Word: hitlers
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...beginning of December 1941, German troops were in Istra, a suburb only 15 miles west of Moscow. Ever since Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa at 4 a.m. on June 22, 1941, his forces had swept through Stalin's European empire. They took the half of Poland that had been partitioned to the Soviet Union in 1939, stripped off the Baltic states that Moscow had annexed just a year before, seized Belorussia, and were marching south into Ukraine. Stalin's generals were stunned. They had believed the idea of blitzkrieg was an unreliable bourgeois strategy. No one had expected such a lightning...
...better to stuff with wool and straw to protect toes against the cold. A popular Russian caricature of the time had the Fritzes -- as German soldiers were less than affectionately called -- wrapped in anything they could grab out of occupied civilian homes -- including women's shawls and feather boas. Hitler, expecting the war to be over by October, made Napoleon's mistake, neglecting to plan for the exigencies of a Russian winter...
...Hitler proclaimed, "The Soviet Union is finished." But by then the Germans poised at the gates of Moscow were exhausted, cold and dispirited. On Dec. 5, as the Japanese sailed toward Pearl Harbor, the Soviet army launched a massive counterattack along a 560-mile front. The Fritzes were thrown back by its ferocity. A German reporter assigned to the front recalls coming upon a soldier staggering out of a wood screaming "Aah! Come and help me! I can't see. They've gouged out my eyes." Soldiers had attacked him with a knife, slashing his eyes but taking care...
...attack on Pearl Harbor, / Leningrad's situation was even more desperate than the capital's. While the Germans outside Moscow were nearly exhausted by three unsuccessful attempts to take the city, Leningrad was not only being lashed by cannon fire and air raids but was also slowly being starved. Hitler had given orders that the city be completely eradicated after its surrender so that German occupying forces would not have to worry about supplying its civilian population...
...route for hundreds of thousands of refugees -- and a way in for food. The Russian counteroffensive that began on Dec. 5, 1941, also relieved pressure on the city. By early 1942, though the blockade was not broken, the Germans could not hope to advance without a terrible fight. Besides, Hitler was turning his attention toward the Volga River and oil-rich Baku by the Caspian Sea. There a titanic struggle soon developed over the city that stood in his way: Stalingrad...