Thank you, sir, for you comment and your service to our country.
It was largely the Russian winters that enabled them to hold the Nazis in check during WWII. I suspect that if WW II had continued a couple more years, all things then being equal, the Germans would have figured out how to fight in the harsh winters and may have completely changed that front of the war.
Yeah, like supply their troops with something more substantial than summer uniforms and maintain a supply train. Barbarossa was seriously screwed up. The Germans should have succeeded.
Winter is Russia's ace in the hole now because they basically control Europe's natural gas supplies. Western Europe has no taste for spending winter in the cold and dark.