Last time we spoke about the continued Soviet counteroffensive. The Red Army, under Zhukov and Rokossovsky, resisted heavy German pressure toward Moscow and Rostov, while STAVKA reshuffled commands to sustain pressure and tie down Army Group Center. A new Volkhov Front under Meretskov was instructed to break through the western Volkhov river line and encircle German forces around Leningrad. In Leningrad, the siege deepened as famine worsened. Food rationing collapsed to near starvation, cannibalism emerged in extreme cases, and NKVD records documented thousands of cannibalism arrests, though mass murder for ration cards remained more common. Despite dire logistics, the city’s Kirov Tank Factory continued producing; about 490 tanks rolled out by December, bolstering defenses. On the German side, Guderian’s forces withdrew under pressure, with navigable lines contracting and leadership friction escalating. In Sevastopol, Manstein intensified the siege even as Kerch landings loomed for a broader Soviet counter-offensive.  This episode is The End of the First Year Well hello there, welcome to the Eastern Front week by week podcast, I am your dutiful host Craig Watson. But, before we start I want to also remind you this podcast is only made possible through the efforts of Kings and Generals over at Youtube. Perhaps you want to learn more about world war two? Kings and Generals have an assortment of episodes on world war two and much more  so go give them a look over on Youtube. So please subscribe to Kings and Generals over at Youtube and to continue helping us produce this content please check out www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. If you are still hungry for some more history related content, over on my channel, the Pacific War Channel you can find a few videos all the way from the Opium Wars of the 1800’s until the end of the Pacific War in 1945.    As the new year approached, the Wehrmacht and the Red Army were locked in brutal combat from the Arctic Circle to the shores of the Black Sea. Millions had already perished in the fighting, and there was no indication of an end in sight. Moscow had been spared from conquest for the year, and the Nazi War Machine had been pushed back onto the defensive. As winter deepened, Stalin’s advisors worked feverishly to assemble plans for the next phase of operations, schemes they hoped would liberate the rest of their beleaguered country. In the meantime, the Red Army continued to press men and materiel against German defenses, hoping for a breakthrough that would end the war. Zhukov and his comrades were not the only enemies the Germans had to contend with. They also faced the increasingly irrational demands of their Führer. And the worsening winter weather continued to take its toll, causing casualties and limiting operations. Both sides were affected by the harsh weather, but many German units remained poorly equipped with cold-weather gear and suffered accordingly. Frostbite cases were recorded for tracking, even as the OKH excluded medical casualties from their accounting. Nevertheless, estimates suggested that as many as 130,000 men became frostbite cases during the December fighting, with varying degrees of severity.   For Army Group North, the paramount issue was keeping Leningrad encircled. To achieve this, Shisselburg had to be held. It formed the end of what was known as the Shisselburg Corridor. The town sat at the mouth of the Neva where it flows into Lake Ladoga. Even at the height of the German advance beyond the Volkhov River, the corridor had never been more than about thirty kilometers wide. The Soviet 54th Army had been battered and driven back, but it managed to hold the southern shore of Lake Ladoga. This prevented the Germans from gaining anything more than a precarious foothold on the lake. Nevertheless, the Germans had demonstrated their defensive skill throughout November and December in the area, fending off several small-scale attacks and two large-scale