Word: rzhev
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...keep their access to the North Atlantic. It was the face of Leeb on the northern front, where the Russians were reduced to sending training planes with bombs against the German ring around Leningrad. It was the face of List on the Central front, where the Russians at Rzhev fought to press the Germans back from Moscow's door, but had yet to press them far enough. It was the face of the German in the North Caucasus; in the streets of Novorossiisk (the Red Fleet's fallen base on the Black Sea); in the oilfields of Grozny...
...torment Russia lashed out on the Moscow front like a wounded giant beating a beast that gnaws his vitals. Stalingrad's peril was so great that distraction was necessary. For the desperate offensive, handsome, hard-eyed General Georgy Zhukov chose the Rzhev region, where the German lines bent within 130 miles of Moscow. One morning, early in August, deep-throated Soviet artillery opened up in the birchwood and meadow land around Rzhev. It concentrated first on Nazi battery positions, then on German division headquarters, finally on communications and transport centers. Ground-strafing Stormoviks joined the fray, followed by waves...
...mighty Volga's headwaters. Bridgeheads were established across the Gzhat. The Russians met terrific resistance from Germans holding a railway line until a simultaneous frontal and flank assault forced a Nazi retreat. Day after day the Russians hammered forward across the Volga and into the outskirts of Rzhev. House by house the Germans defended the city which had been their most advanced headquarters on the northern front. Churches and other thick-walled structures had been turned into small fortresses, with mortars and machine guns on the street level, tommy guns poking from every opening in the upper stories. Slowly...
Last year the recapture of Rzhev would have filled Russia and her allies with rejoicing, for then Moscow was in deadly danger and it would have signaled relief. This year the danger was even graver because in the south Russia's industrial guts were being eaten away. As yet the Rzhev offensive had done little to lessen Russia's agony...
Last week the peasants trekked back to what was left of their homes and fields in the recaptured regions east of Rzhev. On their backs they carried children too weak to walk or hold up their heads. A soldier, giving bread to a weeping, toothless, grey-haired woman, asked: "What's wrong, Babushka [Grandmother]?" The fields were tangled with tall, unmown yellow grass; meadows were snarled with burdock and thistle. The few remaining houses were stripped of logs and furniture. German soldiers had taken the wheels off baby buggies and used the prams for easy chairs; they...