Word: rzhev
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...Army's capture of Rzhev last week freed the 160-mile railway between Velikie Luki and Moscow. Soviet engineers immediately began to broaden the gauge to the Russian size. For the Germans this "axle war" had involved moving the wheels of captured rolling stock slightly toward the center of the axle. The Russians are now having to return the wheels to the ends of the axle...
...days after Timoshenko's breakthrough, the Russians won an even bigger victory-the capture of Rzhev. It was from Rzhev, 140 miles northwest of Moscow, that the Germans began the powerful drive on Russia's capital in the autumn of 1941 which almost landed Adolf Hitler inside the Kremlin. It was the city which, above all others, Hitler had to hold if he hoped to try again...
...Wehrmacht's scheme of defense Rzhev was the main forward hedgehog protecting the Germans in north or central Russia. For 14 months Red armies had hammered the city, until last week had never managed to break its defenses. According to the Russians, Hitler himself once told his generals that Rzhev's fall would be equal to the "loss of half of Berlin...
...glad heat of victory in the south-was that the Germans on the central front were still less than 125 miles from Moscow. At Gzhatsk, on the Moscow-Smolensk railway, the Germans reported one attack. The Russians had been intermittently assaulting the Germans' powerfully defended Smolensk-Rzhev-Vyazma triangle since last summer, they had stepped up the assaults at the start of the winter drives-yet the Germans still held a position which could be the starting point of another stab at Russia's heart. The Russians were at once trying to forestall this possibility and perhaps pinning...
Another was headed southwestward from Rzhev, advancing on the strong German defense line running southward from Nikitinka through Dorogobuzh...