Snow, sludge and mud: The Распутица and my evolution as a military historian

I iz in your winter, stealing all your snow

Like all young, naive history geeks, I was led to believe that the mystical force known as "Russian Winter" was what defeated the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. This "theory" is well supported by third-rate historians and quacks arguing on Youtube videos of Selena Gomez. The idea is naturally rather appealing, seeing as nobody really wants to accept the idea that the greatest military force the world has ever seen could be defeated by a bunch of drunks with rifles by themselves, and it does have some small basis in fact; it was after all the winter that halted the advance in 1941 until the next year.

But this is the point that needs to be made: in 1942 the Wehrmacht continued offensive operations thus proving that winter hadn't effectively destroyed their fighting capacity. Some would point out the fact that the winter did degrade the fighting quality of German forces in the East, especially with regards to armoured forces. I still don't necessarily think this is true, but as this is a blog and not a university essay, I will refrain from arguing points of fact. If you don't like my opinions, bite me.

Now when the young, arrogant military geek in me went to university to begin by caterpillar-like transformation into a military historian, we were told something different about what actually stopped the Wehrmacht. Of course, it was a combination of different factors, but the biggest being.....mud.

Time to get out and push

When the massive amount of snow that falls on the plains and steppes of Russia melts, naturally this creates a massive amount of mud. Now I ask you, how hard is it to get vehicles, even tracked ones, out of this massive mess? There is essentially nothing around for miles apart from mud, mud and more mud. The vehicles that had stopped in the Russian winter all of a sudden found themselves sinking into a massive quagmire from which they would never return.

This change in weather happens around spring time, and all of the huge piles of snow slowly melt, creating a beautiful slushy mess that cars and people alike try to avoid (unsuccessfully). This time of year has a special name in Russian: it's called Распутица (Rasputitsa) and it's generally not the kind of time you want to be hanging around large plains (or cities that reside in plains). While strictly speaking the Rasputitsa only occurs in Western Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine, I have seen more than my fair-share of mud and quagmire, convincing me that it occurs in Kazakhstan too.

Road a la Mud - Karaganda Style

Which leds me very nicely on to my next point, namely why I chose to mention this. In the film Good Will Hunting, there is a scene where Robin Williams (a shit psychiatrist) and Matt Damon (some math-genius idiot) start to discuss how well people can really discuss things that they have never experienced in person but have only read about in books. My whole life I have read about the mystical "Russian Winter" and its accompanying levels of mud and never really experienced it myself. If I had never decided to come here then I probably never would have experienced it at all, and I would probably keep on talking away about how winter and mud and all lovely stuff killed Napoleon, and Hitler, and about a million other people.

Somebody get my BMW, it's time for a drive!

The desolate wasteland of Karganda central park

After experiencing the joys of the Rasputitsa for two days, I can honestly say it's shit. Really shit. There's nothing quite like walking over slowly melting, compacted snow all of the time expecting it to give way underneath you and swallow you whole. Or dancing over puddles of muddy water trying not only to avoid getting soaked but also trying to dodge old Mercs, BMWs and GAZ vans that seem determined to dive straight into the biggest pits. And all of this is in the city where things are not so bad; I would hate to imagine what it is like out in Karaganda's suburbs or the many villages in the Oblast. Welcome to my own muddy hell.

Suddenly I feel a lot of sympathy for the Wehrmacht.