After tanks and aircraft created in the pre-war years disappeared in the flames of the Border and Smolensk battles of June and July 1941, the Red Army had to go through five circles of hell under the blows of Wehrmacht tank wedges. Operations to surround the scale unprecedented in the history of wars followed one after another, and it seemed that nothing could stop the advance of the Nazi army on Moscow. But already in November 1941, the counteroffensive of the Soviet troops near Rostov and Tikhvin followed, and as if by a wave of a magic wand, the military vehicle of the Third Reich stopped with a creak a few dozen kilometers from the Kremlin towers.