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“In the battles near Moscow, Hitler’s “blitzkrieg” plan was finally buried, a false legend about the invincibility of the “Hitler’s” army was debunked in front of the whole world.It was near Moscow that the dawn of our future Victory over German fascism began.The Battle of Moscow, which included a complex set of battles and operations of a different nature, unfolded over a vast territory and continued uninterruptedly during the fall of 1941 and the winter of 1941-1942.On both sides, more than 2 million people, about 2.5 thousand tanks, 1.8 thousand aircraft and over 25 thousand guns and mortars simultaneously participated in it.By the nature of the events that took place, the battle of Moscow, as you know, consisted of two periods - defensive and offensive.It was supposed to destroy and flood the city with all its inhabitants, and then fill it with sand and build a monument of glory of the German invincible army in red center of an empty massif. The stone was even transported in a convoy along with equipment to Moscow.By the beginning of the Battle of Moscow, the German command had concentrated more than a millionth Army of the Center group, over 14 thousand guns and mortars, 1700 tanks, 950 aircraft, or 42% of the people, against the three Soviet fronts — the Western, Reserve, and Bryansk acting in the Moscow direction. % of tanks, 45% of guns and mortars from the total on the Soviet-German front.By the beginning of the offensive of fascist troops in Moscow, the following balance of forces had developed:The representatives of the Third Reich did not doubt their complete, truly “hurricane” success with their operation of a general offensive against Moscow and the thorough preparation of troops, which is why the operation was called “Typhoon”.As of October 1, 1941, there were 213 rifle, 30 cavalry, 5 tank and 2 motorized divisions, 18 rifle, 37 tank and 7 airborne brigades in the army in the army. [4] The forces were far from equal. In addition, part of the military equipment was outdated designs. Therefore, it was so hard on the battlefields in the Moscow Region in the first defensive stage during the Moscow battle.The Nazis introduced groups of 30-50 tanks, their infantry marched in thick chains, supported by artillery fire and aerial bombardments. Heavy fighting ensued in the Volokolamsk and Mozhaisk directions, which represented the shortest paths to Moscow.It was in the defensive course of the fighting that many of our defenders of the Fatherland were killed on the approaches to Moscow, who at times, precisely at the cost of their lives, tried not to miss the enemy to the capital.Their heroic resistance was widely covered in the media.The command of the troops explained the decisions of the State Defense Committee on the introduction of a state of siege in the capital and its suburbs. On October 14, the Krasnoarmeyskaya Pravda newspaper on the Western Front noted in an editorial: “There is a great battle day and night in which the enemy has put everything at stake. It's about life and death! But a great nation cannot die, and in order to live, one must block the path of the enemy, one must win! ” And the troops understood this. Mass heroism, which history did not know equal, created the basic prerequisites for the subsequent counterattack near Moscow.In the last days of October 1941 G.K. Zhukov proposed without a break in defensive battles to go on the counterattack. The troops were tasked with defeating the shock forces of the Center army and eliminating the immediate threat to Moscow.On December 6, units of the Red Army launched a counterattack on the advance groupings of Nazi forces north and south of the capital. The offensive unfolded on a strip of 1000 km, from Kalinin to Yelets. Soviet troops attacked an equal in number enemy. In the first three days, they advanced 30-40 km. The enthusiasm of the advancing made up for the lack of technology. The enemy held steady, but the lack of preparedness for conducting military operations in winter conditions and the lack of reserves affected it. Hitler, having signed in December a directive on the transition to the Soviet-German front to defense, blamed failures on the military command and, having removed some of the top army generals from their posts, took over the high command. But this did not lead to significant changes. The offensive of the Red Army continued, and by the beginning of January 1942 the enemy was driven back from Moscow by 100-250 km. Our soldiers liberated Kalinin and Kaluga.Thus, the immediate threat to Moscow was eliminated. This was the first major defeat of the Nazis in World War II, which meant the complete collapse of the plan of "lightning war."So, in December 1941, a significant event took place near Moscow: for the first time in World War II, the Red Army troops stopped, and then inflicted a major defeat on the previously invincible German army and, throwing it 100-250 km from Moscow, removed the threat to the Soviet capital and Moscow Industrial District. This success was undeniable and extremely important, and its significance went far beyond the scope of a purely military task.This is the main event of the Second World War, which determined a turning point towards the anti-Hitler coalition.The importance of the Moscow battle was also in the fact that Moscow was and still remains the main economic, political and cultural center of the country. The capture of Moscow would instantly paralyze the whole country, which would entail Hitler's victory.The main production center of the country was also in Moscow throughout the war. For example, out of 100 aircraft, 70 were launched in Moscow. Of the 4 shells, 3 are Moscow shells. Large-scale production was not a secret for