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Good post Janh. It isn't just the cold that is the problem for the Germans. They are at the end of a very tenuous and overloaded supply line to beging with, then suddenly an army that has no snowploughs, no snowhovels, no winter tires and no whatnot finds itself in a winter landscape. It is to a large extent a gigantic supply problem. By spring the had begun to adapt. But even then the sludge and mud would have put a stop to ambitious encirclements.

ORIGINAL: Helpless

It's a bit off-topic, but as a Russian you surely know: have the season transitions changed so much in 70 years?

..some Austrians may know it better [;)] http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/

Indeed [:)] I was told by a Russian guy in Irkutsk that every end of winter/start of spring quite many cars "sink" in the Baikal Lake (as for the drivers: obviously sayonara)... Maximum depth 1.600 meters [X(] So even these guys (obsessed Russian fishermen who should know what they're doing) get things utterly wrong: "will the ice hold up the weight of my car?...". Russian Roulette.

just wanted to make some comments on late winter based on personal experience. I live in Montreal, Canada which has a similar climate to Russia.

Snow will usually accumulate all winter and be at its highest in march. When the snow melts, all the water gets absorbed into the ground which appears solid, but will quickly turns to mush if you walk or drive over it. It usually takes 2-4 weeks of warm weather and sunshine before the ground is dry, so a few weeks of mud after the end of winter would be normal, especially in Russia which had no paved roads.

At my cottage, about 250 km north of montreal, the lake is still frozen solid and you can drive skidoos over it at end of march. The lake ice usually melts from late april to mid-may. It is not unusual to see patches of snow in the woods as late as end of may. We already had our first snowfall at the cottage 10 days ago.

and this is at 45 degrees north in 2011 after decades of global warming. Montreal is at about the same latitude as Sevastopol. Moscow is at 55 degrees north, about 1,000 km north of montreal.