title: Languages with official status in India

text: Communication between the union and states which use Hindi as their official language (classified by the Official Language Rules as "the states in Region A"), and with persons who live in those states, is generally in Hindi, except in certain cases. Communication with a second category of states "Region B", which do not use Hindi as their official language but have elected to communicate with the union in Hindi (currently Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Punjab) is usually in Hindi, whilst communications sent to an individual in those states may be in Hindi and English. Communication with all other states "Region C", and with people living in them, is in English.


title: Languages with official status in India

text: Each official language has a designated official script using which it is written for official purposes.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a song by the American rock band Nirvana. It is the opening track and lead single from the band's second album, "Nevermind" (1991), released on DGC Records. The unexpected success of the song propelled "Nevermind" to the top of several albums charts at the start of 1992, an event often marked as the point when grunge entered the mainstream. It was Nirvana's biggest hit, charting high on music industry charts around the world in 1991 and 1992; and was number one the charts in Belgium, France, New Zealand and Spain. It was met with wide critical acclaim, and described as an "anthem for apathetic kids" of Generation X. Although Nirvana grew uncomfortable with the mainstream and commercial attention the song brought to them, listeners and critics continue to praise "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as one of the greatest songs of all time.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The music video for the song is based on the concept of a high school pep rally which ends in chaos and riot, inspired by Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 film "Over the Edge" and the Ramones' film "Rock 'n' Roll High School". It won two MTV Video Music Awards, and was in heavy rotation on music television. In subsequent years Amy Finnerty, formerly of MTV's programming department, claimed the video "changed the entire look of MTV" by giving the channel "a whole new generation to sell to". In 2000, the "Guinness World Records" named "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the "Most Played Video" on MTV Europe.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. In 2001, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ranked the song at number 80 on their Songs of the Century list. In 2002, "NME" ranked the song the number two on its list of "100 Greatest Singles of All Time", while "Kerrang!" ranked it at number one on its list of the "100 Greatest Singles of All Time". In 2021, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Smells Like Teen Spirit" fifth on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2017, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was one of several songs written following Nirvana's first recording sessions with producer Butch Vig in 1990. Singer and guitarist Kurt Cobain began writing it a few weeks before recording their second album, "Nevermind", in 1991. He said it was an attempt to write a song in the style of the Pixies, a band he admired:


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: When Cobain presented the song to his bandmates, it comprised just the main guitar riff and the chorus vocal melody. Cobain said the riff was "clichéd", similar to a riff by Boston or the Richard Berry song "Louie Louie". Bassist Krist Novoselic dismissed it as "ridiculous"; in response, Cobain made the band play it for an hour and a half. Eventually, Novoselic began playing it more slowly, inspiring drummer Dave Grohl to create the drum beat, which drew from disco artists like The Gap Band. As a result, it is the only song on "Nevermind" to credit all three band members as writers.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The title derives from a phrase written on Cobain's wall by his friend Kathleen Hanna, singer of the riot grrrl band Bikini Kill: "Kurt smells like Teen Spirit." Hanna meant that Cobain smelled like the deodorant Teen Spirit, which she and Tobi Vail, his then-girlfriend, had discovered during a trip to the grocery store. Cobain said he was unaware of the deodorant until months after the single was released, and had interpreted it as a revolutionary slogan, as they had been discussing anarchism and punk rock.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: Prior to the album recording, the band sent Vig demos for songs including "Teen Spirit". While the sound was distorted due to the band playing at a volume, Vig felt it had promise. Vig and the band recorded "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, in May1991. Vig suggested changes to the arrangement, including moving a guitar ad lib to the chorus and shortening the chorus. The band recorded the basic track in three takes, and used the second take. Vig corrected some timing errors created by Cobain switching between his guitar effects pedals. Cobain recorded only three vocal takes; according to Vig, "I was lucky to ever get Kurt to do four takes."


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is a grunge, alternative rock, and hard rock song. It was recorded in the original key of F minor and follows a Fm-Bm–A–D chord progression, with the main guitar riff constructed from four power chords played in a syncopated sixteenth note strum by Cobain. The guitar chords were double tracked to create a "more powerful" sound. The chords occasionally lapse into suspended chord voicings as a result of Cobain playing the bottom four strings of the guitar for the thickness of sound. The riff resembles that of Boston's 1976 hit "More Than a Feeling", though it is not identical. During the verses, Cobain used a Small Clone effect pedal to add a chorus effect.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" uses a "somewhat conventional formal structure" consisting of four-, eight-, and twelve-bar sections, including an eight-bar verse, an eight-bar pre-chorus, and a twelve-bar chorus. Musicologist Graeme Downes, who led the band the Verlaines, says that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" illustrates developing variation. Elements of the structure are marked with shifts in volume and dynamics, moving from quiet to loud several times. This structure of "quiet verses with wobbly, chorused guitar, followed by big, loud hardcore-inspired choruses" became an alternative rock template.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: During the verses, the band maintains the same chord progression as the chorus. Cobain plays a two-note guitar line over Novoselic's root-note eighth note bassline, which outlines the chord progression. Approaching the chorus, Cobain begins to play the same two notes on every beat of the measure and repeats the word "Hello". Following the first and second choruses, Cobain simultaneously sings the word "Yay" and performs a unison bend on his guitar. After the second chorus, Cobain plays a 16-bar guitar solo restating his vocal melody from the verse and pre-chorus. During the closing refrain, Cobain sings "A denial" repeatedly; his voice becomes strained from the force of yelling.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released to radio on August 27, 1991. On September 10, it was released as the lead single from "Nevermind", Nirvana's major label debut on DGC Records. The song did not initially chart, and it sold well only in regions of the United States with an established Nirvana fanbase.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The single was intended to be a base-building alternative rock cut from the album, and was not expected to be a hit; the follow-up "Come as You Are" was planned as the single that could cross over to mainstream radio formats. However, campus and modern rock radio stations placed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on heavy rotation. Danny Goldberg of Nirvana's management firm Gold Mountain said: "None of us heard it as a crossover song, but the public heard it and it was instantaneous ... They heard it on alternative radio, and then they rushed out like lemmings to buy it."


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The video received its world premiere on MTV's late-night alternative rock program "120 Minutes" and proved so popular that the channel began to air it during its regular daytime rotation. MTV added the video to its "Buzz Bin" selection in October, where it stayed until mid-December. By the end of the year, the song, music video, and the "Nevermind" album had become hits. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and "Nevermind" became a rare cross-format phenomenon, reaching all the major rock radio formats including modern rock, hard rock, album rock, and college radio.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was also a critical and commercial success. It topped the 1991 "Village Voice" "Pazz & Jop" and "Melody Maker" year-end polls and reached number two on "Rolling Stone's" list of best singles of the year. The single peaked at number six on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart the same week that "Nevermind" reached number one on the albums chart. "Teen Spirit" hit number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and has been certified platinum (onemillion copies shipped) by the Recording Industry Association of America. However, many American Top 40 stations were reluctant to play the song in regular rotation and restricted it to night-time play.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The single was also successful in other countries. In the United Kingdom, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was released on November 18, 1991, reaching number seven on the UK Singles Chart and charting for 184 weeks. The song was nominated for two Grammy Awards: Best Hard Rock Performance with Vocal and Best Rock Song. "Entertainment Weekly" would later name Nirvana's loss to Eric Clapton in the Best Rock Song category as one of the 10 biggest upsets in Grammy history. Outside the United States, the song topped the charts of Belgium, France, New Zealand, and Spain. It charted within the top five of several European countries and reached number five in Australia. It appeared on several year-end charts, including number 10 in New Zealand, number 17 in Belgium and Germany, and number 32 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 Year-End Chart.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: In the wake of Nirvana's success, Michael Azerrad wrote in a 1992 "Rolling Stone" article: "'Smells Like Teen Spirit' is an anthem for (or is it against?) the 'Why Ask Why?' generation. Just don't call Cobain a spokesman for a generation." Nevertheless, the music press awarded the song an "anthem-of-a-generation" status, placing Cobain as a reluctant spokesman for Generation X. "The New York Times" wrote that "'Smells Like Teen Spirit' could be this generation's version of the Sex Pistols 1976 single, 'Anarchy in the U.K.', if it weren't for the bitter irony that pervades its title ... as Nirvana knows only too well, teen spirit is routinely bottled, shrink-wrapped and sold".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: Nirvana grew uncomfortable with the song's success and, in later concerts, often excluded it from the set list. Prior to the release of the band's 1993 follow-up album "In Utero", Novoselic remarked, "If it wasn't for 'Teen Spirit' I don't know how "Nevermind" would have done ... There are no 'Teen Spirits' on "In Utero"." Cobain said in 1994, "I still like playing 'Teen Spirit', but it's almost an embarrassment to play it ... Everyone has focused on that song so much."