Germany, therefore, this reason became one of the decisive factors in the creation of Operation Typhoon.During the Battle of Moscow, the largest number of manpower gathered at the walls of the capital than ever anywhere else throughout the Second World War. There were 2.7 times more people than the total number of soldiers for the entire 1st World War.The Moscow Battle was, so to speak, the very bullet in the pistol when playing Russian Roulette. Someone could be lucky, but someone could not. In the situation applicable to the Battle of Moscow, these debaters were Germany and the USSR. Here, just as in the game, the question was decided about who would retain his power: Germany or the USSR.Victory in the Moscow Battle carries, besides strategic, special spiritual significance. The defeat of the Nazis near Moscow raised the morale of the army, which later invaluable helped in the victory at Kursk and in Stalingrad.The operational and strategic significance of the Moscow battle is that the best fascist groups and armies, both infantry and tank, were defeated near Moscow.Near Moscow, the foundation was laid for the creation of the New Red Army, which reorganized the remaining disparate units, already tested in battles and with experience of battles, in which there were separate victories in the general counteroffensive.Thanks to the victory near Moscow, the legend about the invincibility of the fascist army was dispelled, the national liberation movement began to grow. This finally laid down the spirit of the fascist troops, which entailed primarily moral, and then physical disintegration.Thus, it would not be an exaggeration to say that in its entire centuries-old history the role of Moscow has never before become so enormous, significant, and responsible as in the war against fascist Germany. It was she who was the last frontier on which the fate of the Fatherland was decided. The unforgettable words “Russia is great, and nowhere to retreat, behind Moscow” reflected the very essence of that harsh and dramatic time, when almost all of Europe fell under the fifth Nazi Germany, when the enslaved peoples lived only in the hope that the Nazi hordes, bringing death, bondage, destruction and threatening the existence of world civilization will be stopped and reversed. This epoch-making historical event for the first time in the entire Second World War took place near Moscow. It was here that the German army lost its halo invincible. At the walls of Belokamennaya the dawn of our Great Victory in the Great Patriotic War began.In general, all the meanings of the Moscow Battle are well known, but I would like not only to list them, but to reveal some of them.I will dwell on the fact that, once again, the capture of Moscow would instantly paralyze the whole country, which would entail Hitler's victory. It is precisely due to the fact that Moscow was not surrendered until the moment when, due to a number of circumstances (reinforcements, equipment), the organization of a counteroffensive became possible. Thus, defensive battles at the approaches to Moscow acquire special significance and sound in the general context of the Moscow Battle.”Битва под Москвой и ее значение

There are a couple of elements of Fred Paul’s otherwise excellent answer I would like to expand on.As Paul noted, generous Canadians in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland did their best to receive and comfort tens of thousands of American travellers stranded when their cross-Atlantic flights were ordered to land at the closest airport, after 9–11. What Paul didn’t note was that George W. Bush snubbed Canada, again, when he gave speeches thanking other nations for their support. He explicitly thanked many nations, even little tiny Pacific nations, whose only support had been a telegram. He did not thank Canada. He did not thank Canada, for about five years.There had been a long tradition that newly elected American Presidents first foreign visit was always made to Ottawa. Bush visited Vicente Fox, in Mexico instead. He didn’t visit Ottawa until 2006. When he did he gave a long belated and totally inadequate thank you.The other element I wanted to expand on was the rescue of the dozen or so Americans who escaped capture in Iran in 1979. Some commentators said that director Ben Affleck’s script reduced the heroic Canadian ambassador role to little more than a concierge. I kind of expected the film to take that kind of liberty.I read the flickr page of the US embassy in Canada, as all the photos posted there are in the public domain, and can be freely re-used. Shortly after Argo came out they published photos from an event they hosted, where they brought one of the rescued diplomats to Toronto, to meet one of the Canadian diplomats who helped rescue him. They then spent some time addressing poli-sci students at the University of Toronto.The US diplomat said something I found really remarkable. The film has a very tense fifteen minutes at Tehran’s airport, as the Iranian guards have implemented very tight security controls. He said not only was the airport security much less tight than portrayed in the film, he said he went through tighter security checks on the previous days flight to Toronto, than he did when leaving Tehran.Finally, an element not mentioned here, so far. After Pearl Harbor some US planners argued that since the Japanese Navy could close the sea-lanes between the Continental US and Alaska, a land link was required to connect Alaska to the lower 48.Canada made land available. US seabees and other combat engineers built what became known as the Alaska Highway. The US military maintained these troops in military bases, built along the highway’s route. Disturbingly, rather than acting like troops billeted in bases in a friendly nation, as