Word: volga
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...frozen plains of Rzhev before Moscow, on the Don and in the Volga corridor at Stalingrad, in the snows and floods of the Caucasus, the Russians are on the offensive. But, as of this week, the Russian offensives alone are not defeating the Germans...
...relieve Stalingrad from the German rear - the Russians won the positions from which they must now fight for the victory. They cleaned the Germans from a great, thinly defended patch, 50 to 100 miles deep, within the Don bend and west of the corridor between the Don and the Volga. They forced the Germans to establish a defense line on the Don's eastern bank, with their backs to Stalingrad, facing the Russians on the western bank. Then they broke the line by a brilliant assault upon the bedeviled Germans' new rear...
Such an offensive, if successful, would: 1) complete the entrapment of the Axis armies in the Don-Volga area; 2) bar the Germans' way of retreat to their last summer's line (Taganrog-Kharkov-Kursk-Orel) ; 3) finally doom the halting German drive in the Caucasus, perhaps cut off the Caucasian armies' last line of supply and retreat through the Crimea; 4) force the Germans to draw further on their dwindling reserves...
...Monday midnight communique failed for the first time since the Red Army launched its Stalingrad offensive on Nov. 19 to report Soviet gains on that front except inside the Volga city where more German strong points and their garrisons were annihilated...
Axis troops in suddenly hopeless positions gave up. Across the steppes plodded long lines of Axis prisoners hobbling to Russian bases, some to have frozen limbs amputated, stumbling toward the Volga in a Drang nach Osten such as der Führer never pictured. According to Moscow communiqués, 66,000 were seized in ten days of fighting. Into Russian hands fell quantities of booty: food, clothing, more than 50,000 rifles, 3,935 machine guns, 1,380 tanks...