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: Dubbed an "anthem for apathetic kids" of Generation X, in the years following Cobain's 1994 suicide and Nirvana's breakup "Smells Like Teen Spirit" has continued to garner critical acclaim, and is often listed as one of the greatest songs of all time. It was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "The Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll" in 1997. In 2000, VH1 rated the song at number forty-one on its "100 Greatest Rock Songs" list, while MTV and "Rolling Stone" ranked it third on their joint list of the "100 Greatest Pop Songs".<ref name="MTV/RS 2000"></ref> The Recording Industry Association of America placed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at number eighty on their 2001 "Songs of the Century" list. In 2002, "NME" awarded the song the number two spot on its list of "100 Greatest Singles of All Time", with "Kerrang!" ranking it at number one on its own list of the "100 Greatest Singles of All Time". VH1 placed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at number one on its list of "100 Greatest Songs of the Past 25 Years" in 2003, while that same year, the song came third in a "Q" poll of the "1001 Best Songs Ever". In 2021, "Rolling Stone" ranked "Smells Like Teen Spirit" fifth on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song was placed at number six in "NME"s "Global Best Song Ever Poll" in 2005. In 2022, it was included in the list "The story of "NME" in 70 (mostly) seminal songs": Mark Beaumont wrote that with this song, Nirvana rejuvenated American rock, "honing the melodic roars of Husker Du, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr and Sonic Youth into an MTV friendly quiet-loud dynamic".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: In the 2006 VH1 UK poll "The Nation's Favourite Lyric", the line "I feel stupid and contagious / Here we are now, entertain us" was ranked the third-favorite lyric by over 13,000 voters. VH1 placed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at number one on its list of the "100 Greatest Songs Of The '90s" in 2007, while "Rolling Stone" ranked it number ten on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time". In 2009, the song was voted number one for the third time in a row on the Triple J Hottest 100 of All Time in Australia (it was first place previously in 1991 and 1998). That year, VH1 ranked the song seventh on its list of the "100 Greatest Hard Rock Songs". Despite previously proposing in its 2006 entry for "Nevermind" on "The All-TIME 100 Albums" that "'Smells Like Teen Spirit' ... may be the album's worst song", "Time" magazine later included it on its list of "The All-TIME 100 Songs" in 2011. That same year, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" kept its number nine ranking on "Rolling Stone"s updated list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", while in 2019, the magazine ranked it at number one in its list of "50 Best Songs of the Nineties". "NME" placed the song at number two on its list of the "100 Best Tracks Of The '90s" in 2012, and at number one on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in 2014. In 2015, the song was also named the most iconic song of all time according to a study by Goldsmith's College, which analysed various songs featured in numerous 'all-time best' lists, using analytical software to compare their key, BPM, chord variety, lyrical content, timbral variety, and sonic variance the result of which designated the title to this song. In 2017, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was rereleased as a limited edition 7-inch vinyl single in December2011. In an attempt to emulate a successful 2009 Facebook campaign to promote Rage Against the Machine's song "Killing in the Name", an online campaign was launched to promote "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to 2011 Christmas number one in the UK Singles Chart in protest at the dealings of "The X Factor" television series with the children's charity Rhythmix. A similar campaign was also launched in Ireland to get the track to 2011 Christmas number one in the Irish Singles Chart. The campaign resulted in the song reaching number 11 on the UK Singles Chart, selling 30,000 copies. According to Nielsen Music's year-end report for 2019, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the most-played song of the decade on mainstream rock radio with 145,000 spins. All of the songs in the top 10 were from the 1990s. In June 2021, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became only the second song from the 1990s to reach 1 billion streams on the Spotify platform.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The lyrics to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" were often difficult for listeners to decipher, both due to their nonsensicality and because of Cobain's slurred, guttural singing voice. This problem was compounded by the fact that the "Nevermind" album liner notes did not include any lyrics for the songs aside from selected lyrical fragments. This incomprehensibility contributed to the early resistance from radio stations towards adding the song to their playlists; one Geffen promoter recalled that people from rock radio told her, "We can't play this. I can't understand what the guy is saying." MTV went as far as to prepare a version of the video that included the lyrics running across the bottom of the screen, which they aired when the video was added to their heavy rotation schedule. The lyrics for the album—and some from earlier or alternate versions of the songs—were later released with the liner notes of the "Lithium" single in 1992. American rock critic Dave Marsh noted comments by disc jockeys of the time that the song was "the 'Louie Louie' of the nineties" and wrote, "Like 'Louie', only more so, 'Teen Spirit' reveals its secrets reluctantly and then often incoherently." Marsh, trying to decipher the lyrics, felt after reading the correct lyrics from the song's sheet music that "what I imagined was quite a bit better (at least, more gratifying) than what Nirvana actually sang", and added, "Worst of all, I'm not sure that I know more about [the meaning of] 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' now than before I plunked down for the official version of the facts."


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The book "Teen Spirit: The Stories Behind Every Nirvana Song" describes "Teen Spirit" as "a typically murky Cobain exploration of meaning and meaninglessness". Azerrad plays upon the juxtaposition of Cobain's contradictory lyrics (such as "It's fun to lose and to pretend") and states "the point that emerges isn't just the conflict of two opposing ideas, but the confusion and anger that the conflict produces in the narrator—he's angry that he's confused". Azerrad's conclusion is that the song is "alternately a sarcastic reaction to the idea of actually having a revolution, yet it also embraces the idea". Additionally, the "famously obscure couplet"—"A mulatto, an albino / A mosquito, my libido"—is, according to Azerrad, "nothing more than two pairs of opposites, a funny way of saying the narrator is very horny". In "Heavier Than Heaven", Charles R. Cross' biography of Cobain, Cross argues that the song is a reference to Cobain's relationship with ex-girlfriend Tobi Vail. Cross cites the line "She's over-bored and self-assured" and states the song "could not have been about anyone else". Cross backs up his argument with lyrics which were present in earlier drafts, such as "Who will be the King & Queen of the outcasted teens".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Teen Spirit" is widely interpreted as a teen revolution anthem, an interpretation reinforced by the music video. In an interview conducted the day "Nevermind" was released, Cobain stated the song was about his friends, explaining, "We still feel as if we're teenagers because we don't follow the guidelines of what's expected of us to be adults ... It also has kind of a teen revolutionary theme." In Michael Azerrad's biography "", Cobain said he felt a duty "to describe what I felt about my surroundings and my generation and people my age". He also said, "The entire song is made up of contradictory ideas ... It's just making fun of the thought of having a revolution. But it's a nice thought." As Cobain did more interviews, he changed his explanation of the song and rarely gave specifics about the meaning. Grohl stated he does not believe the song has any message, and said, "Just seeing Kurt write the lyrics to a song five minutes before he first sings them, you just kind of find it a little bit hard to believe that the song has a lot to say about something. You need syllables to fill up this space or you need something that rhymes."


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the first for director Samuel Bayer. Bayer believed he was hired because his test reel was so poor the band anticipated his production would be "punk" and "not corporate". The video is based on the concept of a school concert which ends in anarchy and riot, inspired by Jonathan Kaplan's 1979 film "Over the Edge" and the Ramones' film "Rock 'n' Roll High School". It had an estimated budget between $30,000 and $50,000.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The video was filmed on August 17, 1991, on Stage 6 of GMT Studios in Culver City. The music video features Nirvana playing at a pep rally in a high school gym to an audience of apathetic students on bleachers, and cheerleaders wearing black dresses with the Circle-A anarchist symbol. The video features an appearance by Burton C. Bell, later known as frontman of heavy metal band Fear Factory. Occasionally, the scene cuts to a janitor (played by Tony De La Rosa) wearing a navy blue jumpsuit and dancing with a push broom handle. The video ends with the students destroying the set and the band's gear. The discontent was genuine; the extras that filled the bleachers had been forced to stay seated through numerous replays of the song for an entire afternoon of filming. Cobain convinced Bayer to allow the extras to mosh, and the set became a scene of chaos. "Once the kids came out dancing they just said 'fuck you', because they were so tired of his shit throughout the day", Cobain said. Cobain disliked Bayer's final edit and oversaw a re-edit of the video, creating the final version. One of Cobain's major additions was the penultimate shot, a close-up of his face after it had been obscured for most of the video. Another major change involved two sequences of a principal standing next to a loudspeaker and getting sprayed with confetti, and a teacher dressed like a nerd dancing to the song with a "Dunce" cap before being tied to a basketball hoop pole. Cobain had the principal's footage entirely removed as well as most of the teacher's footage, aside from the ending scene which shows the teacher tied to the pole as the janitor sweeps the floor nearby. Bayer said that unlike subsequent artists he worked with, Cobain was not vain, and was more interested that "the video had something that was truly about what they were about".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: Like the song itself, the music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" received positive reviews. "Rolling Stone" writer David Fricke described the video as looking like "the greatest gig you could ever imagine". In addition to a number-one placing in the singles category, "Teen Spirit" also topped the music video category in the "Village Voice"s 1991 "Pazz & Jop" poll. The video won Nirvana the Best New Artist and Best Alternative Group awards at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards, and in 2000 the "Guinness World Records" named "Teen Spirit" the Most Played Video on MTV Europe. In subsequent years Amy Finnerty, formerly of MTV's Programming department, claimed the video "changed the entire look of MTV" by giving them "a whole new generation to sell to". "Rolling Stone" placed the music video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at number two on their 1993 list of "The 100 Top Music Videos". MTV ranked the song's music video at number three on its "100 Greatest Music Videos Ever Made" list in 1999. VH1 placed the debut of the "Teen Spirit" video at number eighteen on its 2000 list of "100 Greatest Rock & Roll Moments on TV", noting that it made alternative rock "a commercial and pop culture force". In 2001, VH1 named it the fourth-greatest video. The video was parodied in "Weird Al" Yankovic's music video for "Smells Like Nirvana" and in Bob Sinclar's 2006 music video for "Rock This Party (Everybody Dance Now)". By December 25, 2019, the video had been viewed 1 billion times on YouTube.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was first performed live on April 17, 1991, at the OK Hotel in Seattle, Washington. The performance is featured on the DVD of the 2004 box set "With the Lights Out", while shorter clips are included on the "Classic Albums Nevermind" DVD, as well as the documentary film "Hype!". As the song's lyrics had not yet been entirely written, there are notable differences between it and the final version. For example, the first performance started with "Come out and play, make up the rules" instead of the eventual opening of "Load up on guns, bring your friends". A recording of the earlier version appears on "With the Lights Out" and again on "". A similar early live performance of the song is found in the documentary "", filmed during a 1991 summer tour in Europe with Sonic Youth.


