Word: dnieper
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Cleaning up the Ukraine is no afternoon tea party. It comprises an area bigger than Italy, and about one-sixth of Russia's peoples live there. But Adolf Hitler must have it, must grasp its steelworks, its great Dnieper dam, its rich black dirt which pushes up abundance and covers coal and iron...
Last week his Ukraine strategy became apparent. It was his aim to encircle the Russian defenders and contain them in the great geographical sack defined by the Dniester and Dnieper Rivers and the Black Sea; there to cut them up. Wrote authoritative Dienstaus Deutschland of this ambitious undertaking: "The size of the encircled area or the time required to liquidate it is not important. What counts is that the enemy is grabbed; he can't retreat and he is destroyed...
...Fronts. Hitler's battle for Moscow had its focus at Smolensk. He had broken through the Stalin Line at the gap near Smolensk-the open space between the defending Dnieper and Dvina Rivers, north of Orsha (see map, p. 16). Through the gap the usual spearhead poured and for the first time Moscow itself was a Luftwaffe target. In a five and a half hour night attack, 200 planes planted big explosions near the Kremlin, said Berlin. But the Russians declared that only "isolated" raiders got through, called the attempt a "failure...
...Push. Had the pause lasted a fortnight or longer, it would have indicated that the Germans were in trouble. Instead the Nazis gave the Russians only a few days' rest before launching their second push. Soon the Russians inferentially reported the Germans attempting to force bridgeheads across the Dnieper in the center, slogging through "the wet zone" to the north, knocking at the Ukraine down south...
...Russians retreated fast, devastating the country as they went, harassing the Swedes only at the river crossings. The country people were forced to bury their grain in pits and drive their cattle into the trackless swamp. By the time Charles had crossed the Dnieper, his force had begun to suffer from want of bread and fodder. The endless horizon of charred fields and burning villages strained his troops' morale. The final straw was the coldest winter in centuries-so cold that vodka froze and it was said wood would not burn in the open air. By spring, Charles...