Word: hitlered
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From mid-July 1942 onward, the fighting intensified as the Germans advanced along the great bend of the Don River. Hitler ordered the German Sixth Army to conquer Stalingrad by Aug. 25. Stalin ordered the city to prepare for siege...
...Stalingrad. While they held air superiority, they were unable to knock out the powerful batteries of Russian artillery across the Volga. And beyond the Stalingrad cauldron, the Red Army was on the move. In late November 1942 the Russians encircled the city, trapping thousands of German and Romanian troops. Hitler had committed a strategic mistake. He had dissipated his military strength and caused tremendous logistical confusion by splitting up the offensive -- sending a huge strike force toward the Caucasus simultaneously with the drive toward Stalingrad...
...Germans in Stalingrad fought on through January, even as the Russian military ringed the city. Hitler had promised reinforcements, and in the second half of December launched a major tank assault on the Soviet blockade. It failed. Wrote Chuikov: "Up to the end of December, ((the Germans)) continued to live in hopes and put up a desperate resistance, often literally to the last cartridge. We practically took no prisoners, since the Nazis just wouldn't surrender." Not until Feb. 2, 1943, was the enemy defeated in Stalingrad. By then the Germans were more willing to surrender: 90,000 were taken...
North Africa was not originally Germany's theater of war. But the stunning defeat of 200,000 Italian soldiers in Libya by a force of 30,000 from the British empire forced Hitler to send reinforcements to the region in February 1941. The brilliant Erwin Rommel, who had helped lead German forces in the lightning conquest of France in 1940, quickly turned back the Allied advance in Libya and in April besieged an Australian division in the strategic seaside fortress of Tobruk as troops from Britain and New Zealand retreated to Egypt. Rommel called Tobruk's defenders nothing but rabble...
...Desert Fox," however, was far from finished. Orchestrating an intricate withdrawal, he then prepared for a counterattack. Hitler sent him an entire air corps, detached from the Russian front. The two divisions of the Afrika Korps were resupplied and refreshed, and in June 1942 Rommel captured Tobruk -- earning from the Fuhrer the rank of field marshal. Egypt, Suez and the oil of the Middle East now seemed within his grasp. Hitler, warned by more cautious advisers to be wary about proceeding toward Cairo, nonetheless ordered that operations "be continued until the British forces are completely annihilated . . . The goddess of fortune...