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: The international television debut performance of the song was on November 8, 1991, on UK TV show The Word. Cobain opened by declaring that: "I want everyone in this room to know that Courtney Love, the lead singer of the sensational pop group Hole, is the best fuck in the world".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: Nirvana often altered the song's lyrics and tempo for live performances. Some live performances of the song had the line "our little group has always been" changed to "our little tribe has always been", which can be heard on the 1996 live album "From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah". "Rolling Stone" remarked that the "Wishkah" version of "Teen Spirit" "[found] Cobain's guitar reeling outside the song's melodic boundaries and sparking new life in that nearly played-out hit". A notable alternate performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" occurred on BBC's "Top of the Pops" in 1991, during which the band refused to mime to the pre-recorded backing track and Cobain sang in a deliberately low voice and altered numerous lyrics in the song (for example, "Load up on guns, bring your friends" became "Load up on drugs, kill your friends"). Cobain later said he was trying to sound like former Smiths frontman Morrissey. When "Top of the Pops" was cancelled in 2006, "The Observer" listed Nirvana's performance of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" as the third greatest in the show's history. This performance can be found on the 1994 home video "Live! Tonight! Sold Out!!".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: "Weird Al" Yankovic parodied the song in 1992 with "Smells Like Nirvana", a song about Nirvana itself. Cobain quickly gave permission, but asked, "It's not about food, is it?" Yankovic answered, "No, it's about how nobody can understand your lyrics." Upon hearing the parody, Cobain and his bandmates laughed hysterically. Yankovic has said Cobain told him he realized that Nirvana had "made it" when he heard the parody. In 1995, the queercore band Pansy Division released a cover version with altered lyrics titled "Smells Like Queer Spirit" on their "Pile Up" album. Pansy Division guitarist Jon Ginoli insisted that his band's version of the song was not a parody but "an affectionate tribute". Tori Amos recorded the song and released it in 1992 on her "Crucify" EP single. Dave Grohl commented on the Amos cover of the song in 1996, saying it was "pretty hilarious".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: In the 2011 film "The Muppets" and its soundtrack, one of the acts of the Muppet Telethon involves Rowlf the Dog, Link Hogthrob, Sam Eagle, and Beaker performing the song as a barbershop quartet, where unwilling special guest Jack Black accuses them of "ruining one of the greatest songs of all time".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: A version recorded by singer Malia J is used in the opening credits sequence of the 2021 film "Black Widow".


title: Smells Like Teen Spirit

text: All lyrics are written by Kurt Cobain, except "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (Cobain, Grohl, Novoselic); all music is composed by Nirvana, except "Drain You" (Cobain).


