Word: blows
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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East to the Don. For their first main blow of summer at the Red Army, Hitler's generals had chosen a region of villages, sparsely wooded plains, and good tank country well south of Moscow and about 400 miles north of fallen Sevastopol (see p. 21). There, rivers were the only natural allies of the Red Army, and the rivers were not enough. This front, lying between Kursk on the north and Kharkov on the south, was placed so that at one stroke the Germans could drive for three objectives...
...Moscow itself. For the Germans driving eastward to the Don and the railway, were striking indirectly at Russia's heart, seeking to cut it off from the main body of the U.S.S.R. This tactic alone, if it succeeded, would be a crushing blow to Russia...
Pressure in the North. Although the Germans' main blow fell south of Moscow, their summer strategy, as it unfolded, embraced the whole Russian front. Near Borodino, where Napoleon won a Pyrrhic victory, Nazi artillery and infantry made just enough of a gesture to pin down the Red forces defending the capital to keep them from relieving Timoshenko. Then, on the Kalinin front northwest of Moscow, the Germans began still another drive. It was geared for speed: fleets of Luftwaffe transports swarmed into rear-line fields to supply the mobile Nazi forces. This served immediately to divert the Red Army...
...European armies. It had become a race to see who would open one first-the U.S. and Britain to aid Russia, or Japan to help Germany. From the Pacific came portents indicating that Japan, with 1,000,000 men already lined up in Manchukuo, was poised for a blow against Siberia...
...Germans did their best to 'get' the cathedral," said Dean Johnson after the raid. "They singled it out, dive-bombed it and hoped to burn it to the ground if they couldn't blow it to pieces. The bravest of fire guards, who worked within inches of death for over an hour throughout the bombing, spoiled the diabolical plan...