Word: rzhev
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...consolidating his eastern front he had gambled on the capture of Stalingrad. But Stalingrad had held out and now was striking back at his advanced columns. In the midst of Herr Hitler's frantic preoccupation with Africa the Russian winter offensive had exploded. In the central sector around Rzhev the Russians launched another attack. In both sectors Hitler's troops stumbled backward over the frozen graves of Axis soldiers who had already died in the attempt to conquer Russia...
...Rzhev. Six hundred miles to the north, west of Moscow, the Russians had launched another offense. It began, as the one in Stalingrad began, with an artillery barrage. The Moscow front lay under a white blanket of snow. Cossack cavalrymen wrapped their horses' hoofs in burlap to deaden the sound and get a better footing on hard crust. Artillery was mounted on skis. On their first plunge into the deep and long-held German defenses the Russians reached the village of Velikie Luki, 90 miles from the border of Latvia...
...Rzhev, powerful Axis anchor, was bypassed. But the Russians claimed that the line from Rzhev to Vyazma in the south was cut. If that was true, another encirclement was developing which might isolate one of the strongest fortified positions along Germany's whole Russian front...
...developed at week's end. The Russians had isolated Velikie Luki; they had broken three rail lines and had put four German infantry divisions and one tank division to rout. But, compared to the Stalingrad offense, the Rzhev action was so far only a knocking against the German...
Among other testimonies, the commission will hear that of Sergei Dorochenkov, partisan leader in the Rzhev district, from which the Germans were driven recently. Said he to a British newsman: "Pogoreloe had a population of 3,400. 1,980 died of hunger or disease behind the Nazi front. Of 540 houses, 57 are still partly standing. Of 56 schools, only the walls of three are left standing. There were 20 libraries; not one single book is left...