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a sector of the Eastern Front during World War II. It took place between September 1941 and January 1942. The Soviet defensive effort frustrated Hitler's attack on Moscow, the capital and largest city of the Soviet Union. Moscow was one of the primary military and political objectives for Axis forces in their invasion of the Soviet Union.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The German Strategic Offensive, named Operation Typhoon, called for two pincer offensives, one to the north of Moscow against the Kalinin Front by the 3rd and 4th Panzer Armies, simultaneously severing the Moscow–Leningrad railway, and another to the south of Moscow Oblast against the Western Front south of Tula, by the 2nd Panzer Army, while the 4th Army advanced directly towards Moscow from the west.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Initially, the Soviet forces conducted a strategic defence of the Moscow Oblast by constructing three defensive belts, deploying newly raised reserve armies, and bringing troops from the Siberian and Far Eastern Military Districts. As the German offensives were halted, a Soviet strategic counter-offensive and smaller-scale offensive operations forced the German armies back to the positions around the cities of Oryol, Vyazma and Vitebsk, and nearly surrounded three German armies. It was a major setback for the Germans, and the end of their belief in a swift German victory over the USSR. As a result of the failed offensive, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch was dismissed as supreme commander of the German Army, with Hitler replacing him in the position.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion plan, called for the capture of Moscow within four months. On 22 June 1941, Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union, destroyed most of the Soviet Air Force on the ground, and advanced deep into Soviet territory using "blitzkrieg" tactics to destroy entire Soviet armies. The German Army Group North moved towards Leningrad, Army Group South took control of Ukraine, and Army Group Centre advanced towards Moscow. By July 1941, Army Group Centre crossed the Dnieper River, on the path to Moscow.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: At this stage, although Moscow was vulnerable, an offensive against the city would have exposed the German flanks. In part to address these risks, and to attempt to secure Ukraine's food and water and mineral resources, Hitler ordered the attack to turn north and south and eliminate Soviet forces at Leningrad and Kiev. This delayed the German advance on Moscow. When that advance resumed on 30 September 1941, German forces had been weakened, while the Soviets had raised new forces for the defence of the city.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: For Hitler, the Soviet capital was secondary, and he believed the only way to bring the Soviet Union to its knees was to defeat it economically. He felt this could be accomplished by seizing the economic resources of Ukraine east of Kiev. When Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, supported a direct thrust to Moscow, he was told that "only ossified brains could think of such an idea". Franz Halder, head of the Army General Staff, was also convinced that a drive to seize Moscow would be victorious after the German Army inflicted enough damage on the Soviet forces. This view was shared by most within the German high command. But Hitler overruled his generals in favor of pocketing the Soviet forces around Kiev in the south, followed by the seizure of Ukraine. The move was successful, resulting in the loss of nearly 700,000 Red Army personnel killed, captured, or wounded by 26 September, and further advances by Axis forces.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: With the end of summer, Hitler redirected his attention to Moscow and assigned Army Group Centre to this task. The forces committed to Operation Typhoon included three infantry armies (the 2nd, 4th, and 9th) supported by three "Panzer" (tank) Groups (the 2nd, 3rd and 4th) and by the Luftwaffes "Luftflotte" 2. Up to two million German troops were committed to the operation, along with 1,000–2,470 tanks and assault guns and 14,000 guns. German aerial strength, however, had been severely reduced over the summer's campaign; the "Luftwaffe" had lost 1,603 aircraft and 1,028 had been damaged. "Luftflotte" 2 had only 549 serviceable machines, including 158 medium and dive-bombers and 172 fighters, available for Operation Typhoon. The attack relied on standard "blitzkrieg" tactics, using "Panzer" groups rushing deep into Soviet formations and executing double-pincer movements, pocketing Red Army divisions and destroying them.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Facing the Wehrmacht were three Soviet fronts forming a defensive line based on the cities of Vyazma and Bryansk, which barred the way to Moscow. The armies comprising these fronts had also been involved in heavy fighting. Still, it was a formidable concentration consisting of 1,250,000 men, 1,000 tanks and 7,600 guns. The Soviet Air Force "(Voyenno-Vozdushnye Sily", VVS) had suffered appalling losses of some 7,500 to 21,200 aircraft. Extraordinary industrial achievements had begun to replace these, and at the outset of Typhoon the VVS could muster 936 aircraft, 578 of which were bombers.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Once Soviet resistance along the Vyazma-Bryansk front was eliminated, German forces were to press east, encircling Moscow by outflanking it from the north and south. Continuous fighting had reduced their effectiveness, and logistical difficulties became more acute. General Guderian, commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, wrote that some of his destroyed tanks had not been replaced, and there were fuel shortages at the start of the operation.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The German attack went according to plan, with 4th Panzer Group pushing through the middle nearly unopposed and then dividing its mobile forces north to complete the encirclement of Vyazma with 3rd Panzer Group, and other units south to close the ring around Bryansk in conjunction with 2nd Panzer Group. The Soviet defenses, still under construction, were overrun, and spearheads of the 3rd and 4th Panzer Groups met at Vyazma on 10 October 1941. Four Soviet armies (the 16th, 19th, 20th, 24th and part of the 32nd) were encircled in a large pocket just west of the city.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The encircled Soviet forces continued to fight, and the Wehrmacht had to employ 28 divisions to eliminate them, using troops which could have supported the offensive towards Moscow. The remnants of the Soviet Western and Reserve Fronts retreated and manned new defensive lines around Mozhaisk. Although losses were high, some of the encircled units escaped in small groups, ranging in size from platoons to full rifle divisions. Soviet resistance near Vyazma also provided time for the Soviet high command to reinforce the four armies defending Moscow (the 5th, 16th, 43rd and 49th Armies). Three rifle and two tank divisions were transferred from East Siberia with more to follow.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The weather began to change, hampering both sides. On 7 October, the first snow fell and quickly melted, turning roads and open areas into muddy quagmires, a phenomenon known as "rasputitsa" in Russia. German armored groups were greatly slowed, allowing Soviet forces to fall back and regroup.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Soviet forces were able to counterattack in some cases. For example, the 4th Panzer Division fell into an ambush set by Dmitri Leliushenko's hastily formed 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps, including Mikhail Katukov's 4th Tank Brigade, near the city of Mtsensk. Newly built T-34 tanks were concealed in the woods as German armor rolled past them; as a scratch team of Soviet infantry contained their advance, Soviet armor attacked from both flanks and savaged the German Panzer IV tanks. For the Wehrmacht, the shock of this defeat was so great that a special investigation was ordered. Guderian and his troops discovered, to their dismay, that the Soviet T-34s were almost impervious to German tank guns. As the general wrote, "Our Panzer IV tanks with their short 75 mm guns could only explode a T-34 by hitting the engine from behind." Guderian also noted in his memoirs that "the Russians already learned a few things." In 2012, Niklas Zetterling disputed the notion of a major German reversal at Mtsensk, noting that only a battlegroup from the 4th Panzer Division was engaged while most of the division was fighting elsewhere, that both sides withdrew from the battlefield after the fighting and that the Germans lost only six tanks destroyed and three damaged. For German commanders like Hoepner and Bock, the action was inconsequential; their primary worry was resistance from within the pocket, not outside it.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Other counterattacks further slowed the German offensive. The 2nd Army, which was operating to the north of Guderian's forces with the aim of encircling the Bryansk Front, had come under strong Red Army pressure assisted by air support.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: According to German assessments of the initial Soviet defeat, 673,000 soldiers had been captured by the Wehrmacht in both the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets, although recent research suggests a lower—but still enormous—figure of 514,000 prisoners, reducing Soviet strength by 41%. Personnel losses of 499,001 (permanent as well as temporary) were calculated by the Soviet command. On 9 October, Otto Dietrich of the German Ministry of Propaganda, quoting Hitler himself, forecast in a press conference the imminent destruction of the armies defending Moscow. As Hitler had never had to lie about a specific and verifiable military fact, Dietrich convinced foreign correspondents that the collapse of all Soviet resistance was perhaps hours away. German civilian morale—low since the start of Barbarossa—significantly improved, with rumors of soldiers home by Christmas and great riches from the future "Lebensraum" in the east.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: However, Red Army resistance had slowed the Wehrmacht. When the Germans arrived within sight of the Mozhaisk line west of Moscow on 10 October, they encountered another defensive barrier manned by new Soviet forces. That same day, Georgy Zhukov, who had been recalled from the Leningrad Front on 6 October, took charge of Moscow's defense and the combined Western and Reserve Fronts, with Colonel General Ivan Konev as his deputy. On 12 October, Zhukov ordered the concentration of all available forces on a strengthened Mozhaisk line, a move supported by General Vasilevsky of the General Staff. The "Luftwaffe" still controlled the sky wherever it appeared, and "Stuka" and bomber groups flew 537 sorties, destroying some 440 vehicles and 150 artillery pieces.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 15 October, Stalin ordered the evacuation of the Communist Party, the General Staff and various civil government offices from Moscow to Kuibyshev (now Samara), leaving only a limited number of officials behind. The evacuation caused panic among Muscovites. On 16–17 October, much of the civilian population tried to flee, mobbing the available trains and jamming the roads from the city. Despite all this, Stalin publicly remained in the Soviet capital, somewhat calming the fear and pandemonium.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: By 13 October 1941, the Wehrmacht had reached the Mozhaisk defense line, a hastily constructed set of four lines of fortifications protecting Moscow's western approaches which extended from Kalinin towards Volokolamsk and Kaluga. Despite recent reinforcements, only around 90,000 Soviet soldiers manned this line—far too few to stem the German advance. Given the limited resources available, Zhukov decided to concentrate his forces at four critical points: the 16th Army under Lieutenant General Rokossovsky guarded Volokolamsk, Mozhaisk was defended by 5th Army under Major General Govorov, the 43rd Army of Major General Golubev defended Maloyaroslavets, and the 49th Army under Lieutenant General Zakharkin protected Kaluga. The entire Soviet Western Front—nearly destroyed after its encirclement near Vyazma—was being recreated almost from scratch.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Moscow itself was also hastily fortified. According to Zhukov, 250,000 women and teenagers worked building trenches and anti-tank moats around Moscow, moving almost three million cubic meters of earth with no mechanical help. Moscow's factories were hastily converted to military tasks: one automobile factory was turned into a submachine gun armory, a clock factory manufactured mine detonators, the chocolate factory shifted to food production for the front, and automobile repair stations worked fixing damaged tanks and military vehicles. Despite these preparations, the capital was within striking distance of German tanks, with the Luftwaffe mounting large-scale air raids on the city. The air raids caused only limited damage because of extensive anti-aircraft defenses and effective civilian fire brigades.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 13 October 1941 (15 October, according to other sources), the Wehrmacht resumed its offensive. At first, the German forces attempted to bypass Soviet defenses by pushing northeast towards the weakly protected city of Kalinin and south towards Kaluga and Tula, capturing all except Tula by 14 October. Encouraged by these initial successes, the Germans launched a frontal assault against the fortified line, taking Mozhaisk and Maloyaroslavets on 18 October, Naro-Fominsk on 21 October, and Volokolamsk on 27 October after intense fighting. Because of the increasing danger of flanking attacks, Zhukov was forced to fall back, withdrawing his forces east of the Nara River.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: In the south, the Second Panzer Army initially advanced towards Tula with relative ease because the Mozhaisk defense line did not extend that far south and no significant concentrations of Soviet troops blocked their advance. However, bad weather, fuel problems, and damaged roads and bridges eventually slowed the German army, and Guderian did not reach the outskirts of Tula until 26 October. The German plan initially called for the rapid capture of Tula, followed by a pincer move around Moscow. The first attack, however, was repelled by the 50th Army and civilian volunteers on 29 October, after a fight within sight of the city. This was followed by the counter-offensive by the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps whose flanks were secured by the 10th Army, 49th Army and 50th Army who attacked from Tula. On 31 October, the German Army high command ordered a halt to all offensive operations until increasingly severe logistical problems were resolved and the "rasputitsa" subsided.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: By late October, the German forces were worn out, with only a third of their motor vehicles still functioning, infantry divisions at third- to half-strength, and serious logistics issues preventing the delivery of warm clothing and other winter equipment to the front. Even Hitler seemed to surrender to the idea of a long struggle, since the prospect of sending tanks into such a large city without heavy infantry support seemed risky after the costly capture of Warsaw in 1939.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: To stiffen the resolve of the Red Army and boost civilian morale, Stalin ordered the traditional military parade on 7 November (Revolution Day) to be staged in Red Square. Soviet troops paraded past the Kremlin and then marched directly to the front. The parade carried a great symbolic significance by demonstrating the continued Soviet resolve, and was frequently invoked as such in the years to come. Despite this brave show, the Red Army's position remained precarious. Although 100,000 additional Soviet soldiers had reinforced Klin and Tula, where renewed German offensives were expected, Soviet defenses remained relatively thin. Nevertheless, Stalin ordered several preemptive counteroffensives against German lines. These were launched despite protests from Zhukov, who pointed out the complete lack of reserves. The Wehrmacht repelled most of these counteroffensives, which squandered Soviet forces that could have been used for Moscow's defense. The only notable success of the offensive occurred west of Moscow near Aleksino, where Soviet tanks inflicted heavy losses on the 4th Army because the Germans still lacked anti-tank weapons capable of damaging the new, well-armoured T-34 tanks.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: From 31 October to 13–15 November, the Wehrmacht high command stood down while preparing to launch a second offensive towards Moscow. Although Army Group Centre still possessed considerable nominal strength, its fighting capabilities had thoroughly diminished because of wear and fatigue. While the Germans were aware of the continuous influx of Soviet reinforcements from the east as well as the presence of large reserves, given the tremendous Soviet casualties, they did not expect the Soviets to be able to mount a determined defense. But in comparison to the situation in October, Soviet rifle divisions occupied a much stronger defensive position: a triple defensive ring surrounding the city and some remnants of the Mozhaisk line near Klin. Most of the Soviet field armies now had a multilayered defense, with at least two rifle divisions in second echelon positions. Artillery support and sapper teams were also concentrated along major roads that German troops were expected to use in their attacks. There were also many Soviet troops still available in reserve armies behind the front. Finally, Soviet troops—and especially officers—were now more experienced and better prepared for the offensive.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: By 15 November 1941, the ground had finally frozen, solving the mud problem. The armored Wehrmacht spearheads, consisting of 51 divisions, could now advance, with the goal of encircling Moscow and linking up near the city of Noginsk, east of the capital. To achieve this objective, the German Third and Fourth Panzer Groups needed to concentrate their forces between the Volga Reservoir and Mozhaysk, then proceed past the Soviet 30th Army to Klin and Solnechnogorsk, encircling the capital from the north. In the south, the Second Panzer Army intended to bypass Tula, still held by the Red Army, and advance to Kashira and Kolomna, linking up with the northern pincer at Noginsk. The German 4th Field Army in the centre were to "pin down the troops of the Western Front."


