Pavel Alexeyevich Belov was a Soviet Army colonel general and a Hero of the Soviet Union. He was nicknamed the "Fox" by the Germans and personally led the longest successful war raid, lasting five months behind the German lines. He has earned legendary status and could be considered one of the greatest cavalry generals. Considering his accomplishments from 1941-1945, his adaptation of combining horses, tanks, artillery, and aircraft on a modern battlefield resulted in the victory against a more technologically advanced enemy, often in the most desperate parts of the Eastern Front.

The Battle of Moscow was a military campaign that consisted of two periods of strategically significant fighting on a 600 km (370 mi) sector of the Eastern Front during World War II, 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.