Word: vatutin
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Tough Job. If Bagramian takes Vitebsk, he will rank with other Red greats: Konstantin Rokossovsky, now inching toward Vitebsk from the under side; Nikolai Vatutin, fighting in the Kiev bulge, 350 miles to the south; Stalin's pal, Ivan Konev, long stalemated in the Dnieper bend...
Late last week, General Vatutin's army -estimated by the Germans at 150,000 men - broke through on a 50-mile front, advanced 25 miles to the west, killed 15,000 Germans in three days. Before it lay an objective the Red command would love dearly to regain: Zhitomir, which Vatutin captured last November, lost to the Germans six days later. In Russian hands, Zhitomir as well as Vitebsk could well become a springboard for a jump onto the eastern ramparts of the once great Reich...
...weeks this reckless expenditure of armor kept Moscow worried. The loss of Kharkov in similar circumstances last March was still fresh in everyone's mind; would Kharkov's fate befall Kiev? But by a prodigious effort, General Nikolai Vatutin halted the German advance. As in the summer, Russian artillery won its duel with German armor...
...this desperate game audacity paid fat returns-or ended in disaster. It was audacity which led General Nikolai Vatutin, one of Russia's ablest exponents of blitz warfare, to strike west of Kiev with tanks and horsemen, without adequate infantry or cannon. The muddy roads delayed supplies and reinforcements, but the opportunity to deal the Wehrmacht a finishing blow was too tempting to forgo. Zhitomir fell (TIME, Nov. 22). The cavalry corps which took it seemed poised for a raid into prewar Poland...
...this time audacity's returns were poor. Vatutin had overextended himself, as he did in another crucial offensive west from Kharkov last spring. Without artillery support, the cavalry could not withstand strong German counterattacks. Last week it abandoned Zhitomir, in the first major reverse in the Red Army's great, 18-week offensive. The retreat was has tened by fierce German blows at the Russian flank east of Zhitomir...