Word: melitopol
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First Front. Russia was still the first front, massive and man-consuming. The Wehrmacht found no rest at the Dnieper, only more blood, battle and bafflement. The Red Army crunched through Zaporozhe, grappled fiercely for Gomel, Kiev and Melitopol, crashed through the German lines between the key cities, battered at the flank of the enemy's Dnieper loop, threatened with disaster his powerful forces in the Crimea...
...followed the loss of Smolensk, it has yielded only Kremenchug. At some points the front is still as much as 40 miles east of Hitler's defense wall. Yet the Russian pressure is immense. Early this week, most of the bastions of this line-Vitebsk, Mogilev, Gomel, Kiev, Melitopol-were in danger...
...clutched at cannon and tank, swathed marching men's feet with a heavy, sticky cast, and blackend the battles' dead. But, from Velikie Luki down, nine army groups, including perhaps 27 armies, early this week pushed and plunged at the German Dnieper line - at Kiev and Melitopol, Zaporozhe and Dnepropetrovsk, Gomel and Cherkasi...
...difficulties: >From Smolensk, they now threaten the fat German bulge stretching out to Leningrad. If Vitebsk falls, the Baltic states would soon be in Russian hands. >From half a dozen points on the Dnieper, they can outflank most of the German strongholds on the Dnieper line. > From Melitopol and the Caucasus they will threaten the Crimea. > From the Crimea, if & when it falls, they will again dominate the Black Sea, and once again Germany's vassal states of Rumania and Bulgaria will be open to a direct attack...
Goals. With its armies, as the week turned, within eight mi. of Melitopol, within 20 mi. of the Dnieper, 25 mi. of Smolensk, 35 mi. of Kiev and 115 mi. of the old Polish border, Moscow remained closemouthed. Yet the war maps spelled clearly the Red Army's immediate objectives: Smolensk, Kiev, the Dnieper, the Crimea...