After a summer and autumn of devastating defeats at the hands of the Wehrmacht, the Red Army was finally able to inflict a major setback on Hitler’s forces just nine miles from Moscow itself. A combination of the Russian winter, Germany’s poor preparations and hardened Siberian divisions saw the first major German retreat of the war in December 1941.Explaining History is funded through advertising and donations. For more content, journalism and ideas, visit the Explaining History Patreon page he
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Explaining History Podcast
For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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