Word: stalingraders
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...simple-minded soldier of the sentimental maiden-for the second time in six months-swept beyond Kharkov driving the Wehrmacht before him. He had swept the Germans from Stalingrad 450 miles, nearly to the Dnieper, been set back to the Donets when his supply lines grew overextended, and now was back again, pushing toward Poltava and the Dnieper, with the smart Germans choking the roads and their single southwestward railroad in retreat...
Outstanding among these are the historic three who fought through Stalingrad's siege and counteroffensive-Colonel General Markian Mikhailovich Popov, Army General Nicolai Fedorovich Vatutin and Army General Konstantin Rokossovsky. They, along with Colonel General Vassily Sokolovsky and Colonel General Ivan Konev, were the men chosen to command the hydra-headed counterattack on Orel and Belgorod last month. They broke the short-lived German summer offensive of 1943 and developed the battle into a Russian onslaught...
...most talented of these leaders is the blue-eyed, 6 ft. 4 in. Rokossovsky. He has not only Orel and Stalingrad on his record. He also commanded one of the seven armies which saved Moscow in the crucial year-end battle of 1941. Russian newspapers have marked him for his ability to inspire his men and learn the new lessons of war, his mastery of all military branches, his ability to outsmart the Germans...
...colleagues have sopped up this contempt. Said one of his officers, when asked what errors the Germans made at Stalingrad: "The greatest error was in having Hitler for a strategist...
Gaudiest feather in his cap was his command of the Stalingrad relief campaign. Rokossovsky's forces-tanks, infantry, artillery, aircraft and cavalry-crossed the Don to form a ring around Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus' 22 divisions, anticipated the point of a German counterattack, and in savage and protracted battle defeated the powerful Panzer army of Field Marshal Fritz Erich von Manstein. It was Rokossovsky who signed the demand for capitulation sent to Paulus, which was rejected and which led to the final destruction of Hitler's Stalingrad army. It was the greatest single victory...