Word: volga
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...soon might be stacked too high for the Red Army. It was on this sector that the Germans had massed their greatest strength. They hammered forward last week to occupy most of the great eastward bend of the Don, where it comes within 48 miles of Stalingrad and the Volga, Russia's next line of defense...
...range of the Caucasus which divides the Black Sea from the Caspian. On the west one German column was headed for the Black Sea coast to skirt the towering mountains and move in behind them. Another German column thrust eastward through Elista, possibly to drive at Astrakhan, where the Volga flows into the Caspian, or possibly to cut the Volga farther north...
...Russians saw their danger well (see col. 1). They hoped that the Red Army would protract the game, keep the Germans from reaching the Volga until winter froze the stakes. Said Pravda: "Every minute shows that the Germans are gambling their entire fortune on the present campaign...
Eyes on Astrakhan. As the Germans hammered east from Rostov, it apeared that Nazi strategists might be planning to by-pass Stalingrad, whose defense lines for three weeks have remained relatively unchanged in the Don bend. Cutting the Volga at Astrakhan would be just as effective as servering it at Stalingrad. Between the German forces bulging east from Rostov and their river objective lie only rolling steppes, covered with slivery feather grass, ridged with few hills, marked by few towns. It is terrain eminently suitable for mechanized warfare. Part is scorching desert now, particularly as it slopes down...
...Stalingrad is the St. Louis of the Volga. The western shore is a wall of brown four-storied landing stages that look like floating Montana boardinghouses. Large-bosomed women hand out of windows. Moppets, stripped to the waist, fish for minnows with flies hooked to bent pins...