Word: volga
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This week on the Stalingrad front, the Russians scored their biggest victory in nearly a year. In its immediate scope and consequences, the victory was "local"-the culmination of a prolonged, hitherto indecisive effort to relieve Stalingrad itself by blows at the Germans' flanks and rear, between the Volga and the Don. But its full possibilities, if realized-which they are still to be-might be immense. Disrupting Germany's winter line in the south, blocking the diversion of Nazi forces to the Mediterranean, perhaps cutting off the Germans in the Caucasus, were among the conceivable consequences...
...from Stalingrad's rear toward the Don and prepared for a stand there, the Russian advances might not have been a complete shock to Hitler. The facts remained that the Red Army had shown its best offensive generalship to date, that it had punctured the Germans' Don-Volga line, and that the battle was not yet over...
Last week Berlin's radio complained that in the Stalingrad region the temperature had dropped to 29° F. below zero. Floating ice clogged the Volga, stopping Soviet shipping for the winter and robbing Hitler of the only bitter satisfaction he might have received from the whole Stalingrad adventure. Radiators froze; narrow-treaded German tanks slid along weakly on their bellies; breechblocks became stiff; transmission oil jelled...
...Wounds. Russia has lost the coal and electric power of the Don Basin; she has lost the Ukraine's great feeding ground (see p. 36). Before the Don was lost, the Russians themselves said that it was second only to the Volga in national importance. If they have not been cut off from the oil, fish and ports-of-entry in the Caucasus, their access has been gravely impeded...
Behind the Russians in Stalingrad a two-mile pontoon bridge, built of rough planks supported by empty gasoline cans, gave access across the Volga. Since Sept. 18 German bombers had dropped tons of explosives attempting to smash the bridge, but had done only minor damage and that was quickly repaired. But the floating bridge was a slender thread...