Word: ploesti
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...week the Germans in Rumania lost the rich oil fields of Ploesti; Constanta, Rumania's chief port on the Black Sea; Bucharest, the "little Paris" of the Balkans. Worst of all, by choosing to fight for the Wallachian plain, Adolf Hitler had lost the better part of 30 divisions -which might otherwise have pulled back to defend Germany proper. Moreover the Russians, now heading for a junction with Marshal Tito's forces in Yugoslavia, threatened to cut off all the remaining Wehrmacht divisions-estimated at 15 to 20-in the southern Balkan peninsula...
...Ploesti. For the Allied cause as a whole, Ploesti's capture would have been a meatier triumph six months ago than it was last week. Germany is already so parched for oil that its motorized transport is grinding to a stop on all fronts. Allied air attacks on Ploesti have reduced its rate of annual output from 5,500,000 metric tons to 2,000,000. Nevertheless Ploesti in August was still providing Germany with about one-third of its total natural and synthetic oil, and Allied airmen still bombed Ploesti as a prime target...
...began along a 156-mile front -the mouth of a funnel narrowing into the Galati Gap, where 45 miles of Danubian plain, marsh and delta separate the mountains from the sea. On the Gap's farther side stretch the fat grain fields of Rumania, the high roads to Ploesti's oil, and the strategic plains of Hungary...
...Second Ukrainian Army lunged southward through ripening wheat and corn, sent spearheads westward into the beech-clad Carpathian foothills, penetrated Hungarian-held Transylvania. At week's end it hammered past Focsani, western anchor of the Gap's defenses and a main junction on the railway to Ploesti...
Within a week the Russians had ad vanced 125 miles, overrun 18.500 square miles, recovered all of Bessarabia, killed or captured 300,000 enemy troops. They were less than 60 miles from the Ploesti wells. 80 miles from Bucharest. In addition, their molnia...