Word: smolensk
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...center long enough to make him concentrate his strength there, then roll up the flanks, encircle the whole and annihilate. Though it seems almost too simple for such a devious commander, that is Adolf Hitler's strategy in Russia. He struck at the center, at Bialystok, Minsk, Smolensk, and won great victories which alarmed the Russians. He then went to work on the southern flank, the Ukraine (see below). Finally, last week, he concentrated on the northern flank, the Leningrad sector (see below). If he succeeded in turning both flanks he would then be ready to strike again...
...reply to the rather astronomical German claims about the tanks and planes they have destroyed, I may say that I saw large numbers of Russian tanks in this area [Smolensk] and I saw more Russian airplanes in the skies than German...
Line or No Line? Fortnight ago a Russian communique denied that a Stalin Line "ever existed, or exists." In the sense of a continuous line, like the Maginot, none existed. But in the Smolensk area, blocking the traditional military highroad to Moscow-between the Dnieper and Dvina Rivers-the Russians had translated PU-36 into concrete and steel terms...
...Battle. German Intelligence had also studied PU-36. Reconnaissance had looked over the Smolensk area. In posthumous tribute to Marshal Tukhachevsky, the German commander in this area, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, decided to abandon the fundamental pattern of Blitzkrieg -cutting as if with a knife through one strategic spot (as at Sedan) and then encircling. Instead he dug in, as if with a gigantic fork, sending five parallel prongs into the defense area. Each pair of prongs had to reduce island after island between them...
During the first plunge forward there had been the great Battle of Bialystok-Minsk; during the second phase, the great Battle of Smolensk. Last week the great Battle of the Ukraine raged...