"Move it! This stretch of trench had to be finished today, or forget about eating!"
Several Russian soldiers drove over a hundred Moscow civilians to dig trenches on the outskirts of Moscow with hoes, shovels, and other tools. The vast majority of these civilians were the old, the weak, women, and children; the young had already been forcibly conscripted into the military.
After Joseph gave the order, Moscow could only be entered, not left. At Marshal Shaposhnikov's suggestion, the Moscow civilians had no choice but to exchange their labor for the food they needed to survive. They were thrown into the construction of Moscow's defensive system to speed up the building of those fortifications.
The outskirts of Moscow would be turned into defensive positions made up of trenches, barbed wire, and landmines. Defensive works were being built along the streets within the city. The German military's firepower was simply too formidable. Once the German military attacked Moscow, how many of the city's buildings would remain was impossible to say. Therefore, the Russian military was in no hurry to deploy firing positions in those buildings. Once the German military had bombed Moscow into ruins, placing firing positions among the rubble would be far more useful.
After General Zhukov was appointed Moscow Garrison Commander, Marshal Shaposhnikov handed the construction of Moscow's defensive system over to him. After all, as Moscow Garrison Commander, General Zhukov should be the one to build Moscow's defenses from the ground up. That way, in the battles to come, he would be able to command the troops more effectively against the German advance.
This brought misery upon the civilians within Moscow. Nearly every resident of the city took part in constructing Moscow's defensive system, making the construction proceed at an extremely rapid pace.
Of course, there was no