The agricultural system in much of the central Russian 'forest zone' (the southern boundary line of which runs about 150 - 200 km south of Moscow, for example) is very different from what prevails further south or in western Europe. The German Wehrmacht found this out the hard way in 1941: preliminary German planning had assumed that their forces could 'live off the land' for most of their rations and horse fodder and thus save shipping space for their stretched logistical apparatus by not shipping either types of food to the front. Came the end of September, and they started their last great offensive on Moscow only to discover that the only crops/foodstuffs left anywhere in the Moscow area were potatoes, turnips and a bit of cabbage: grains were conspicuously not planted in the area, so there were no oats which their heavy draft horses required, no wheat, rye or anything else to make bread out of. By the end of October the average German infantry division had lost up to half of their heavy horses to starvation and could no longer move their artillery forward, and a large percentage of the men in each division were spending a percentage of their time scouring local farms for largely non-existent food. The German officers blamed 'mud' for stopping their Moscow offensive: in fact, it was their own amateurish supply planning and ignorance of the terrain they were invading.
