What were the major factors? Some suggestions could be the prevalence of horse transport in the German infantry, the lack of winter clothing, the rain in the Fall 1941, soviet reinforcements taken from other fronts, a larger number of Soviet troops than Germany expected, the delaying battles by doomed Soviet forces in other cities. Any other factors? What factors were less important? How has the relatively recent opening of the Soviet archives changed historian's perception of this battle?
Could Hitler have taken Moscow if he had 'focused' his forces on that objective, rather than attacking everywhere in Russia at once? How could the German Army have protected the flanks of the attack if they chose to focus on Moscow?
I understand that Hitler believed the 'Soviet system' would crumble and the country would fall before the winter (hence the lack of winter clothes boots and the like for the infantry). What was the basis for such a prediction? Why was Hitler wrong?
Is this the wrong forum for this question? Too many questions? Has this discussion already happened in the sub before? Thanks! (BTW, I am no 'Nazi apologist', just interested in the area).
The reason why Germany did not capture Moscow was that Hilter deemed that the capture of Moscow was no longer a priority for the Germans after the Battle of Smolensk. The battle was a narrow victory for the Axis. It showed them that blitzkrieg into Moscow would be difficult; especially because they believed that a majority of the Red Army was positioned around the city.
Hilter thought it would be more important to attack military production in Lenningrad and cut off Russia from the oil fields of the Caucasus, even though all of his general staff thought it would be best to take Moscow, which also contains a large military industry. This caused Hilter to order Army Group Center, who was initially responsible for capturing Moscow, to split up and assist capturing Lenningrad to the North and Stalingrad to the south.
Lenningrad survived a siege that lasted over 2 years. Moscow could probably have lasted that long, but it likely would never have even came to that. By the time the Wehrmacht approached Moscow, the logistical situation they were in was terrible because they believed they would strategic freedom of movement in only a few weeks. Because of this, they could not have focused a major attack.
I am not a historian, but David Glantz has many books on the subject of the Western Front of WWII. One of them is “When Titans Clashed.”
Why was the Wehrmacht unable to capture Moscow in '41? You already mentioned most of the most relevant factors, most of them being basic problems with the German campaigns of '41. In no particular order, the Germans failed because of: Truly abysmal intelligence, horrendous weather, sparse and thoroughly unsuitable logistics, thoroughly un-German strategies being forced by geography, and Soviet reinforcements drawn off of the Japanese front.
Abysmal Intelligence - One of the greatest flaws of the Wehrmacht that surfaced time and time again in World War II was its very poor grasp of intelligence work. In this case, Hitler (and more importantly, the German General Staff) did indeed predict that the USSR would fold and collapse with one swift, stiff blow. Multiple times, members of the German General Staff wrote in their war diaries that the Soviets were on their last leg and that the next battle would spell their doom and dissolution. Invariably, they were woefully incorrect, and by the end of the German campaign season, the Wehrmacht had inflicted more casualties in deaths, wounds, and imprisonment / death-in-captivity than they'd estimated the Soviets to have men on the front period.
General Winter - If you look at a map of the Eastern Front in January 1942, you'd be forgiven for thinking it had been drawn by a drunkard with Parkinson's Disease. The front makes no military sense whatsoever, with salients and bulges in the strangest and most precarious of places. The reason for this irregularity is that after the November rains, the weather quite literally froze German divisions in place. All of Germany's wonderful mechanization and all of Germany's less wonderful but equally important supply transport tended to fare very, very poorly in the harsh winter - certainly German logistics were in very poor shape compared with their Soviet equivalents, which leads to...
Unsuitable Logistical Trail - ...a supply conundrum, though one that had been staring them in the face for months. While Hitler and the General Staff sure did think the fighting would be over long before Christmas, that was not the reason they failed to send winter coats to their troops. The real reason is far more mundane: in modern terms, the Wehrmacht was faced with a horrific bandwidth problem from the very start. Gone were the days that an army could subsist on the land it occupied - instead, they were reliant on supplies built in factories in the Rhineland and other industrial centers and stockpiled in supply depots far behind the front. However, there were only so many railway lines heading from German depots to the front lines, and only so many trains to load in Germany and unload in Russia. The choice faced by the Wehrmacht during the entire invasion from Summer onwards could be roughly boiled down to, "We need to send our troops 1) food so they don't starve, 2) coats so they don't freeze, and 3) fuel and ammo so they can advance successfully - Pick 1.5"
Thoroughly Un-German Strategies - You might be thinking that logistics is a problem that should have been evident from the start; if so, then take a minute to follow a brief narrative about the German Way of War: Since the Germans, and the Prussians before them, began making a name for themselves, the Wehrmacht's predecessors had always been surrounded by larger, more powerful enemies who could raise and maintain a far larger army than Prussia or Germany. In response, the German / Prussian tradition emphasized a war of movement, or bewegungskrieg (not Blitzkrieg - that word is an almost completely Western invention, courtesy of sensationalist newspapers). In this war of movement, multiple independent units would maneuver against the enemy and coordinate concentric attacks against the main body of the enemy from multiple directions. In essence, German doctrine emphasized surrounding the enemy and encircling them if possible, then attacking inwards.
Looking at a map of Barbarossa, it should become patently obvious that by advancing eastward, the front line does the opposite of attacking inwards - German forces operated in three different sectors, moving in three different, diverging directions, diluting the Wehrmacht as a whole and spreading their forces precariously thin. As a result, when the thermometers froze and the transmission boxes followed, the German army in front of Moscow numbered a good number of divisions and corps arrayed in a ragged, undisciplined arc. They were organized into a single Army Group, comprised of six armies that had not received reinforcements because the trains were tied up delivering all the fuel and ammunition they'd sucked up through the supply chain.
Soviet (Siberian) Reinforcements - Returning to the first item on this list, the first sign that the Germans had of Soviet reinforcements around Moscow was when the following happened:
29th and 31st Armies attacked the northern side of the Klin salient
30th Army and 1st Shock Army attacked the center of the Klin salient
20th, 16th, and 5th Armies attacked the southern side of the Klin salient
50th Army and a scratch group of mixed cavalry and mechanized forces smashed into Guderian's Panzergruppe at Tula
Much, much more.
A total of 17 mostly-fresh Soviet armies and 2 large cavalry corps, organized into 4 army groups (Fronts in Soviet parlance) smashed into less than half their number of bloodied German defenders in front of Moscow. Many of the Wehrmacht's generals came very close to losing their nerve in the face of the completely unexpected counterattack of fresh Soviet troops. If nothing else on this list spelled the end to German delusions of taking Moscow, this was it.
The simple summation of all these factors is that the Wehrmacht was geared to fight the German way of war - Defeat a large, Western European adversary ([cough] France [cough]) by maneuvering like a madman, marching your troops towards the sound of gunfire, and invariably falling upon the enemy from all directions while supplied by the generous rail systems criss-crossing Western Europe. By picking to fight a war so squarely not in their comfort zone, the Wehrmacht doomed themselves to failure period.
TL;DR: the Wehrmacht was completely unsuited to conflict with the USSR and lost because of multiple factors - primarily winter, horribad logistics, and a massive, undetected Soviet counterattack.
hi! not discouraging anyone from tackling all your questions, but FYI, there was a great related post last month. See here for the thread, which includes links to several more posts
How important was the cold to the defeat of the Nazi war machine in the Soviet Union?