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 15 November 1941, German tank armies began their offensive towards Klin, where no Soviet reserves were available because of Stalin's wish to attempt a counteroffensive at Volokolamsk, which had forced the relocation of all available reserve forces further south. Initial German attacks split the front in two, separating the 16th Army from the 30th. Several days of intense combat followed. Zhukov recalled in his memoirs that "The enemy, ignoring the casualties, was making frontal assaults, willing to get to Moscow by any means necessary." Despite the Wehrmacht's efforts, the multi-layered defense reduced Soviet casualties as the Soviet 16th Army slowly retreated and constantly harassed the German divisions which were trying to make their way through the fortifications.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The Third Panzer Army captured Klin after heavy fighting on 23 November, Solnechnogorsk as well by 24 November and Istra, by 24/25 November. Soviet resistance was still strong, and the outcome of the battle was by no means certain. Reportedly, Stalin asked Zhukov whether Moscow could be successfully defended and ordered him to "speak honestly, like a communist." Zhukov replied that it was possible, but reserves were urgently needed. By 27 November, the German 7th Panzer Division had seized a bridgehead across the Moscow-Volga Canal—the last major obstacle before Moscow—and stood less than from the Kremlin; but a powerful counterattack by the 1st Shock Army drove them back. Just northwest of Moscow, the Wehrmacht reached Krasnaya Polyana, little more than 29 km (18 mi) from the Kremlin in central Moscow; German officers were able to make out some of the major buildings of the Soviet capital through their field glasses. Both Soviet and German forces were severely depleted, sometimes having only 150–200 riflemen—a company's full strength—left in a regiment.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: In the south, near Tula, combat resumed on 18 November 1941, with the Second Panzer Army trying to encircle the city. The German forces involved were extremely battered from previous fighting and still had no winter clothing. As a result, initial German progress was only per day. Moreover, it exposed the German tank armies to flanking attacks from the Soviet 49th and 50th Armies, located near Tula, further slowing the advance. Guderian nevertheless was able to pursue the offensive, spreading his forces in a star-like attack, taking Stalinogorsk on 22 November 1941 and surrounding a Soviet rifle division stationed there.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 26 November 1941, the German 2nd Panzer Army under General Heinz Guderian began advancing towards Kashira, which was a strategic stronghold that lay 120 kilometres southwest of Moscow and 80 kilometres northeast of Tula. Kashira was of paramount importance, considering that it was the headquarters of the Soviet Western Front, one of the three main groups of resistance against the Nazi storm. The Germans were capable of seizing Venev and pushing towards storming formidably towards Kashira. Should Kashira fall, the road to Moscow would be open for the 2nd Panzer Group. In an attempt to halt the onslaught of the 2nd Panzer Group, the STAVKA High Command hurled Major General Pavel Belov's 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, General Andrei Getman's 112th Tank Division, an armoured brigade and a battalion of BM-13 Katyusha rocket launchers along with support from the air force against the armoured beast of the Wehrmacht. The cavalrymen of the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps, which was primarily armed with the SVT-41 semi-automatic battle rifle and Cossack shashkas, as well as the mechanized troops possessing T34 M1940 and KV-1 tanks, battled relentlessly against Heinz Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group. After much vicious fighting, the 1st Guards Cavalry Corps was able to repel the armoured forces of Guderian and subsequently drove them back by 40 kilometres to the town of Mordves. This became the end of one of the greatest German generals, Heinz Guderian's carrier who is credited with invented blitzkrieg and conquering most of Europe. By the culminating point of the battle, considered the best tank army, has been stopped and defeated by the Soviet cavalry led by Pavel Belov with his much lower number of supporting tanks and aircraft.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The Germans were driven back in early December, securing the southern approach to the city. Tula itself held, protected by fortifications and determined defenders mostly from the 50th army, made of both soldiers and civilians. In the south, the Wehrmacht never got close to the capital. The first stroke of the Western-Front's counter-offensive on the outskirts of Moscow fell upon Guderian's 2nd Panzer Army.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Because of the resistance on both the northern and southern sides of Moscow, on 1 December the Wehrmacht attempted a direct offensive from the west along the Minsk-Moscow highway near the city of Naro-Fominsk. This offensive had limited tank support and was directed against extensive Soviet defenses. After meeting determined resistance from the Soviet 1st Guards Motorized Rifle Division and flank counterattacks staged by the 33rd Army, the German offensive stalled and was driven back four days later in the ensuing Soviet counteroffensive. On the same day, the French-manned 638th Infantry Regiment, the only foreign formation of the Wehrmacht that took part in the advance on Moscow, went into action near the village of Diutkovo. On 2 December, a reconnaissance battalion came to the town of Khimki—some away from the Kremlin in central Moscow reaching its bridge over the Moscow-Volga Canal as well as its railway station. This marked the closest approach of German forces to Moscow.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The European Winter of 1941–42 was the coldest of the twentieth century. On 30 November, von Bock claimed in a report to Berlin that the temperature was −45 °C (−49 °F). General Erhard Raus, commander of the 6th Panzer Division, kept track of the daily mean temperature in his war diary. It shows a suddenly much colder period during 4–7 December: from −36 to −38 °C (−37 to −38 °F), although the method or reliability of his measurements is not known. Other temperature reports varied widely. Zhukov said that November's freezing weather stayed only around −7 to −10 °C (+19 to +14 °F). Official Soviet Meteorological Service records show that at the lowest point, the lowest December temperature reached −28.8 °C (−20 °F). These numbers indicated severely cold conditions, and German troops were freezing with no winter clothing, using equipment that was not designed for such low temperatures. More than 130,000 cases of frostbite were reported among German soldiers. Frozen grease had to be removed from every loaded shell and vehicles had to be heated for hours before use. The same cold weather hit the Soviet troops, but they were better prepared. Clothing was supplemented by Soviet clothing and boots, which were often in better condition than German clothes as the owners had spent much less time at the front. Corpses were thawed out to remove the items; once when 200 bodies were left on the battlefield the "saw commandos" recovered sufficient clothing to outfit every man in a battalion.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The Axis offensive on Moscow stopped. Heinz Guderian wrote in his journal that "the offensive on Moscow failed ... We underestimated the enemy's strength, as well as his size and climate. Fortunately, I stopped my troops on 5 December, otherwise the catastrophe would be unavoidable."


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Some historians have suggested that artificial floods played an important role in defending Moscow. They were primarily meant to break the ice and prevent troops and heavy military equipment from crossing the Volga river and Ivankovo Reservoir. This began with the blowing up of the waterworks reservoir dam on 24 November 1941. On 28 November 1941, the water was drained into the Yakhroma and Sestra Rivers from six reservoirs (, , , , , and reservoirs), as well as from Ivankovo Reservoir using dams near Dubna. This caused some 30–40 villages to become partially submerged even in the severe winter weather conditions of the time.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Both were results of Soviet General Headquarters' Order 0428 dated 17 November 1941. Artificial floods were also used as an unconventional weapon of direct impact.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Although the Wehrmacht's offensive had been stopped, German intelligence estimated that Soviet forces had no more reserves left and thus would be unable to stage a counteroffensive. This estimate proved wrong, as Stalin transferred over 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks, and over 1,500 aircraft from Siberia and the Far East. The Red Army had accumulated a 58-division reserve by early December, when the offensive proposed by Zhukov and Vasilevsky was finally approved by Stalin. Even with these new reserves, Soviet forces committed to the operation numbered only 1,100,000 men, only slightly outnumbering the "Wehrmacht". Nevertheless, with careful troop deployment, a ratio of two-to-one was reached at some critical points.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 5 December 1941, the counteroffensive for "removing the immediate threat to Moscow" started on the Kalinin Front. The South-Western Front and Western Fronts began their offensives the next day. After several days of little progress, Soviet armies retook Solnechnogorsk on 12 December and Klin on 15 December. Guderian's army "beat a hasty retreat towards Venev" and then Sukhinichi. "The threat overhanging Tula was removed."


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On 8 December, Hitler had signed his directive No.39, ordering the Wehrmacht to assume a defensive stance on the whole front. German troops were unable to organize a solid defense at their initial locations and were forced to pull back to consolidate their lines. Guderian wrote that discussions with Hans Schmidt and Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen took place the same day, and both commanders agreed the current front line could not be held. On 14 December, Franz Halder and Günther von Kluge finally gave permission for a limited withdrawal to the west of the Oka river, without Hitler's approval. On 20 December, during a meeting with German senior officers, Hitler cancelled the withdrawal and ordered his soldiers to defend every patch of ground, "digging trenches with howitzer shells if needed." Guderian protested, pointing out that losses from cold were actually greater than combat losses and that winter equipment was held by traffic ties in Poland. Nevertheless, Hitler insisted on defending the existing lines, and Guderian was dismissed by 25 December, along with generals Hoepner and Strauss, commanders of the 4th Panzer and 9th Army, respectively. Fedor von Bock was also dismissed, officially for "medical reasons". Walther von Brauchitsch, Hitler's commander-in-chief, had been removed even earlier, on 19 December.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Meanwhile, the Soviet offensive continued in the north. The offensive liberated Kalinin and the Soviets reached Klin on 7 December, overrunning the headquarters of the LVI "Panzer" Corps outside the city. As the Kalinin Front drove west, a bulge developed around Klin. The Soviet front commander, General Ivan Konev, attempted to envelop any German forces remaining. Zhukov diverted more forces to the southern end of the bulge, to help Konev trap the Third Panzer Army. The Germans pulled their forces out in time. Although the encirclement failed, it unhinged the German defenses. A second attempt was made to outflank Army Group Centre's northern forces, but met strong opposition near Rzhev and was forced to halt, forming a salient that would last until March 1943. In the south, the offensive went equally well, with Southwestern Front forces relieving Tula on 16 December 1941. A major achievement was the encirclement and destruction of the German XXXV Corps, protecting Guderian's Second Panzer Army's southern flank.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The "Luftwaffe" was paralysed in the second half of December. The weather, recorded as –42 °C (–44 °F), was a meteorological record. Logistical difficulties and freezing temperatures created technical difficulties until January 1942. In the meantime, the "Luftwaffe" had virtually vanished from the skies over Moscow, while the Red Air Force, operating from better prepared bases and benefiting from interior lines, grew stronger. On 4 January, the skies cleared. The "Luftwaffe" was quickly reinforced, as Hitler hoped it would save the situation. The "Kampfgruppen" (Bomber Groups) II./KG 4 and II./KG 30 arrived from refitting in Germany, whilst four "Transportgruppen" (Transport Groups) with a strength of 102 Junkers Ju 52 transports were deployed from "Luftflotte 4" (Air Fleet 4) to evacuate surrounded army units and improve the supply line to the front-line forces. It was a last minute effort and it worked. The German air arm was to help prevent a total collapse of Army Group Centre. Despite the Soviets' best efforts, the "Luftwaffe" had contributed enormously to the survival of Army Group Centre. Between 17 and 22 December the "Luftwaffe" destroyed 299 motor vehicles and 23 tanks around Tula, hampering the Red Army's pursuit of the German Army.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: In the centre, Soviet progress was much slower. Soviet troops liberated Naro-Fominsk only on 26 December, Kaluga on 28 December, and Maloyaroslavets on 2 January, after ten days of violent action. Soviet reserves ran low, and the offensive halted on 7 January 1942, after having pushed the exhausted and freezing German armies back from Moscow. Stalin continued to order more offensives in order to trap and destroy Army Group Centre in front of Moscow, but the Red Army was exhausted and overstretched and they failed.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The Red Army's winter counter-offensive drove the Wehrmacht from Moscow, but the city was still considered to be threatened, with the front line relatively close. Because of this, the Moscow theater remained a priority for Stalin, who at first appeared to be in shock due to the initial German success. In particular, the initial Soviet advance was unable to reduce the Rzhev salient, held by several divisions of Army Group Centre. Immediately after the Moscow counter-offensive, a series of Soviet attacks (the Battles of Rzhev) were attempted against the salient, each time with heavy losses on both sides. By early 1943, the Wehrmacht had to disengage from the salient as the whole front was moving west. Nevertheless, the Moscow front was not finally secured until October 1943, when Army Group Centre was decisively repulsed from the Smolensk landbridge and from the left shore of the upper Dnieper at the end of the Second Battle of Smolensk.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Furious that his army had been unable to take Moscow, Hitler dismissed his commander-in-chief, Walther von Brauchitsch, on 19 December 1941, and took personal charge of the Wehrmacht, effectively taking control of all military decisions. Additionally, Hitler surrounded himself with staff officers with little or no recent combat experience.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: For the first time since June 1941, Soviet forces had stopped the Germans and driven them back. This resulted in an overconfident Stalin further expanding the offensive. On 5 January 1942, during a meeting in the Kremlin, Stalin announced that he was planning a general spring offensive, which would be staged simultaneously near Moscow, Leningrad, Kharkov, and the Crimea. This plan was accepted over Zhukov's objections. Low Red Army reserves and Wehrmacht tactical skill led to a bloody stalemate near Rzhev, known as the "Rzhev meat grinder", and to a string of Red Army defeats, such as the Second Battle of Kharkov, the failed attempt at elimination of the Demyansk pocket, and the encirclement of General Andrey Vlasov's army in a failed attempt to lift the siege of Leningrad, and the destruction of Red Army forces in Crimea. Ultimately, these failures would lead to a successful German offensive in the south and to the Battle of Stalingrad.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: A documentary film, "Moscow Strikes Back", (, "Rout of the German Troops near Moscow"), was made during the battle and rapidly released in the Soviet Union. It was taken to America and shown at the Globe in New York in August 1942. "The New York Times" reviewer commented that "The savagery of that retreat is a spectacle to stun the mind." As well as the Moscow parade and battle scenes, the film included images of German atrocities committed during the occupation, "the naked and slaughtered children stretched out in ghastly rows, the youths dangling limply in the cold from gallows that were rickety, but strong enough."


