Word: kharkov
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Voronezh to Kursk. The line that the Germans hoped to hold in the south became fairly clear. If they could keep Kursk and Kharkov-the starting points of their summer drive-and retain a line swerving southeastward to Rostov, they would still have the main arteries of their principal supply system and most of the industrially rich Donets basin. Fortnight ago, the Red Army seemed to have a chance to threaten this "last line." This week, after they completed the repossession of Voronezh and swept westward, the Russians were actually attacking the outer bastions of that line near Kursk...
...Donets basin is the greatest prize the Germans have won in Russia. If they have to retreat from Rostov, giving up the eastern half of the basin, they could still try to hold a straightened version of the Kharkov-Mariupol line from which they started last year, and the richer western half of the basin would still be German. Any retirement beyond that line, meaning the sacrifice of all the Donets area, could be attributed only to utter defeat...
...south, render the Volga lifeline useless to the Russians and secure the German flank driving through the Caucasus toward Baku and the Middle East. It also meant that the Red Armies defending Stalingrad and the Volga were free to push west and join the armies smashing at Rostov and Kharkov...
...Rostov. The fall of Salsk and Armavir gave the Red Army a tighter hold upon the railways of the Caucasus, increased the prospect that the retiring Axis forces there can only retreat across the Black Sea into the Crimea. Ever nearer was a Russian thrust into the Germans' Kharkov line...
...central front, based below Voronezh and aimed roughly at the Germans' key point of Kharkov, the Russians launched another new attack. The General's diagnosis was indeed correct. From that area no reserves could be safely moved -and none could be added, because other fronts were in distress. Yet here was potentially the greatest threat of all to the integrity of the German front. The one way the Red Army can decisively smash the German position in Russia is to crash through the great lateral Smolensk-Kursk-Kharkov-Crimea railway system into relatively ill-defended positions behind...