[00:07.26]the many victories they enjoyed led them to believe that anything was possible,that nothing could stand in their way.
[00:15.67]Russia's icy defender was to prove them wrong.
[00:20.22]THE ICY DEFENDER By hlila B.smith
[00:25.29]IN 1812,napoleon Bonapare,Emperor of the French,led, his Grand Army into Russia.
[00:33.49]He was prepared for the fierce resistance of the Russian people defending their homeland.
[00:40.10]He was preprared for the long march across Russian soil to Moscow,the capital city.
[00:46.86]But he was not prepared for the devastating enemy that met him in Moscow -the raw,bitter,bleak Russian winter.
[00:56.53]In 1941,Adolf Hitler,leader of Nazi Germany,launched an attack against the Soviet Uoion,as Russia then was called.
[01:07.76]Hitler's military might was unequaled.His war machine had mowed down resistance in most of Europe.Hitler expected a sort campaign
[01:19.99]but,like Napoleon before him,was taught a painful lesson.The Russian winter again came to the aid of the soviet soldiers.
[01:30.93]Napoleon'Campaign
[01:33.81]In the spring of1812,Napoleon assembled an army of six hundred thousand men on the borders of Russia.
[01:42.11]The soldiers were well trained,efficient,and well equipped.This military force was called the Grand Army.
[01:50.71]Napoleon,confident of a quick victory,predicted the conquest of Russia in five weeks.
[01:58.31]Shortly afterwards,Napoleon's army crossed the Neman River into Russia.
[02:04.03]The quick,decisive victory that Napoleon expected never happened.To his surprise,
[02:11.68]the Russians refused to stand and fight.Instead,they retreated eastward,burning their crops and homes as they went.
[02:20.59]The Grand Army followed,but its advance march soon became bogged down by slow moving supply lines.
[02:28.24]In August,the French and Russian armies engaged at Smolensk,in a battle that left over ten thousand deal on each side.
[02:37.31]Yet,the Russians were again able to retreat farther into Russian territory.Napoleon had won no decisive victory.
[02:45.83]He was now faced with a crucial decision.Should he continue to pursrue the Russian army?
[02:52.20]Or should he keep his army in Smolensk for the approaching winter?
[02:56.72]Napoleon took the gamble of pressing on to Moscow,448kilometers away.On September7,1812,
[03:07.04]the French and Russian armies met in fierce battle at Borodino,112kilometers west of Moscow.By nightfall,
[03:17.41]thirty thousand French and forty-four thousand Russians lay dead or wounded on the battlefield.
[03:24.36]Again,the Russian army retreated to safety.Napoleon had a clear path to Moscow,but the occupation of the city
[03:34.13]became an empty victory.The Russians fled their capital.Soon after the French arrived,a raging fire destroyed two-thirds of the city.
[03:45.12]Napoleon offered a truce to Alexander I,but the Russian czar knew he could bide his time:
[03:52.44]"We shall let the Russian winter fight the war for us."
[03:56.77]Napoleon soon realized he could not feed,clothe ,and quarter hts army in Moscow during the winter.
[04:04.04]In October 1812,he ordered hes Grand Army to retreat from Moscow.
[04:09.99]The French retreat turned into a nightmare.From fields and forests,the Russians launched hit-and-run attacks on the French.
[04:19.08]A short distance form Moscow,the temperature had already drppped to minus 4degrees Celsius.On November 3,
[04:27.73]the winter's first snow came Exhausted horses fell dead in their tracks.Cannon became stuck in the snow.
[04:36.90]Equipment had to be burned for fuel.Soldiers took ill and froze to death.
[04:43.27]The French soldiers dragged on,leaving the dead along every mile.
[04:48.84]As the Russian army was gathering its strength,the French had to flee Russia to avoid certain defeat.
[04:55.68]At the Berezina River,the Russians nearly trapped the retreating French by burning the bridges over the swollen river.
[05:03.20]But Napoleon,by a stroke of luck,was able to build two new bridges.Thousands of French soldiers escaped,
[05:12.14]but at the cost of fifty thousand dead.Once across the Berezina,the tattered survivors limped toward Vilna.
[05:20.78]Of the six hundred thousand soldies Napoleon had led into Russia,less than one hundred thousand came back.
[05:28.65]The weakened French army continued its retreat westward across Europe.Soon,Britain,Austria,Russia,and Prussia formed a powerfull alliance
[05:38.91]and attacked these stragglers.In March1814,Paris was captured.Napoleon abdicated and went into exile,his empire at an end.
[05:49.86]Hitler's Invasion
[05:52.42]By early1941,Adolf Hitler,leader of Nazi Germany,had seized control of most of Europe.
[05:54.98]To the east of Hitler's German empire was the Soviet Union.On June22,1941,without a declaration of war,
[06:03.18]Hitler began an invasion of the Soviet Union that was the largest military land campaign in history.Confident of a quick victory,
[06:13.37]Hitler expected the campaign to last nolonger than three months.He planned to use the blitzkrieg,or"lightning war,"
[06:23.87]tactics that had defeated the rest of Europe.The invasion had three broad thrusts:against Leningrad and Moscow and through the Ukraine.
