Word: rzhev
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...definitive defeat upon the Axis. Rommel was fleeing through Libya and the Allies were at his back in Tunisia, but the Germans were still in North Africa, astride the Mediterranean. The Russians were attacking on ever-widening fronts, but the Germans were still entrenched on those fronts. From Rzhev to Casablanca the Allies had greatly improved their positions, but they still had to translate these positions into victory...
...communications and supply in the Ukraine, to endanger Axis forces both in the Don-Volga area and in the Caucasus. The great object of the Red Army's winter strategy was now clear: to slice up the Germans' winter lines, keep the Wehrmacht on the defensive from Rzhev to the Caucasus...
Hitler to his commanders in the area: "The advance of Soviet troops to the [Rzhev-Vyazma] railroad line will create a serious threat to Rzhev and a loss equivalent to the loss of half of Berlin." The Russians also said that a German tank commander had sent word for "help today-tomorrow will be too late...
...Germans capped their apparent calm with a report similar in tone to their accurate (and equally unflurried) forecast of the Rzhev offensive. They said that at Voronezh, where the Russians last summer kept a foothold on the Don 300 miles northwest of Stalingrad, the Red Army was assembling forces for a third offensive southward toward Rostov...
...Army training, brought it as closely as possible to actual conditions of modern warfare. After the Germans suddenly brought war in earnest to the Russians, Stalin entrusted Zhukov with the outer defenses of Moscow, and with the winter offensive which pushed the Germans back to their present line at Rzhev. Last summer, when the Germans launched their 1942 campaign, Zhukov still had the central front, and he was responsible for holding the Russians' all-important pivot at Voronezh...