Great Heros! Geh!

[Sarmatian]

No one said it didn't have any effect. Term "General Winter" (and sometimes "General Snow" - Russians sometimes refer to it as "General Mrazov") refers to excuses by various armies, most notably French and German that they were defeated by Russian winter. They weren't defeated by Russian winter, they were defeated by Russian army which used climate, among many other things, to its advantage. It's only logical - if your troops are trained to fight at night and enemy troops aren't, you'll try to fight at night, if you have superior cavalry, you'll try fight in a terrain that suits cavalry, if your army is better suited for winter warfare, you'll try to engage enemy in winter etc etc... It's what armies did since the ancient times.

It's not like those armies tried to invade Ethiopia and were surprised by sudden and very cold winter. That would be a valid excuse. But in the case of a country like Russia or some country in Scandinavia, it's just silly. Who would imagine snow and cold winter in Russia or Scandinavia, really...

In fact, the winter during Napoleon's invasion (1812-1813) was one of the mildest winters in years, not to mention that Grande Armee was pretty much defeated before the winter (Borodino was on 7th September)...

Oh, and then there's the infamous raspustsina(sp?)

Rasputitsa (Cyrillic - распу́тица)...