Word: dam
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Last week the Germans were as good as ever at fighting for time. In the west they burrowed like moles, worked like beavers to dam the stream of Allied power swelling up to spill out over them. In the east they had limited for at least one more precious week the scythe-like swing of the Red Army...
Smart Blast. By last week it was clear that the Germans had made perhaps their smartest move in their play for time by blasting the floodgates of the Schwammenauel dam. The Roer, usually only 75 feet wide and knee-deep, at some points was more than 1,000 feet of brown water spilled over forested flatlands. At others it was a raging, narrow torrent...
...With the impending collapse of Germany and her destruction as a dam against Communism, Spain and Portugal, a thousand miles to the west, become the next barriers to the onrushing Red Russian tidal flood...
...Ninth Army stood on a 45-mile stretch of the Roer's west bank, from Roermond south beyond Düren. They could not risk a crossing so long as the Germans threatened to loose a flood on them from above. Before giving up the biggest dam, to the advancing First, the Germans last week demolished the floodgates. That dumped a huge volume of water into the valley, and the Allied armies on the west bank got out of its way. When the flood subsided, that danger would be gone for good...
...thaw made the going tougher for Red Army vehicles. Magnificent Autobahnen (express highways) enabled the Nazis to switch reserves quickly from one threatened spot to another. But the respite was only temporary. All along the Oder's east banks tremendous Russian forces were gathering like water behind a dam. German propagandists demanded a last-ditch stand, coined a slogan, "Victory or Siberia." Best bet: Siberia...