Word: vitebsk
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Farther north, Red armies hammered at Vitebsk. New thrusts sprang out of Nevel. Striking across dense forests south of Lake Ilmen, Russian troops had torn a ten-mile gap in German lines, cut an important railroad. A drive north of the lake threatened the great stronghold of Novgorod. Somewhere, the Stavka hoped, the German line would burst under the fierce pressure, let the Red flood through...
Twin Perils. In the north, Armenian General Ivan Bagramian was hacking away methodically at the Vitebsk-Mogilev line (see map, p, 27). The great German stronghold of Vitebsk was engulfed. Orsha was in danger. And at any hour, the four huge Red Armies idling in the north might roll west, crush the thinly spread forces of Field Marshals von Kluge" and von Küchler, pour into old Poland, the Baltic States...
...Bagramian's job will not be easy. The German command has poured tanks, aircraft, armored trains into Vitebsk...
Many of the tanks at Vitebsk may have been shifted from the Kiev bulge, as earlier they had been rushed south to halt a Red push into the Dnieper bend. Now the Red command played its old, shrewd game of "dispersing punching." With the German strength in the Kiev bulge sapped to help other sectors, the Russians struck inside the bulge with all their strength...
...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...