Word: breakthroughs
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There was another sector on the west, where the Allied beachhead in Normandy hung in stalemate and German skill seemed to be accomplishing something. Then came the breakthrough: Brittany was lost, a steel-tipped javelin poised to hurl at Paris, heart of Germany's western defenses. Nor could Hitler find any comfort in the south. There nothing was left except a weary German army, fighting in Northern Italy-where it might yet be trapped...
...give him three hours of good flying weather any forenoon and he would break out of Normandy. The pent power of his U.S. forces back of Saint-Lô, like a gigantic rocket, would be loosed into the chute carved by a 2,000-plane air bombardment. After the breakthrough-the General made no promises...
Still the Weather. There were some reasons for the stoppage. The terrain was still tough for attack-but it will always be tough until the Allies can force a genuine breakthrough into the open country between Caen and Paris. The battleground was so restricted that German reconnaissance had ample warning of the push-but the battleground will always be restricted while the Allies remain bottled up on the Normandy peninsula. The weather was vile; dust-dry one day, bucketing rain the next two or three-but even the most loyal correspondents were weary of apologizing for the fighting weather...
...East Prussia, the exit gate for the German Armies in the Baltic provinces stood open. But the Nazis were in dire peril. Having carved a huge salient in Lithuania, General Bagramian was closer last week to Riga than General Chernyakhovsky, at the Suwalki triangle, was to Konigsberg. Yet a breakthrough to Riga would bring in only part of the bag. Pulling the drawstring at Konigsberg might be more difficult, but it would pay off more handsomely...
...swung back to the Caen sector, where the British Second Army jumped off in a new offensive on a nine-mile front southwest of Caen. The drive punched ahead for two and a half miles, then slowed as Field Marshal Erwin Rommel moved five divisions to stave off a breakthrough. German headquarters said the fighting might soon reach a new high of intensity and decide the fate of the Norman front...