German army pulled back after two of their offensives on Moscow failed and they were facing imminent danger of being encircled and cut off. They didn’t fail for lack of trying, but due to facing superior force at this part of the front.
You mean the way they collapsed when Napoleon took Moscow?
By this time entire factories with all of its machines, tools and workers were moved further East. Moscow ceased being of strategic importance.
Moreover the mass murdering of civilians in areas occupied by German Army had become public knowledge thus making it clear that this is a war for very survival.
Then instead of facing rear insurgency they would face real prospect of full encirclement by professional Russian armies. Russia is too vast of a landmass to allow “single front approach”. Moreover, Germany desperately needed Russian resources and factories to be able to keep its war machine rolling. If they went straight for Moscow and neglected the rest not only would they not secure those resources, but they would continue to produce against them.
It is not about being “more open to Hitler”. Both Ukraine and Belorussia lost millions civilians due to Stalin’s famine and collectivization politics. Stalin was facing a very real prospect of anti-Soviet uprising in these areas and he was extremely afraid that all that needs to happen for him to lose them is just Poland providing weapons. (And Poland was seriously considering it for a time, given that they felt secure in the West due to 1934 pact with Germany as well as after having invaded Czechoslovakia together with Germany and Hungary).
All that Germany needed to do was to give those guys uniforms and guns, and then they could have millions more people going for Moscow, most of them with determination that only those who seek revenge may have.
Instead they just started raping and murdering them by the millions.
Not only reload, MG 42 was extremely overheating, so the operator had several spare barrels and had to switch them quite often during shooting.
This is why I said that BREN/ZB 26 was a different weapon. A soldier was expected to run and gun with BREN (having both semi-auto as well as full auto mode), while MG 42 needed to be mainly stationary due to combination of extreme ammo consumption and extreme overheating.
