The Soviet troops in the Bryansk pocket in Russia were eliminated (50,000 captured), while the Vyazma pocket was within days of the same fate. In Berlin, Germany, Adolf Hitler ordered that the Soviet capital of Moscow was to be enveloped, not attacked directly. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Joseph Stalin briefed 23 senior Soviet military and civilian officials between 1530 and 1815 hours on a plan to evacuate the city in an orderly fashion; he ordered four theater groups (Lenin State Theater, Maxim Gorkiy Artistic Academic Theater, Little Academic Theater, and Vakhtangov Theater) to be evacuated first