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The defense of Moscow became a symbol of Soviet resistance against the invading Axis forces. To commemorate the battle, Moscow was awarded the title of "Hero City" in 1965, on the 20th anniversary of Victory Day. A Museum of the Defence of Moscow was created in 1995.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: In the Russian capital of Moscow, an annual military parade on Red Square on 7 November was held in honor of the October Revolution Parade and as substitute for the October Revolution celebrations that haven't been celebrated on a national level since 1995. The parade is held to commemorate the historical event as a Day of Military Honour. The parade includes troops of the Moscow Garrison and the Western Military District, which usually numbers to close to 3,000 soldiers, cadets, and Red Army reenactors. The parade is presided by the Mayor of Moscow who delivers a speech during the event. Prior to the start of the parade, an historical reenactment of the Battle of Moscow is performed by young students, volunteers, and historical enthusiasts.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: The parade commands are always given by a high ranking veteran of the armed forces (usually with a billet of a Colonel) who gives the orders for the march past from the grandstand near the Lenin Mausoleum. On the command of "Quick March!" by the parade commander, the parade begins with the tune of "Song of the Soviet Army", to which the historical color guards holding wartime symbols such as the Banner of Victory and the standards of the various military fronts march to. Musical support during the parade is always provided by the Massed Bands of the Moscow Garrison, which includes various military bands in the Western Military District, The Regimental Band of the 154th Preobrazhensky Regiment, and the Central Military Band of the Ministry of Defense of Russia.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: Both German and Soviet casualties during the battle of Moscow have been a subject of debate, as various sources provide somewhat different estimates. Not all historians agree on what should be considered the "Battle of Moscow" in the timeline of World War II. While the start of the battle is usually regarded as the beginning of Operation Typhoon on 30 September 1941 (or sometimes on 2 October 1941), there are two different dates for the end of the offensive. In particular, some sources (such as Erickson and Glantz) exclude the Rzhev offensive from the scope of the battle, considering it as a distinct operation and making the Moscow offensive "stop" on 7  January 1942—thus lowering the number of casualties.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: There are also significant differences in figures from various sources. John Erickson, in his "Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies", gives a figure of 653,924 Soviet casualties between October 1941 and January 1942. Glantz, in his book "When Titans Clashed", gives a figure of 658,279 for the defense phase alone, plus 370,955 for the winter counteroffensive until 7 January 1942. The official Wehrmacht daily casualty reports show 35,757 killed in action, 128,716 wounded, and 9,721 missing in action for the entire Army Group Centre between 1 October 1941 and 10 January 1942. However, this official report does not match unofficial reports from individual battalion and divisional officers and commanders at the front, who record suffering far higher casualties than was officially reported.


title: Battle of Moscow

text: On the Russian side, discipline became ferocious. The NKVD blocking groups were ready to shoot anyone retreating without orders. NKVD squads went to field hospitals in search of soldiers with self-inflicted injuries, the so-called 'self shooters' - Those who shot themselves in the left hand to escape fighting. A surgeon in a field hospital of the Red Army admitted to amputating the hands of boys who tried this 'self-shooting' idea to escape fighting, to protect them from immediate execution via punishment squad. In the first three months, blocking detachments shot 1,000 penal troops and sent 24,993 to penal battalions. By October 1942, the idea of regular blocking detachments was quietly dropped; by October 1944, the units were officially disbanded.


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan (; ), also known as lenga d'òc (; ) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as Provençal, is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitània. It is also spoken in Calabria (Southern Italy) in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area (mostly Guardia Piemontese). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative.


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken in the Val d'Aran. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to be the officially preferred language for use in the Val d'Aran.


title: Occitan language

text: Across history, the terms Limousin ("Lemosin"), Languedocien ("Lengadocian"), Gascon, and later Provençal ("Provençal", "Provençau" or "Prouvençau") have been used as synonyms for the whole of Occitan; nowadays, "Provençal" is understood mainly as the Occitan dialect spoken in Provence, in southeast France.


title: Occitan language

text: Unlike other Romance languages such as French or Spanish, there is no single written standard language called "Occitan", and Occitan has no official status in France, home to most of Occitania. Instead, there are competing norms for writing Occitan, some of which attempt to be pan-dialectal, whereas others are based on particular dialects. These efforts are hindered by the rapidly declining use of Occitan as a spoken language in much of southern France, as well as by the significant differences in phonology and vocabulary among different Occitan dialects.


title: Occitan language

text: According to the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages, four of the six major dialects of Occitan (Provençal, Auvergnat, Limousin and Languedocien) are considered severely endangered, whereas the remaining two (Gascon and Vivaro-Alpine) are considered definitely endangered.


title: Occitan language

text: The name Occitan comes from the term ("language of "), being the Occitan word for "yes." While the term would have been in use orally for some time after the decline of Latin, as far as historical records show, the Italian medieval poet Dante was the first to have recorded the term in writing. In his , he wrote in Latin, ("for some say , others , yet others say "), thereby highlighting three major Romance literary languages that were well known in Italy, based on each language's word for "yes", the " language" (Occitan), the " language" (French), and the " language" (Italian). This was not, of course, the only defining characteristic of each group.


title: Occitan language

text: The word came from Vulgar Latin ("this"), while originated from Latin ("this [is] it"). Old Catalan and now the Catalan of Northern Catalonia also have (). Other Romance languages derive their word for "yes" from the Latin , "thus [it is], [it was done], etc.", such as Spanish , Eastern Lombard , Italian , or Portuguese . In Modern Catalan, as in modern Spanish, is usually used as a response, although the language retains the word , akin to , which is sometimes used at the end of yes–no questions and also in higher register as a positive response. French uses to answer "yes" in response to questions that are asked in the negative sense: for example, ("You have no brothers?" "But yes, I have seven.").


title: Occitan language

text: For many centuries, the Occitan dialects (together with Catalan) were referred to as "Limousin" or "Provençal", after the names of two regions lying within the modern Occitan-speaking area. After Frédéric Mistral's Félibrige movement in the 19th century, Provençal achieved the greatest literary recognition and so became the most popular term for Occitan.


title: Occitan language

text: According to Joseph Anglade, a philologist and specialist of medieval literature who helped impose the then archaic term "Occitan" as the sole correct name, the word "Lemosin" was first used to designate the language at the beginning of the 13th century by Catalan troubadour Raimon Vidal de Besalú(n) in his :


title: Occitan language

text: The French language is worthier and better suited for romances and pastourelles; but that (language) from Limousin is of greater value for writing poems and cançons and sirventés; and across the whole of the lands where our tongue is spoken, the literature in the Limousin language has more authority than any other dialect, wherefore I shall use this name in priority.


title: Occitan language

text: As for the word "Provençal", it should not be taken as strictly meaning the language of Provence, but of Occitania as a whole, for "in the eleventh, the twelfth, and sometimes also the thirteenth centuries, one would understand under the name of Provence the whole territory of the old Provincia romana Gallia Narbonensis and even Aquitaine". The term first came into fashion in Italy.


title: Occitan language

text: Currently, linguists use the terms "Provençal" and "Limousin" strictly to refer to specific varieties within Occitania, keeping the name "Occitan" for the language as a whole. Many non-specialists, however, continue to refer to the language as Provençal, causing some confusion.


title: Occitan language

text: One of the oldest written fragments of the language found dates back to 960, in an official text that was mixed with Latin:


title: Occitan language

text: Carolingian litanies (c. 780), both written and sung in Latin, were answered to in Old Occitan by the audience (; ).


title: Occitan language

text: Other famous pieces include the "Boecis", a 258-line-long poem written entirely in the Limousin dialect of Occitan between the year 1000 and 1030 and inspired by Boethius's "The Consolation of Philosophy"; the Waldensian (dated 1100), (c. 1054–1076), the "Romance of Flamenca" (13th century), the "Song of the Albigensian Crusade" (1213–1219?), (12th or 13th century), (11th century) and (9th or 10th century).


