Word: minsk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Newer, greater Lithuania will supposedly include all White Russia (48,494 sq.mi.; pop. 4,979,700; capital, Minsk), a part of northeastern Poland and former sister republic Latvia's harbor of Libau-if the Nazis...
...miles to the farthest point, halted for several days. This could be attributed to Russian counterattacks, to the fixed defenses of the Stalin Line, to nasty weather, to the number of prisoners the Nazis had taken, to continuing resistance behind the German lines-particularly in the Bialystok-Minsk area...
...main drive (see map) bogged a bit. Beyond dreary Minsk with its old Polish manor houses made over into collective-farm headquarters, beyond the White Russian villages with their bumptious names (They've Caught Fire, It Didn't Rain, Big Blockhead, etc.), the going got tougher. The initial Nazi torrent, catching the Russians with their rubbers off, had swept ahead breathtakingly. But in the second week it began to look as if that early ease had been misleading. The Germans came up against a tough natural line at the Berezina River where Napoleon caught hell on his return...
Green Fields, Blue Sky. Terrain and season defined the campaign. The easiest area for attack was the central plain just above and below the vast Pripet Marshes. The two main German drives developed there - one headed for Minsk and Moscow, the other for Kiev and the Ukraine (see map) - over land flat as a billiard table, through fields still too green to be burned, under a sky clear enough for half-blind pilots. The weather would stay fine for three months, within which the Germans intended to attain their objectives...
...most important offensive was aimed at Minsk, where the Russians had concentrated 24 of their best divisions. Steel columns shot out in the familiar pincers operation, only this time they moved far deeper and far wider than usual. Early this week the steel jaws bit together behind Minsk, and within the maw the Germans claimed to have two great armies; not only the Minsk divisions, but frontier divisions as well...