Word: kharkov
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...year ago these lines curving across the hemispheres would have looked like wishful thinking. About a year ago every Allied line of attack seemed to be a line drawn in sand, to be erased by the next Axis tide. Russia's effort to attack at Kharkov had been wiped out and the Nazi armies flowed around Stalingrad. Rommel had rolled the British back from Bengasi and was beating against the gates of El Alamein. On the other side of the world the U.S. fought frantically to keep a toe hold on a 90-mile-long island in the Pacific...
...Army General Nikolai Vatutin, captor of Sumy and co-captor of Kharkov. A massive man with a peasant's round face, he is one of the Red Army's veteran tankmen. In World War I he was a private. The Civil War gave him an opportunity to display his talents, saw him rise to the command of a cavalry division. Today his soldiers rate Vatutin as a "driving general," recall with awe last winter's campaign, when with fury and disdain for physical suffering he hurled his men into attack in the fiercest blizzards until the Nazi...
...Colonel General Ivan Konev, captor of Kharkov. A hard-faced man with a leathery skin and a head as bare as a billiard ball, he is one of the dwindling number of oldtimers who survived the test of this war. Like Popov, he headed an army in the Far East before the war. When Hitler struck, Konev was in the vital Gomel sector, fighting stubbornly for each foot of the muddy terrain. In the battle for Moscow, he held the southern anchor of the defense line, soundly drubbed the renowned Nazi tankman, Colonel General Heinz Guderian. Marshal Zhukov once said...
...Army General Rodion Malinovsky, co-captor of Kharkov. At 44, this stocky, Odessa-born general is a veteran of much bloodshed. In World War I he fought in France beside American troops. In World War II he achieved a major triumph by crushing the Wehrmacht's desperate attempt to relieve the army trapped at Stalingrad. Today his is the crucial job of clamping the lid on the Germans caught in the southern rattrap. The Red Army regards him as a subtle and original tactician, second only to Rokossovsky as a daring and two-fisted field commander...
...July 5 the Russians knew they had guessed right. The Germans struck at Kursk, were repulsed with staggering losses. But the Red Army did not attack Sevsk. Instead, it struck in the north, capturing Orel. That done, it shifted its weight to the south, against Kharkov. The German command moved its idle reserves from Sevsk, threw them into the futile defense of Kharkov...