Word: gomel
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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While thrusts and counterthrusts continued in the Ukraine, the weight of the Russian attack shifted northward. There, on the fringe of the Pripet Marshes, General Konstantin Rokossovsky celebrated the first anniversary of his historic Stalingrad noose by stringing a similar noose around German-held Gomel. And from the areas farther north came new rumblings: perhaps the next big Red offensive will roll there...
...After a drive across the frozen Pripet Marshes, a Russian column had outflanked the German stronghold of Gomel...
...which looks like a dagger aimed at the Baltic States and northern Poland, there was fierce action again, and the Germans acknowledged a "major penetration" of their lines. West of Nevel some Russian columns were now within 50 miles of the Latvian, 40-odd miles of the Polish border. Gomel still faced doom and Red troops were barely a dozen miles from German held Vitebsk...
Vistas. Though the Germans had not yet admitted it, Hitler's vaunted Dnieper line ("Here I am and here I shall remain") was no more. From a point just below doomed Gomel, 550 miles down to the Black Sea, the Dnieper's left bank was virtually clear...
...Farther north, powerful Russian columns inched closer to the German strongholds at Kiev, Gomel, Vitebsk. German defenses forbade a quick breakthrough. But the steady punching kept the worried German command from shifting its troops from these threatened cities to the crumbling line in the south...