The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, between September 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union.

Walther Heinrich Alfred Hermann von Brauchitsch was a German Generalfeldmarschall and Commander-in-Chief (Oberbefehlshaber) of the German Army during the first two years of World War II. Born into an aristocratic military family, he entered army service in 1901. During World War I, he served with distinction on the corps-level and division-level staff on the Western Front.