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The Battle for Moscow/The Viazma Pocket

Joe Roberts

       RIP        
The documentary, while very good, doesn't go fully into the Russian blunders which led to the pocket coming about in the first place, yet the story is one of almost unbelievable savagery. One wonders why the Germans, who must have had some idea of how bad the roads were, or would be after the Autumnal Thaw, hadn't assigned at least a hundred thousand men and whatever machinery they could spare, to building roads.



Another almost unbelievable story is the survival of one Red Army soldier's identity form, which he'd filled out, rolled up, and placed in a screw topped Bakelite cylinder issued for the purpose. These weren't airtight so the paper often didn't survive and besides which, the Red Army men superstitiously thought of these forms as, "A pass to the next world," and were thus reluctant to fill them out. This man is one of the few so identified.
 
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