US troops did when billeted in the United Kingdom, the troops building the Alaska Highway treated their local portion of Canada as occupied territory.This is said to be the primary reason Ottawa authorized the St Roch to attempt to cross the Northwest Passage. It wasn’t defending Canada’s Northern Sovereignty against Nazi Germany. Rather it was a symbolic measure to defend Canada’s Northern Sovereignty against an anticipated US annexation.I am going to add two more elements to my answer. The Canadian Coast Guard vessel sent to help Louisiana, following Hurricane Katrina, couldn’t proceed at the same speed as the RCN vessels, because, as an icebreaker it was designed to count on cooling its engine by traveling through icy water, and the Gulf Stream was too darned warm. However, of all the Canadian vessels, it probably turned out to be of the most use. After the evacuees had been found, and taken care of, there was still months of work restoring navigation buoys, and clearing debris — stuff the RCN crews weren’t trained for, and which the CCG crew were. It remained down there for months. File:CCG Sir William Alexander.jpgI will add an element where Buffalo, New York aided Port Colborne, Ontario. Very small Port Colborne is the southern end of the Welland Canal, part of the St Lawrence Seaway. There is, or was, a large complex of grain elevators there, and in the early 1960s there was a massive fire in that complex, one beyond the ability of local fire departments to defeat. The Buffalo Fire Department loaned their fireboat, the historic Edward Cotter. It had to be escorted, since it had not been built with any navigation equipment, This is said to be the first time a fireboat crossed an international border, to help out a neighbour. The Cotter’s powerful pumps had the fire under control in a few hours. Thanks Buffalo!

Should Israel have responded differently to Hamas' attempt to overrun the Gaza border?I freely admit I am not a military expert. I’m just a moderately well-read civilian amateur scholar of the ancient and modern Near East, a trained anthropologist, and a practicing trial lawyer. Oh, and also an avid amateur fan of military history and aviation history.TL;DR: the short answer is, no other approach to the actual constellation of threats that the IDF was facing during the several-weeks-long recent border-overrun riots (and, I’m glad OP recognized that ongoing event for what it is, rather than disingenuously calling them “innocent protests”) would have been nearly as effective, AND any other approach would have put Israelis more at risk.The burden is on anyone suggesting a better alternative to actually come up with one, and to defend why it fulfills the mission requirements at least as well as the path the IDF actually chose for its rules of engagement here, without increasing the danger to IDF troops OR to Israeli civilians living a short walk away from that border. I would be thrilled if there were a better way; but doubt there is.Let’s look at the facts on the ground, and what the IDF actually faced. Put aside the tens (or hundreds) of thousands of Gazans who remained the required distance away from the border security fence, who did not present a threat, and who were not — in the least — targeted by the IDF. These Gazans knew full well that they could rely on the fact the IDF was not going to carpet-bomb their massed assembly with napalm, the way Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies have done to (Sunni Muslim) Palestinians in Syria; and was not going to indiscriminately machine-gun masses of civilians engaged in an innocent, truly nonviolent act of protest away from the security area, in Gazan territory, which was of no concern to the IDF. None of those people who stayed where it was designated as safe to protest, and behaved themselves, got hurt.Rather, the IDF’s fear — well-grounded, as it turns out — was that the internationally-recognized and -condemned terrorist group, Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip with an iron fist, would embed handfuls of actual terrorists within these multitudes of innocent protesters, and would use the smoke, confusion, and milling activity near the border security fence as an intentional cover for repeated, sneaky attempts to actually destroy or breach the security fence, destroy or disable security cameras and other sensors along the fence, and find a way for these armed terrorists — armed with everything from rocks and knives to Molotov cocktails, more sophisticated military-grade chemical explosives, and guns of several kinds — to surge across the border in significant numbers, evade the IDF soldiers trying to prevent such an incursion, and run toward Israeli civilian communities, some at less than one kilometer from the border, where they would use their weapons, or their bare hands, to kill, injure, or capture as many Israeli civilians as possible, before being stopped (“martyred”) by the IDF or other Israeli defenders.Let’s be clear: Hamas’ stated goal — openly and proudly — was to kill Israeli civilians.This was not an idle boast. It’s what Hamas does. They have killed hundreds of innocent Israelis in the past, including families driving by in cars pelted with stones, infants and mothers stabbed in their sleep in their own beds, elderly men in a synagogue at prayer, celebrants at a wedding or holiday festival, passengers on buses, and customers at pizza parlors and other public places where happy civilians congregate.from Hamas’ point of view, the border incursion attempts were, operationally, the exact parallel of what Hamas sought to do with its terror tunnels that it had built, and is still building, from points within Gaza, under the border between Gaza and Israel, deep into Israeli territory, where, at moments when