Word: pyrrhic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even as men saluted the greatest and most grimly Pyrrhic of victories in all the gratitude and good spirit they could muster, they recognized that the discovery which had done most to end the worst of wars might also, quite conceivably, end all wars?if only man could learn its control...
...after the dressing-down, the newsmen's rights to the radio were restored (they had been unable even to tell of its denial to them until after the Alexander meeting). But it was a Pyrrhic victory. Before he gave back the radio, the General had made plain that he expected strict adherence to the military line. Over the newsmen was the threat that their stories, censored for fact at the source, would be recensored at Naples to jibe with Army policy. That policy obviously would be to even up the bad with the good, to emphasize the hunky-dory...
...World War I, in the civil wars of 1918-20 and in the Russo-Polish campaign of 1920. In Frunze Military Academy, nursery of Soviet generals, he studied tank and air warfare. The priestly-looking Rokossovsky fought in the great battle of Smolensk in July 1941, which was a Pyrrhic victory for the Germans. He learned the essence of German tactics the hard way, and how to parry them. "By studying German tactics we changed our own method of attack and step by step inflicted increasing losses...
...period. The U-boats had shied away, but they might return at any time. The convoy system was reaching southward through the Caribbean toward the South Atlantic, but in those areas and in the mid-Atlantic, sinkings of unconvoyed ships were still high. Moreover, convoying at best achieves a Pyrrhic advantage: convoys sacrifice efficiency for safety. The ships make fewer and slower trips, lose time at each end of their runs waiting for the next convoy to assemble...
Pressure in the North. Although the Germans' main blow fell south of Moscow, their summer strategy, as it unfolded, embraced the whole Russian front. Near Borodino, where Napoleon won a Pyrrhic victory, Nazi artillery and infantry made just enough of a gesture to pin down the Red forces defending the capital to keep them from relieving Timoshenko. Then, on the Kalinin front northwest of Moscow, the Germans began still another drive. It was geared for speed: fleets of Luftwaffe transports swarmed into rear-line fields to supply the mobile Nazi forces. This served immediately to divert the Red Army...