“Roads to Moscow” by Al Stewart

Al Stewart crammed a whole front line into "Roads to Moscow", a 1973 song from his album Past, Present and Future that follows the German drive into Russia during the Second World War through the eyes of a Russian soldier, one that a source has identified as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The Scottish singer wrote it alone, with John Anthony producing and Mike Stone engineering.

It unfolds like a campaign map, a verse for each stage: the attack that began on 22 June 1941 and the Luftwaffe wrecking Soviet planes on their airfields, the long retreat across Ukraine and the fall of Smolensk, the German push on Moscow, and then winter, with snow and mud bogging the invaders down until they are forced back. It's history told like a novel, sung with a storyteller's patience.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.