least expected, mobs of terrorists were intended to burst forth from the exits of those tunnels within Israel territory, and seek out Israeli civilians to kill, maim, or capture. Those tunnels, like the attempted border incursions, presented a real threat which Israel’s government would have been suicidally foolish to ignore.The IDF was tasked with preventing such slaughter of Israelis from happening, again.This they did, and did well, as proven by the fact that no Israelis — neither civilians nor soldiers — were hurt at any point in this operation.How did the IDF do it? Well, I’m not privy to their actual rules of engagement, or to the intelligence sources or methods they used, but a lot can be figured out just by applying rational behavior-modification theory to the problem of how to get people to stop doing something you want them not to do.Yes, you read that right. There is no difference between the theory applicable to military deterrence, containment, and threat removal, on the one hand, versus the psychological techniques that have been proven to work in dealings between parents and temper-tantruming toddlers, or between school administrators and delinquent, disruptive students, or between event organizers and clueless mobs of people coming to an event, except in the importance of the issues being contested, and the tools which are available to use to protect those issues. But, the principles are the same; we are all human, we are all (mostly) wired the same, and we respond to stimuli pretty much the same.So. With large masses of protesters expected on the Gaza side of the border, the first and most important task of the IDF was to cordon off the forbidden area by appropriate signs and markers, and thereby make it clear to Gazans one and all, that they would be unmolested by the IDF if they remained at least a safe distance from the final border fence, and could protest all they want, outside of that forbidden zone, but that any attempts to break into and enter that forbidden zone would be met with necessary force, up to and including deadly force.That notice was given, not only by the obvious presence of barbed-wire barriers, signs, security cameras, and other common indicia that this was a forbidden area, but also by dropping of leaflets over the crowds from drones, use of social media and public mass media, and many other channels. I believe it fair to say that it is highly unlikely any of the Gazans gathered for the “protest” riot did not know that Israel demanded they keep away from the forbidden border zone, and that there could be deadly consequences if the Gazans did not adhere to those rules.Most of the Gazans present did stay the requisite distance away; they valued their lives. No further action by IDF was necessary to keep those people out of harm’s way, other than the many notices they had been given. Please keep that in mind; that was what any reasonable “protesters” are expected to do at any protest in any country anywhere in the world — stay within the zone designated for the protest to occur. Even in a purely civilian context, within a given country, NOT at an international border between two entities that are in fact STILL TECHNICALLY AT WAR with one another (since 1948, with no peace agreement yet), and dealing with PURELY CIVILIAN and truly UNARMED protesters who are NOT enabling terrorism by serving as “cover” for armed, violent individuals mixed into their crowd, even the most liberal of Western democracies will place reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions on civil protests. Even the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution permits this. I mention all of the above only to indicate that the portion of the “protest march” that DID comply with these eminently reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions set by the IDF (don’t cross the preliminary barbed wire, don’t use any weapons, don’t attempt to damage or breach the final security fence) were allowed to protest, without a hitch.But, as expected, Hamas stirred up a sufficient number of hotheaded terrorists, as well as martyrdom-inclined women and children willing to act as human shields to accompany them, to actually enter the forbidden border zone, past the initial line of barbed-wire fencing, and even approach the final border security fence that stood between them and wide-open Israeli territory. And, once there, the terrorists among them would, at various random times throughout each day-long session of this weeks-long event, make a sudden “jink” or “move” that would threaten the border security fence. This meant that the IDF could not “doze off” and take a breather just because things looked “calm” for the moment on the other side of the fence; these were the opportunities that the Hamas terrorists were waiting for, to try to dash across the border. So, the IDF stakeout units had to remain vigilant, throughout the day-long protest.The second line of cordoning and riot control, in this instance as is also common in riot situations even in democracies, worldwide, is use of tear gas and other non-lethal “herding” tools to make it extremely unpleasant for people to remain in the areas which the authorities want them to vacate, and to go somewhere else — in this case, to retreat behind the designated “safe” lines, behind which — not to put too fine a point on it, as it bears repeating — nobody in Gaza was in danger, whether they were engaged in the protest, selling lemonade to the crowds, taking pictures or notes of the event as journalists, acting as medics, or doing literally anything else. They were only in danger if they went into the forbidden border zone. Which, I forgot to point out yet, is actually in Israeli territory; yes, the final border security fence was intentionally