Word: line
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...statement did not urge any specific steps for bringing the Baltic states into line, but its ominous tone came as a shock to Soviet liberals. With Mikhail Gorbachev out of Moscow on vacation last week, many wondered if the virulent anti-Baltic onslaught was yet another maneuver by conservative forces to discredit the Soviet leader's political reforms...
...Japanese army lieutenant meticulously wired 42 cubes of yellow blasting powder and buried the load in the earth 5 ft. from railroad tracks north of the Manchurian city of Mukden (now Shenyang). The explosives would throw a lot of dirt but cause little damage to the rail line. After all, the South Manchurian Railroad was Japanese-owned and linked the empire's economic outposts in predominantly Chinese Manchuria. All the army wanted was an "incident...
...setting off a circus of public surveillance but no formal charges. Yet as Bloch sipped a vodka tonic and spoke angrily of the "F Bureau of Incompetents," he seemed little changed from the career foreign-service officer I have known for more than 28 years. "I guess the bottom line is they don't have a case yet," he said...
Even as he spoke, German artillery had already started firing, and tanks were rolling eastward. For a time, everything went as Hitler planned. The Red Army was caught by surprise, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers fell prisoner. Within three weeks the German line had moved forward some 400 miles, to Smolensk and almost to Leningrad. But with the central army group in striking distance of Moscow, Hitler delayed its advance to concentrate on capturing the industrial and agricultural resources of the Ukraine, and it was not until October that he began a new drive on the capital...
Hitler decided to rethink the whole strategy. The French defense was based on the "Maginot Line," a chain of fortifications that stretched 200 miles along the frontier from Switzerland north as far as Luxembourg. Built at a cost of $200 million (a substantial sum at a time when a workman earned about $3 a day), the Maginot Line was considered invulnerable; its strongest outposts bristled with antitank guns, machine guns and barbed wire, and boasted concrete walls 10 ft. thick as well as supply depots 100 ft. underground. To the north of the Ardennes Forest, which was only lightly fortified...