During the bitterly cold winter of 1941-1942, German infantrymen froze to death in the endless Soviet snowfields near the capital of Moscow during the Battle of Moscow in World War II.

 　　During the bitterly cold winter of 1941-1942, German infantrymen froze to death in the endless Soviet snowfields near the Soviet capital of Moscow. The German soldiers who died from the cold accounted for a significant percentage of the 120,000 German soldiers who invaded Moscow. The Wehrmacht was forced to invade unprepared, underdressed, and undernourished for the brutal winter that lay before them.

　The Battle of Moscow, which broke out on September 30, 1941, saw the first snow fall on October 7, which quickly melted and turned roads and open spaces into a quagmire. The German armored groups slowed considerably and the Soviets were able to retreat and regroup. The German Central Army Group no longer had the reserve forces to counter the Soviet forces. In a chain of bloody battles, they were forced to retreat up to about 400 km. The German front was restored in April 1942. 

　　 On December 2, the Wehrmacht invaded at its closest approach, about 30 km from the Kremlin in the capital, Moscow, and from early December 1941, the relatively mild temperatures in Russia dropped to 20 to 50 degrees below zero. German soldiers who did not have winter clothing and German vehicles were frozen. The number of cases of frostbite among German soldiers reached more than 130,000. Loaded artillery shells were cleared of frozen grease and vehicles were heated for hours before use On December 5, 1941, Soviet counteroffensive operations were launched on the Kalinin front On December 5, the Axis offensive in Moscow was halted and the Wehrmacht invasion stopped On December 8, Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to take defensive positions on all front and ordered the Wehrmacht into a defensive posture on all fronts.

   On January 7, 1942, the Wehrmacht suffered its first major defeat and withdrew approximately 100-250 km from Moscow. At that point, exhausted and worn out, the Soviet forces temporarily halted their offensive; total casualties from September 30, 1941 to January 7, 1942 were estimated at 248,000 to 400,000 for the Wehrmacht and 650,000 to 1,280,000 for the Soviet Red Army.