Word: dniester
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...black Ukrainian steppe the Red Army fought one of its greatest battles, won one of World War II's greatest victories. At week's end Red units swarmed across the Dniester, spilled onto the bleak, muddy Bessarabian plain of pre-1940 Rumania. It was the 1,002nd day of Russia...
...Sixth German Army was ringed and destroyed. South of Vinnitsa three encircled German divisions were being whittled down. Thousands of dejected prisoners wearily marched to Russia's rear. The fortified German line on the Russian Bug (which empties into the Black Sea)* was pierced in two days, the Dniester line in a night...
...failed to hold out behind the broad, free-flowing Dnieper. What chance did he have of making a stand behind the frozen Bug? The Dniester, alone, now some 100 miles behind the front, offered a potential line of defense. But the Dniester's right bank is in Bessarabia, and the echo of Russian gunfire there would echo throughout the Balkans...
...Wehrmacht was still strong, but it was now a cornered, wounded panther, no longer able to mount an offensive on the eastern front. It could still seek refuge behind the Bug or the Dniester, but neither was an obstacle as tough as the Dnieper, and both were frighteningly close to the borders of German Europe...
...Antonescu, his Fourth Army supported by German auxiliaries, moved into action. German support, it appeared, also included a good deal of prodding. A Rumanian platoon commander, later killed in action, wrote in his diary: "Our men are grumbling and asking what business do we have beyond the Dniester. But Germans are behind us and they don't answer such questions-except with their guns. . . . We'll be commanded to sacrifice our lives in order to seize what never belonged to us. So it must be, they tell...