set back away from the actual border, by Israel, for just that reason; it is not a “hair-trigger” no-warning situation when Gazans get close enough to be in danger; by the time they got there, they had to have known that they were already well beyond the edge of where they were permitted to be.And this went on, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.People should be praising the IDF’s restraint in using deadly force to restrain such incursions, if only some 60 people were killed by live fire on the Monday “Naqba day” events, the riot’s most deadly day so far. And of those, some 50 were proudly acknowledged by Hamas to have been actual Hamas terrorist members.I was at the Gaza border, we did all we could to avoid killinghttps://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/i-said-israel-should-be-ashamed-of-its-actions-on-the-gaza-border-now-i-am-the-one-who-is-ashamed-1.464233That is really the long and the short of it. The IDF did their job, preventing a cross-border incursion by murderous Hamas terrorists which was indeed a real risk, and which could have led to slaughter of Israeli civilians if they had let it happen through laxity, inattention, or misplaced “proportionate” methods that would not have been sufficient to deter suicidally-inclined homicidal terrorists from reaching their goal.Nor is it any criticism of Israel or the IDF to say that not enough Israelis died in the incidents to make it “proportionate” to use such force. That kind of ghastly scorekeeping is insanely out of place when the proper goal of the IDF in this instance was to prevent any harm to Israeli civilians (or to themselves), at whatever it might cost to the people trying to kill them, while using reasonable restraint to avoid undue collateral damage among the enemy. At this, they succeeded.Nor would less-lethal means, such as rubber bullets, have worked. Those are only a short-range solution to small-scale riots where the anti-riot forces are trying to disperse a crowd that is threatening the peacekeepers, and is not a useful way to prevent border incursions from occurring within large masses of people, hundreds of yards away from the border defenders. Nor could the IDF have stationed themselves closer to the final border fence, without both (A) endangering themselves needlessly, by exposing themselves to slung rocks, Molotov cocktails, and small-arms fire from the Gaza side, and (B) requiring a much larger IDF force to be present, since the swept area that each sniper nest could adequately cover would be far smaller if they were closer to the border.I’m sure that, for the peacenik Israel-haters who may be reading this, it all sounds coldly rational and calculated in its assessment of use of deadly force. Well, it is.That’s what rules of engagement are supposed to be. WE (and by “we,” I mean the civilized world) WANT the military commanders on all sides not to be crazed, shoot-from-the-hip cowboys, but to think things through beforehand, calmly and dispassionately, and to provide standing orders to the troops at the front which will best carry out their rational, valid military objectives without unduly endangering the IDF soldiers themselves, the enemy’s non-combatant civilians, or the Israeli civilians that the IDF is sworn to protect and whose safety and security is their ultimate goal, even if that means putting themselves in harm’s way, as soldiers anywhere know they may have to do.But that means it is also nonsensical for Israel-bashers to claim that the well-equipped, well-trained soldiers of the IDF had no reason to be “afraid” of “protesters” with rocks, knives, bottles full of gasoline, and paper kites as their “only” weapons, throwing themselves upon the border security fence. The IDF was not “afraid” of these death-cult maniacs; but they were doing their job, of protecting the non-involved Israeli civilians who depended on the IDF to keep homicidal terrorists from stabbing them and their children wherever the terrorists could find a Jew to murder. And that prospect was very real.The whole history of progress in warfare has been away from hand-to-hand, army-facing-army, one-on-one combat, as though it were a ghoulish sporting event played by the Marquess of Queensbury’s rules, toward use of “stand-off” weapons, tactics, and systems that permitted a military force to control, cordon off, or if needed, decimate an enemy from afar while incurring minimal personal risk of injury to themselves, OR to the civilians of their own country whom they were tasked to protect.THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT; in fact, such deterrence, the recognized effect of an OVERWHELMING superiority in tactics, weapons, and training by one side, is the most effective way to PREVENT wholesale slaughter and PROLONGED wars which only increase the damage done to both sides. The concept of “shock and awe” got a lot of bad press after the U.S. use of that term, with unwarranted hubris, in the Iraq wars, partly due to lack of an effective exit strategy; but that should not diminish the value of the concept of a commander’s ability to (A) maintain control over the entire battlefield situation, (B) identify the actual threats as they appear, (C) zero in on those threats to deal with them surgically and effectively, both to eliminate that threat and to deter others; and (D) get out safely with as little battle damage as possible to your own country’s civilians, to your own side’s forces, and to enemy civilians, in that order, while effectively disposing of enemy combatants who present a threat as quickly and efficiently as possible, in accord with the rules of engagement.That’s what a logical, sensible, well-trained, well-equipped, HIGHLY MORAL army would do.Thanks, IDF. You did your job, and did it well.