Nice thread.
Talleyrands is right on the money.
Andreas is belitteling the effects of the failure of German logistics, ignoring the need to sit fat in Moscow well before the rasputiza comes up, the effects of Soviet resistance and counterattacks (El'nja!), the front gap between AGC and her northern and southern flanks, the complete communication mess up between Hitler/OKW, who always said that Moscow isn't the target and Halder/OKH who more or less ignored Hitler until he finally conviced him to go for Moscow after it was too late.
Kiev was the perfect thing to do (if you leave the hindsight at home) and fully in sync with the inital "Barbarossa" plan to destroy the enemy.
Advancing without regard on logistics and the intact enemy at your overstreched southern flank is a pretty stupid thing to do.
And even if Moscow had been encicled, I wonder which automatism is ending the war in this case. The Soviet side was highly concerned about lossing Moscow´, but had their plans for that case in the drawer.
That's it in short, let's see if the thread is still valid.
Cheers,
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