Word: crimea
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Russians said that, by taking Yeisk on the Sea of Azov, they had closed the Germans' last channels of escape via Rostov. There were reports of the Red Fleet's harrying boatloads of Germans fleeing across the narrow (3 mi.) Kerch Straits to the Axis-held Crimea. The most the Nazis could hope for was a Dunkirk, but it seemed more likely that they would suffer another Stalingrad...
...gain for the Russians and the greatest loss to the Germans would be Kharkov, fulcrum of the entire Axis line lying between the Red armies in the south and the outer defenses of the Reich itself. Second in importance was Rostov-a vital gate to the Caucasus and the Crimea and a point which the Germans seized and lost once before...
...north and south toward the German's pinion position at Rostov. The fall of Salsk and Armavir gave the Red Army a tighter hold upon the railways of the Caucasus, increased the prospect that the retiring Axis forces there can only retreat across the Black Sea into the Crimea. Ever nearer was a Russian thrust into the Germans' Kharkov line...
...could be added, because other fronts were in distress. Yet here was potentially the greatest threat of all to the integrity of the German front. The one way the Red Army can decisively smash the German position in Russia is to crash through the great lateral Smolensk-Kursk-Kharkov-Crimea railway system into relatively ill-defended positions behind it. This week the drive was still young, the results unclear. In any case it kept thousands of Germans pinned down...
...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...