In January 1942 the German army lost the battle for Moscow and a furious Hitler sacked or side-lined his leading generals and appointed himself commander-in-chief of the army. He decided on a bold new plan, focusing his forces on seizing the Soviet oil fields and taking the fuel to supply his own troops. Stalin unveiled his own plan to drive the Germans out of the Soviet Union by launching a huge offensive from Leningrad to the Black Sea. Georgy Zhukov warned him that the Red Army was in no shape to attack, but Stalin banished the former chief of the general staff to the front and took control