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan was the vehicle for the influential poetry of the medieval troubadours () and : At that time, the language was understood and celebrated throughout most of educated Europe. It was the maternal language of the English queen Eleanor of Aquitaine and kings Richard I (who wrote troubadour poetry) and John.


title: Occitan language

text: With the gradual imposition of French royal power over its territory, Occitan declined in status from the 14th century on. The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (1539) decreed that the (French – though at the time referring to the Francien language and not the larger collection of dialects grouped under the name ) should be used for all French administration. Occitan's greatest decline occurred during the French Revolution, in which diversity of language was considered a threat.


title: Occitan language

text: In 1903, the four Gospels, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were translated into the form of Provençal spoken in Cannes and Grasse. This was given the official Roman Catholic Imprimatur by vicar general A. Estellon.


title: Occitan language

text: The literary renaissance of the late 19th century (in which the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Frédéric Mistral, among others, were involved in) was attenuated by World War I, when Occitan speakers spent extended periods of time alongside French-speaking comrades.


title: Occitan language

text: Because the geographical territory in which Occitan is spoken is surrounded by regions in which other Romance languages are used, external influences may have influenced its origin and development. Many factors favored its development as its own language.


title: Occitan language

text: Catalan in Spain's northern and central Mediterranean coastal regions and the Balearic Islands is closely related to Occitan, sharing many linguistic features and a common origin (see Occitano-Romance languages). The language was one of the first to gain prestige as a medium for literature among Romance languages in the Middle Ages. Indeed, in the 12th and 13th centuries, Catalan troubadours such as Guerau de Cabrera, Guilhem de Bergadan, Guilhem de Cabestany, Huguet de Mataplana, Raimon Vidal de Besalú, Cerverí de Girona, Formit de Perpinhan, and Jofre de Foixà wrote in Occitan.


title: Occitan language

text: At the end of the 11th century, the "Franks", as they were called at the time, started to penetrate the Iberian Peninsula through the Ways of St. James via Somport and Roncesvalles, settling on various locations of the Kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon, enticed by the privileges granted them by the Navarrese kings. They established themselves in ethnic boroughs where Occitan was used for everyday life, e.g. Pamplona, Sangüesa, Estella-Lizarra, etc. The language in turn became the status language chosen by the Navarrese kings, nobility, and upper classes for official and trade purposes in the period stretching from the early 13th century to late 14th century. These boroughs in Navarre may have been close-knit communities with little intermingling, in a context where the natural milieu was predominantly Basque-speaking. The variant chosen for written administrative records was a "koiné" based on the Languedocien dialect from Toulouse with fairly archaic linguistic features.


title: Occitan language

text: Evidence of a written account in Occitan from Pamplona centered on the burning of borough San Nicolas from 1258 survives today, while the "History of the War of Navarre" by Guilhem Anelier (1276) albeit written in Pamplona shows a linguistic variant from Toulouse.


title: Occitan language

text: Things turned out slightly otherwise in Aragon, where the sociolinguistic situation was different, with a clearer Basque-Romance bilingual situation (cf. Basques from the cited c. 1000), but a receding Basque language (Basque banned in the marketplace of Huesca, 1349). While the language was chosen as a medium of prestige in records and official statements along with Latin in the early 13th century, Occitan faced competition from the rising local Romance vernacular, the Navarro-Aragonese, both orally and in writing, especially after Aragon's territorial conquests south to Zaragoza, Huesca and Tudela between 1118 and 1134. It resulted that a second Occitan immigration of this period was assimilated by the similar Navarro-Aragonese language, which at the same time was fostered and chosen by the kings of Aragon. The language fell into decay in the 14th century across the whole southern Pyrenean area and became largely absorbed into Navarro-Aragonese first and Castilian later in the 15th century, after their exclusive boroughs broke up (1423, Pamplona's boroughs unified).


title: Occitan language

text: Gascon-speaking communities were called in for trading purposes by Navarrese kings in the early 12th century to the coastal fringe extending from San Sebastian to the river Bidasoa, where they settled down. The language variant used was different from the ones used in Navarre, i.e. a Béarnese dialect of Gascon, with Gascon being in use far longer than in Navarre and Aragon until the 19th century, thanks mainly to the close ties held by Donostia and Pasaia with Bayonne.


title: Occitan language

text: Though it was still an everyday language for most of the rural population of southern France well into the 20th century, it is now spoken by about 100,000 people in France according to 2012 estimates. Nevertheless, there is a burgeoning movement in regions of France where Occitan was widely spoken to introduce educational programs to encourage young people in these regions to learn the language.


title: Occitan language

text: According to the 1999 census, there were 610,000 native speakers (almost all of whom were also native French speakers) and perhaps another million people with some exposure to the language. Following the pattern of language shift, most of this remainder is to be found among the eldest populations. Occitan activists (called "Occitanists") have attempted, in particular with the advent of Occitan-language preschools (the "Calandretas"), to reintroduce the language to the young.


title: Occitan language

text: Nonetheless, the number of proficient speakers of Occitan is thought to be dropping precipitously. A tourist in the cities in southern France is unlikely to hear a single Occitan word spoken on the street (or, for that matter, in a home), and is likely to only find the occasional vestige, such as street signs (and, of those, most will have French equivalents more prominently displayed), to remind them of the traditional language of the area.


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan speakers, as a result of generations of systematic suppression and humiliation (see Vergonha), seldom use the language in the presence of strangers, whether they are from abroad or from outside Occitania (in this case, often merely and abusively referred to as "Parisiens" or "Nordistes", which means "northerners"). Occitan is still spoken by many elderly people in rural areas, but they generally switch to French when dealing with outsiders.


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan's decline is somewhat less pronounced in Béarn because of the province's history (a late addition to the Kingdom of France), though even there the language is little spoken outside the homes of the rural elderly. The village of Artix is notable for having elected to post street signs in the local language.


title: Occitan language

text: The area where Occitan was historically dominant has approximately 16 million inhabitants. Recent research has shown it may be spoken as a first language by approximately 789,000 people in France, Italy, Spain and Monaco. In Monaco, Occitan coexists with Monégasque Ligurian, which is the other native language. Some researchers state that up to seven million people in France understand the language, whereas twelve to fourteen million fully spoke it in 1921. In 1860, Occitan speakers represented more than 39% of the whole French population (52% for francophones proper); they were still 26% to 36% in the 1920s and fewer than 7% in 1993.


title: Occitan language

text: Occitan is fundamentally defined by its dialects, rather than being a unitary language. That point is very conflictual in Southern France, as many people do not recognize Occitan as a real language and think that the next defined "dialects" are languages. Like other languages that fundamentally exist at a spoken, rather than written, level (e.g. the Rhaeto-Romance languages, Franco-Provençal, Astur-Leonese, and Aragonese), every settlement technically has its own dialect, with the whole of Occitania forming a classic dialect continuum that changes gradually along any path from one side to the other. Nonetheless, specialists commonly divide Occitan into six main dialects:


title: Occitan language

text: The northern and easternmost dialects have more morphological and phonetic features in common with the Gallo-Italic and Oïl languages (e.g. nasal vowels; loss of final consonants; initial "cha/ja-" instead of "ca/ga-"; uvular; the front-rounded sound instead of a diphthong, instead of before a consonant), whereas the southernmost dialects have more features in common with the Ibero-Romance languages (e.g. betacism; voiced fricatives between vowels in place of voiced stops; -"ch"- in place of -"it"-), and Gascon has a number of unusual features not seen in other dialects (e.g. in place of ; loss of between vowels; intervocalic "-r-" and final "-t/ch" in place of medieval --). There are also significant lexical differences, where some dialects have words cognate with French, and others have Catalan and Spanish cognates. Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of mutual intelligibility.


title: Occitan language

text: Gascon is the most divergent, and descriptions of the main features of Occitan often consider Gascon separately. Max Wheeler notes that "probably only its copresence within the French cultural sphere has kept [Gascon] from being regarded as a separate language", and compares it to Franco-Provençal, which is considered a separate language from Occitan but is "probably not more divergent from Occitan overall than Gascon is".


title: Occitan language

text: Bec also notes that some linguists prefer a "supradialectal" classification that groups Occitan with Catalan as a part of a wider Occitano-Romanic group. One such classification posits three groups:


title: Occitan language

text: According to this view, Catalan is an ausbau language that became independent from Occitan during the 13th century, but originates from the Aquitano-Pyrenean group.


title: Occitan language

text: All regional varieties of the Occitan language have a written form; thus, Occitan can be considered as a pluricentric language. Standard Occitan, also called "occitan larg" (i.e., 'wide Occitan') is a synthesis that respects and admits soft regional adaptations (which are based on the convergence of previous regional koinés). The standardization process began with the publication of "Gramatica occitana segon los parlars lengadocians" ("Grammar of the Languedocien Dialect") by Louis Alibert (1935), followed by the "Dictionnaire occitan-français selon les parlers languedociens" ("French-Occitan dictionary according to Languedocien") by the same author (1966), completed during the 1970s with the works of Pierre Bec (Gascon), Robèrt Lafont (Provençal), and others. However, the process has not yet been completed as of the present.. Standardization is mostly supported by users of the classical norm. Due to the strong situation of diglossia, some users thusly reject the standardization process, and do not conceive Occitan as a language that can be standardized as per other standardized languages.


title: Occitan language

text: There are two main linguistic norms currently used for Occitan, one (known as "classical"), which is based on that of Medieval Occitan, and one (sometimes known as "Mistralian", due to its use by Frédéric Mistral), which is based on modern French orthography. Sometimes, there is conflict between users of each system.


title: Occitan language

text: There are also two other norms but they have a lesser audience. The "Escòla dau Pò norm" (or "Escolo dóu Po norm") is a simplified version of the Mistralian norm and is used only in the Occitan Valleys (Italy), besides the classical norm. The "Bonnaudian norm" (or "écriture auvergnate unifiée, EAU") was created by Pierre Bonnaud and is used only in the Auvergnat dialect, besides the classical norm.