[06:44.90]Caught off guard by the invasion,Soviet leader Joseph Stalin instructed the Russian people to "scorch the earth"
[06:53.91]in front of the German invaders.Farms and factories were burned,destroyed,or rendered useless.During the first ten weeks of the invasion,
[07:01.17]the Germans pushed the front eastward,and the Russians suffered more than a million casualties.
[07:08.41]In the north,the Germans closed in on Leningrad.Despite great suffering,however,the people of Leningrad refused to surrender.
[07:18.31]As the battle of Leningrad dragged on into winter,the city's situation became desperate.As food ran out,
[07:26.90]people died from hunger and disease.By the middle of the winter of1941-1942,
[07:35.47]nearly four thousand people starved to death every day.Close to one million people died as a result of the siege.
[07:45.03]In the center of Russia,Hitler's goal was the capture of Moscow.Because the Germans had anticipated a quick victory,
[07:53.65]they had made no plans for winter srpplies.October arrived with heavy rains.
[08:00.60]"General Mud"slowed down the movement of the Germans' lightning attack.
[08:06.82]As Hitler's armies drew closer and closer to Moscow,
[08:11.49]an early,severe winter settled over the Soviet Union,the harshest in years.
[08:18.68]Temperatures dropped to minus 48degrees Celsius.Heavy snows fell.
[08:25.73]The German soldiers,completely unprepared for the Russian winter,froze in their light summer uniforms.
[08:34.25]The German tanks lay buried in the heavy snowbanks.The Russian winter brought the German offensive to a halt.
[08:43.00]By the summer of1942,Hitler had launched two new offensives.In the south,the Germans captured Sevastopol.
[08:52.72]Hitler then pushed east to Stalingrad,a great industrial city that stretched for48kilometers along the Volga River.
[09:02.12]Despite great suffering,Soviet defenders refursed to give up Stalingrad.
[09:08.31]In November1942,the Russians launched a counterattack.With little or no shelter from the winter the winter cold in and around Stalingrad,
[09:18.52]German troops were further weakened by a lack of food and supplies.Not until January1943 did the Germans
[09:28.37]give up their siege.Of the three hundred thousand Germans attacking Stalingrad,only ninety thousand starving soldiers were left.
[09:38.95]The loss of the battle for Stalingrad finally rurned the tide against Hitler.
[09:44.83]The German victories were over,thanks in part to the Russian winter.
[09:50.79]During1943 and 1944,the Soviet armies pushed the German front back toward the west.In the north,
[10:00.24]the Red Army broke the three-year siege of Leningrad with a surprise attack on January15,1944.Within two weeks,
[10:10.95]the heroic survivors of Leningrad saw their invaders depart.By March1944,the Ukraine farming region was again in Soviet hands.
[10:22.81]On May9,1944,Sevastopol was liberated from the Germans.The Russians were now heading for Berlin.
[10:32.61]For Hitler,the invasion of the Soviet Union had turned into a military disaster.For the Russian people,
[10:42.25]it brought unspeakable suffering.The total Soviet dead in World WarⅡreached almost 23 million.
[10:52.33]Russia's Icy Defender
[10:54.97]The elements of nature must be reckoned with in any military campaign.Napoleon and Hitler
[11:02.39]both underestimated the severity of the Russian winter.Snow,ice,and freezing temperatures took their toll on both invading armies.
[11:12.00]For the Russian people,the winter was an icy defender.
[11:16.86]in the case of stand/get/be in the way defender emperor
[11:22.85]至于 挡道 保卫者 皇帝
[11:28.85]homeland devastating raw bleak
[11:32.15]家乡 毁灭性的 生的 凄凉的
[11:35.46]launch unequaled campaign border
[11:39.34]开始 无比的 运动 边界
[11:43.22]efficient conquest decisive retreat
[11:46.32]效率高的 征服 决定性的 退却
[11:49.43]bog engage be faced(sb)in sth crucial
[11:52.52]阻碍 使从事 面临 至关重要的
[11:55.60]gamble press nightfall occupation
[11:59.88]赌博 继续进行 傍晚 职业
[12:04.17]truce czar bide hit-and-run
[12:07.37]停战 沙皇 等待 找了就跑的
[12:10.57]minus Celsius cannon drag on
[12:13.61]减 (温度)摄氏的 大炮 拖延
[12:16.65]swollen stroke at the cost of tattered
[12:20.08]涨水的 一次 以……为代价 衣衫褴褛的
[12:23.50]limp weaken alliance straggler
[12:26.45]跛行 变弱 联盟 掉队
[12:29.40]abdicate exile invasion empire
[12:32.63]退位 流亡 入侵 帝国
[12:35.85]declaration blitzkrieg mud lightning
[12:39.14]宣布 闪电战 烂泥 闪电式的
[12:42.44]tactic catch sb.off guard instruct scorch
[12:46.26]战术 趁某人不备 指示 使成焦士
[12:50.09]render German casualty die from/of
[12:53.81]使成为 德语 伤亡人员 死于
[12:57.53]siege bring to a halt effensive counterattack
[13:01.20]围困 使停止 进攻 反攻
[13:04.88]troop tide thanks to heroic
[13:08.06]部队 趋势 因为 英雄的
[13:11.25]region reckon underestimate severity
[13:14.20]地区 计算 低估 严重
[13:17.60]伤亡人数
