Word: poltava
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Cities and countryside alike had been devastated. Fischer found Poltava and Kremenchug "worse than Berlin," his previous superlative of destruction. Kharkov was almost as bad. The great Donbas industrial basin was one wide ruin. Rural areas were little better...
...hold on until the Dnieper Line was ready, until his men had pulled out of the dangerous southern pocket. To achieve this he used hedgehogs-well-placed, well-fortified strongholds. The hedgehog at Stalino held until Manstein's units withdrew from the Don. The Poltava hedgehog held until the Germans reached the Dnieper...
...Captured Poltava, the key to the big bend of the Dnieper...
Closer to the Dnieper than Rokossovsky were his teammates, Army Generals Nikolai Vatutin, whose sector hung over Poltava, and Rodion Malinovsky, now almost within gun range of Zaporozhe...
...mile fluid front, from the forests of Smolensk to the Sea of Azov, the Wehrmacht was falling back in what might yet be its worst defeat. Nazi bastions which a month ago were safely in the rear were now in peril. Taganrog, Yelnya, Sumy and Konotop had fallen. Smolensk, Poltava, Mariupol and Stalino (which Berlin once possessively hailed as "Russia's Essen") awaited the Red blow. For many, the blow might come within days...