 Nevertheless, the USSR managed to halt the German advance at the outskirts of Moscow and Leningrad.With spies providing the certain knowledge that Japanese forces in the far east would not attack Siberia, the Soviets were able to transfer large numbers of experienced forces from the far east, and in the Winter of 1941/1942 they used them to counter-attack the German Army Group Centre in front of Moscow.As the army was being defeated and giving up ground in the initial assault, a gigantic operation was staged to move economic capacity from the Western areas that were about to be overrun, to Eastern regions in the Urals and central Asia that were out of reach of the Germans.