Word: caucasus
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...much claim to glory as the British people had when they withstood the blitz of 1940. But a strong people had not prevented the loss of White Russia and the Ukraine. Would they be any better able to prevent the conquest of the Don basin, of Stalingrad, of the Caucasus? The strongest will to resist can eventually crack under continued defeat...
...effect an extension of the drive to relieve Stalingrad. But as the Russian thrust widened, it also became an effort to destroy the Germans' entire system of communications and supply in the Ukraine, to endanger Axis forces both in the Don-Volga area and in the Caucasus. The great object of the Red Army's winter strategy was now clear: to slice up the Germans' winter lines, keep the Wehrmacht on the defensive from Rzhev to the Caucasus...
Hitler took a liking to black-eyed, paunchy Kurt Zeitzler during the Polish campaign when the Führer reviewed one of Himmler's 55 regiments. Zeitzler quickly rose from colonel to general, served in Poland, the Balkans and the Caucasus as a Panzer staff officer and, despite his Gestapo connections, won the grudging respect of the Wehrmacht's Junkers...
...victories and old defeats are defeating the Germans: the Red Army's stands, retreats and counterattacks; the Wehrmacht's losses at Smolensk, Rzhev and Moscow; the men and weapons spent, the weeks forever lost at Sevastopol; the spaces of the Ukraine, the Kuban plains and the upper Caucasus, conquered but nonetheless expensive to their conquerors; and, finally, the pit of Stalingrad. No one of these great battles, sieges or marches in the greatest campaign of history exhausted or defeated the German Army. But in the aggregate they saved Russia and they saved the Red Army...
Such an offensive, if successful, would: 1) complete the entrapment of the Axis armies in the Don-Volga area; 2) bar the Germans' way of retreat to their last summer's line (Taganrog-Kharkov-Kursk-Orel) ; 3) finally doom the halting German drive in the Caucasus, perhaps cut off the Caucasian armies' last line of supply and retreat through the Crimea; 4) force the Germans to draw further on their dwindling reserves...