title: Occitan language

text: Note that Catalan version was translated from the Spanish, while the Occitan versions were translated from the French. The second part of the Catalan version may also be rendered as "Són dotades de raó i de consciència, i els cal actuar entre si amb un esperit de fraternitat", showing the similarities between Occitan and Catalan.


title: Occitan language

text: The majority of scholars think that Occitan constitutes a single language. Some authors, constituting a minority, reject this opinion and even the name "Occitan", thinking that there is a family of distinct rather than dialects of a single language.


title: Occitan language

text: Many Occitan linguists and writers, particularly those involved with the pan-Occitan movement centered on the Institut d'Estudis Occitans, disagree with the view that Occitan is a family of languages; instead they believe Limousin, Auvergnat, Languedocien, Gascon, Provençal and Vivaro-Alpine are dialects of a single language. Although there are indeed noticeable differences between these varieties, there is a very high degree of mutual intelligibility between them partly because they share a common literary history; furthermore, academic and literary circles have identified them as a collective linguistic entity—the —for centuries.


title: Occitan language

text: Some Provençal authors continue to support the view that Provençal is a separate language. Nevertheless, the vast majority of Provençal authors and associations think that Provençal is a part of Occitan.


title: Occitan language

text: This debate about the status of Provençal should not be confused with the debate concerning the spelling of Provençal.


title: Occitan language

text: For example, the classical system writes "Polonha", whereas the Mistralian spelling system has "Poulougno", for , 'Poland'.


title: Occitan language

text: The question of Gascon is similar. Gascon presents a number of significant differences from the rest of the language; but, despite these differences, Gascon and other Occitan dialects have very important common lexical and grammatical features, so authors such as Pierre Bec argue that they could never be considered as different as, for example, Spanish and Italian. In addition, Gascon's being included in Occitan despite its particular differences can be justified because there is a common elaboration ("Ausbau") process between Gascon and the rest of Occitan. The vast majority of the Gascon cultural movement considers itself as a part of the Occitan cultural movement. And the official status of Val d'Aran (Catalonia, Spain), adopted in 1990, says that Aranese is a part of Gascon and Occitan. A grammar of Aranese by Aitor Carrera, published in 2007 in Lleida, presents the same view.


title: Occitan language

text: The exclusion of Catalan from the Occitan sphere, even though Catalan is closely related, is justified because there has been a consciousness of its being different from Occitan since the later Middle Ages and because the elaboration ("Ausbau") processes of Catalan and Occitan (including Gascon) have been quite distinct since the 20th century. Nevertheless, other scholars point out that the process that led to the affirmation of Catalan as a distinct language from Occitan started during the period when the pressure to include Catalan-speaking areas in a mainstream Spanish culture was at its greatest.


title: Occitan language

text: The answer to the question of whether Gascon or Catalan should be considered dialects of Occitan or separate languages has long been a matter of opinion or convention, rather than based on scientific ground. However, two recent studies support Gascon's being considered a distinct language. For the very first time, a quantifiable, statistics-based approach was applied by Stephan Koppelberg in attempt to solve this issue. Based on the results he obtained, he concludes that Catalan, Occitan, and Gascon should all be considered three distinct languages. More recently, Y. Greub and J.P. Chambon (Sorbonne University, Paris) demonstrated that the formation of Proto-Gascon was already complete at the eve of the 7th century, whereas Proto-Occitan was not yet formed at that time. These results induced linguists to do away with the conventional classification of Gascon, favoring the "distinct language" alternative. Both studies supported the early intuition of the late Kurt Baldinger, a specialist of both medieval Occitan and medieval Gascon, who recommended that Occitan and Gascon be classified as separate languages.


title: Occitan language

text: Jules Ronjat has sought to characterize Occitan with 19 principal, generalizable criteria. Of those, 11 are phonetic, five morphologic, one syntactic, and two lexical. For example, close rounded vowels are rare or absent in Occitan. This characteristic often carries through to an Occitan speaker's French, leading to a distinctive "méridional" accent. Unlike French, it is a pro-drop language, allowing the omission of the subject (: I sing; you sing)—though, at least in Gascon, the verb must be preceded by an "enunciative" in place of the pronoun, for questions, for observations, for other occasions: , (I am), (He/she is?), (We are.). Among these 19 discriminating criteria, 7 are different from Spanish, 8 from Italian, 12 from Franco-Provençal, and 16 from French.


title: Occitan language

text: Examples of dialect-specific features of the southerly dialects (or some of them) shared with Catalan, but not French:


title: Occitan language

text: A comparison of terms and word counts between languages is not easy, as it is impossible to count the number of words in a language. (See Lexicon, Lexeme, Lexicography for more information.)


title: Occitan language

text: Some have claimed around 450,000 words exist in the Occitan language, a number comparable to English (the Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged with 1993 addenda reaches 470,000 words, as does the Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition). The Merriam-Webster Web site estimates that the number is somewhere between 250,000 and 1 million words.


title: Occitan language

text: The magazine "Géo" (2004, p. 79) claims that American English literature can be more easily translated into Occitan than French, excluding modern technological terms that both languages have integrated.


title: Occitan language

text: A comparison of the lexical content can find more subtle differences between the languages. For example, Occitan has 128 synonyms related to cultivated land, 62 for wetlands, and 75 for sunshine ("Géo"). The language went through an eclipse during the Industrial Revolution, as the vocabulary of the countryside became less important. At the same time, it was disparaged as a patois. Nevertheless, Occitan has also incorporated new words into its lexicon to describe the modern world. The Occitan word for web (as in World Wide Web) is , for example.


title: Occitan language

text: The separation of Catalan from Occitan is seen by some as largely politically (rather than linguistically) motivated. However, the variety that has become standard Catalan differs from the one that has become standard Occitan in a number of ways. Here are just a few examples:


title: Occitan language

text: Despite these differences, Occitan and Catalan remain more or less mutually comprehensible, especially when written – more so than either is with Spanish or French, for example, although this is mainly a consequence of using the classical (orthographical) norm of the Occitan, which is precisely focused in showing the similarities between the Occitan dialects with Catalan. Occitan and Catalan form a common diasystem (or a common Abstandsprache), which is called Occitano-Romance, according to the linguist Pierre Bec. Speakers of both languages share early historical and cultural heritage.


title: Occitan language

text: The combined Occitano-Romance area is 259,000 km, with a population of 23 million. However, the regions are not equal in terms of language speakers. According to Bec 1969 (pp. 120–121), in France, no more than a quarter of the population in counted regions could speak Occitan well, though around half understood it; it is thought that the number of Occitan users has decreased dramatically since then. By contrast, in the Catalonia administered by the Government of Catalonia, nearly three-quarters of the population speak Catalan and 95% understand it.


title: Occitan language

text: In the modern era, Occitan has become a rare and highly threatened language. Its users are clustered almost exclusively in Southern France, and it is unlikely that any monolingual speakers remain. In the early 1900s, the French government attempted to restrict the use and teaching of many minority languages, including Occitan, in public schools. While the laws have since changed, with bilingual education returning for regions with unique languages in 1993, this movement caused serious decline in the number of Occitan speakers. The majority of living speakers are older adults.


title: Occitan language

text: One of the most notable passages of Occitan in Western literature occurs in the 26th "canto" of Dante's "Purgatorio" in which the troubadour Arnaut Daniel responds to the narrator:


title: Occitan language

text: French writer Victor Hugo's classic "Les Misérables" also contains some Occitan. In Part One, First Book, Chapter IV, "Les œuvres semblables aux paroles", one can read about Monseigneur Bienvenu:


title: Occitan language

text: The Spanish playwright Lope de Rueda included a Gascon servant for comical effect in one of his short pieces, "La generosa paliza".


title: Occitan language

text: John Barnes's "Thousand Cultures" science fiction series ("A Million Open Doors", 1992; "Earth Made of Glass", 1998; "The Merchants of Souls", 2001; and "The Armies of Memory", 2006), features Occitan.


title: Occitan language

text: So does the 2005 best-selling novel "Labyrinth" by English author Kate Mosse. It is set in Carcassonne, where she owns a house and spends half of the year.


title: Occitan language

text: The French composer Joseph Canteloube created five sets of folk songs entitled "Songs of the Auvergne", in which the lyrics are in the Auvergne dialect of Occitan. The orchestration strives to conjure vivid pastoral scenes of yesteryear.


title: The Land Before Time

text: The Land Before Time is an American animated film series and media franchise created by Judy Freudberg and Tony Geiss, distributed by Universal Pictures and centered on dinosaurs. The series began in 1988 with the eponymous "The Land Before Time", directed and produced by Don Bluth and executive produced by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. It was followed by 13 direct-to-video musical sequels, a TV series, video games, soundtracks, and related merchandising. Neither the sequels nor the series involve the participation of Bluth, Lucas, or Spielberg. All 14 films were released as a Complete Collection DVD set on June 14, 2016.


title: The Land Before Time

text: The films follow a friendship of a group of young ornithodirans (four dinosaurs and a pterosaur) named Littlefoot ("Apatosaurus"), Cera ("Triceratops"), Ducky ("Saurolophus"), Petrie ("Pteranodon"), and Spike ("Stegosaurus"). After finding the Great Valley, they , (a "Tyrannosaurus", whom they name Chomper), survive a drought and a cold snap, and witness a solar eclipse. Throughout all the films, they embark upon adventures, learning lessons about life and friendship along the way.


title: The Land Before Time

text: A television series based on the films began airing on YTV in Canada on January 5, 2007. It consisted of one season of 26 episodes, and officially premiered on Cartoon Network in the United States on March 5, 2007, after the DVD release of "". The TV series takes place after the events of "". It has since been collected and released on 6 DVDs, each containing 4 episodes, in the United States and the UK.