Word: smolensk
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...most urgent reason for a northerly offensive-and a fact which had been all but forgotten in the 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...
...Colonel General Konstantin Rokossovsky, 50, one of the tallest (6 ft. 4 in.) officers in the Red Army. He was a Czarist major in the last war, joined the Red Guards in 1917. During the defense of Moscow he commanded the central sector on the Smolensk highway, later was shifted to the south. His armies were part of the Red pincers which trapped the Germans at Stalingrad. Now he is mopping up the Don Bend...
...moved -and none could be added, because other fronts were in distress. Yet here was potentially the greatest threat of all to the integrity of the German front. The one way the Red Army can decisively smash the German position in Russia is to crash through the great lateral Smolensk-Kursk-Kharkov-Crimea railway system into relatively ill-defended positions behind it. This week the drive was still young, the results unclear. In any case it kept thousands of Germans pinned down...
...Russians in occupied territory who were overwhelmed before they could turn in their sets, the Germans provide powerful medium-wave propaganda out of Smolensk, Kharkov, Odessa. These stations lure listeners with a vast amount of Russian religious music...
...Hedgehogs. The cities of Rzhev and Vyazma lie a-flank Moscow, some 125 miles to the northwest and southwest (see map). Connecting them with Smolensk, Vitebsk, the town of Velikie Luki and nearby Toropets to the northeast are railways and roads, now the military arteries of a fortified rectangle. Against the eastern edge of this rectangle, between Rzhev and Vyazma, and against the upper edge just west of Rzhev and on two sides of Velikie Luki, the Russians drove last week. Their purpose was to surround both places, to cut the railways and roads serving them and the whole German...