The Battle for Moscow

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Расставьте события в том порядке, в каком они встречаются в тексте.

· The Romans marched forward. Hannibal troops retired.

· Carthaginian force defeated a Roman army nearly twice its size.

· On his left flank Hannibal deployed his heavy cavalry.

· The heavy cavalry attacked the Romans from the rear.

· The Romans were surrounded.

· Varro ordered his forces to deploy for battle.

· Hannibal canalized and enveloped the Roman troops.

· Hannibal instructed the light cavalry to make a lot of noise.

· Varro planned to use infantry to smash through Hannibal centre.

3.5. Какие знаменитые сражения из истории России вы знаете?

to order – отдавать приказ;

to seize – захватывать;

to launch an offensive – перейти в наступление;

resistance – сопротивление;

reinforcements – подкрепление

1. When and where the battle took place?

2. What were the forces or each side?

3. What were the events in the battle?

4. Who won the battle?

5. What was the significance of the battle?

“When somebody asks me what is the most memorable in the bygone war, I always answer: the Battle for Moscow.”

– Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov

The Moscow battle against the German forces cost the Soviet Army a staggering 650,000 lives. It was seen as a key victory that, along with the 1943 Stalingrad battle, disposed of the myth that the German army was invincible in World War II.

The battle started on Sept. 30 after the German high command, in an aggressive offensive, ordered troops to plow through the city’s defenses from the north and northwest and seize Moscow before the harsh winter cold set in.

Nazi troops moved within 40 kilometers of the Kremlin at the northern edge of Moscow by the end of October.

Many of the city’s residents were evacuated. Those who remained lived with the fear that scarce food supplies would run out or that they would be killed in the bombing raids that took place almost every night.

Factories were shut down.

Looting flourished until city officials issued a decree ordering looters to be shot on sight.

Most of the government was sent to Kuibyshev – now Samara – on the Volga River.

The turning point came on Dec. 5. After two months of fierce resistance and tremendous losses on both sides, the Soviet Army stopped the German offensive in its tracks and, bolstered by reinforcements from Siberia and the Far East, launched a heavy counteroffensive. In less than a month, the Soviet troops had pushed the Germans a safe distance away from Moscow.

“During the first days of December, we felt that the enemy was exhausted and short of forces for a serious offensive toward Moscow,” Zhukov wrote in his memoirs.

Veterans and historians alike marvel to this day that the Nazis’ blitzkrieg failed. Some liken the victory to a miracle because the Soviet defense lines were far from impenetrable.

In one incident that was only documented in post-Soviet years, a German reconnaissance motorcycle battalion managed to drive across city lines into the northern outskirts before being destroyed by a Soviet tank brigade.

Sixty years on, veterans say that it was faith, cold and Stalin’s presence in the Kremlin that saved Moscow.

“If it were not for the frost and the fact that Stalin decided to stay in the capital, the Germans would have been in Moscow,” said retired Colonel Mikhail Yefimov, 80, who resides in Maikop in the southern republic of Adygeya.

He helped patrol the city at the start of the Battle for Moscow and then took part in a battle near Klin to the north.

Seven shiny medals draped across his chest bore testament to his role in World War II. Yefimov said he escaped the Battle for Moscow unscathed. He was, however, severely wounded in a gunfight on the last day of the war, May 8, 1945, as Soviet forces swept into Berlin.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-25