Why wasn't Heeresgruppe Nord able to encircle the Soviet Northwestern Front?

[HistoryGeek2019]

Interestingly, the OKW plan for Barbarossa drawn up by Jodl called for Army Group Center to swing north after reaching Smolensk in order to complete the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet forces in the Baltic States. According to David Stahel in his book on Barbarossa, Hitler discussed this with Jodl and intended for such a swing to the north all along, but Halder carefully rephrased the final order for Barbarossa to give Army Group Center the flexibility to drive straight for Moscow, which was Halder's obsession for the entire campaign, in defiance of Hitler's orders to focus on destroying the Red Army in the westernmost regions of the USSR before moving on to "exploitation" objectives such as Moscow and the Donetz basin.

[Aida1]

Interestingly, the OKW plan for Barbarossa drawn up by Jodl called for Army Group Center to swing north after reaching Smolensk in order to complete the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet forces in the Baltic States. According to David Stahel in his book on Barbarossa, Hitler discussed this with Jodl and intended for such a swing to the north all along, but Halder carefully rephrased the final order for Barbarossa to give Army Group Center the flexibility to drive straight for Moscow, which was Halder's obsession for the entire campaign, in defiance of Hitler's orders to focus on destroying the Red Army in the westernmost regions of the USSR before moving on to "exploitation" objectives such as Moscow and the Donetz basin.

Moscow was not obsession. It was an objective to go for in order to provoke a decisive battle with the red army besides the obvious importance of Moscow.

[BDV]

Moscow was not obsession. It was an objective to go for in order to provoke a decisive battle with the red army besides the obvious importance of Moscow.

It did provoke a decisive battle, alright.