. Had the Germans been further from the city of decision these setbacks might have weakened their morale, but with Moscow so close it would take more than the odd shower to dampen their determination.
    On the southern flank Guderian’s forces had reached the banks of the Oka river on a front stretching from Kaluga to Serpukhov, and were striking east between Podolsk and Proletarskiy. Only on 15-17 September did problems arise, in the form of an attack by Timoshenko’s still viable Bryansk Front armies in the region of Kirov. But this was a makeshift affair, born of desperation and conducted as such. The charging Red Army units, including cavalry, were cut down in swathes by the motorised troops deployed on Guderian’s trailing flank. For the architect of the panzer arm, up with his spearhead a hundred miles further east, the matter was no more than a passing concern. He was headed for Noginsk, forty miles east of Moscow, and a meeting with Manstein.
    On the northern flank the bridge at Dubna was captured by a coup de main , the defenders mistaking a panzer column led by captured Soviet tanks for retreating Red Army units. Then, with 8th Panzer leading, the Germans moved down the east bank of the Moscow-Volga canal to Yakhroma, before veering east towards Zagorsk to cut the Moscow-Yaroslavl railway. Now only two lines remained open between the capital and the East.
    On the evening of 18 September Zhukov reported to Stalin. The Soviet leader, despite the rumours to the contrary flying round Moscow, was still in the Kremlin. Now Zhukov told him, and Stavka, that the city could not be held, and that he wished to order his remaining forces east to a line Yaroslavl-Ryazan. He was allowed to do so.
    At this meeting Zhukov noticed that Stalin seemed to have recovered his former ‘calm resolution’. Though reluctantly accepting that the Red Army’s preservation was more important than Moscow, the Soviet leader was determined that the struggle should go on within the city limits. The NKVD battalions and the worker units would harass the Germans street by street.
    The situation in the Ukraine was then discussed at length, and it was agreed that no further withdrawals should be made unnecessarily. Only the certainty of encirclement was justification for retreat. It was also decided that Stavka should leave the capital for Gorkiy while it was still possible. The option of surrender was not discussed. The members of Stavka left the meeting at 03.15 on 19 September and went home to pack their bags.
    Three days and six hours later the leading units of 18th Panzer joined hands with the spearhead of 8th Panzer in the industrial village of Elektrostal, four miles south of Noginsk on the