Word: kursk
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...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 it. This week the drive was still young, the results unclear. In any case it kept thousands of Germans pinned down...
Such an offensive, if successful, would: 1) complete the entrapment of the Axis armies in the Don-Volga area; 2) bar the Germans' way of retreat to their last summer's line (Taganrog-Kharkov-Kursk-Orel) ; 3) finally doom the halting German drive in the Caucasus, perhaps cut off the Caucasian armies' last line of supply and retreat through the Crimea; 4) force the Germans to draw further on their dwindling reserves...
...chosen a region of villages, sparsely wooded plains, and good tank country well south of Moscow and about 400 miles north of fallen Sevastopol (see p. 21). There, rivers were the only natural allies of the Red Army, and the rivers were not enough. This front, lying between Kursk on the north and Kharkov on the south, was placed so that at one stroke the Germans could drive for three objectives...
Mass v. Depth. Last week the Germans widened and joined the preliminary offensives which they had launched from Kharkov and Kursk (TIME, July 6). The struggles along the whole southern front thus became one battle, but it was fought in many separated sectors. In each Field Marshal Fedor von Bock faithfully followed the battle plan which the Nazis had devised to break up the Red Army's famed defense-in-depth: closely meshed, overpowering combinations of planes, tanks, artillery and infantry. Strong and deep though the Russian defenses were, the Nazi forces at the points of contact were even...
After their mauling before Sevastopol, Manstein's troops probably had to rest and refit, but the Luftwaffe air fleet could fly immediately to the Kursk-Kharkov fronts. Fritz Erich von Manstein had earned his quick promotion to Field Marshal...