Word: wehrmacht
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...broken the entire line, but it had burst more than one seam. It was marching into a fragment of Poland, toward Rumania, toward the Baltic States. The border of Germany proper, at its nearest, still lay 340 miles across the buffer lands. But of pre-1939 Russia the Wehrmacht now held a slipping grasp on approximately 200,000 square miles; once it was master of 527,000 square miles of Russia...
...social system, a way of life, a thought pattern, a cancer on Europe's uneasy breast. Century after century, their dreams have become blueprints, their blueprints war. Even under Hitler the German army is in a sense their private weapon. (Between Versailles and Hitler, 60% of the Wehrmacht's officers came from Ostelbien's Junkers...
When, on the wrinkled steppe before Stalingrad, the Wehrmacht met defeat, Hitler did not turn for help to one of his Nazi henchmen-Jodl, List, Guderian; he turned to Junker von Manstein. In December 1942, in the marshlands hugging the Caspian Sea, Manstein met in combat the Russian ex-private, Rodion Malinovsky. Manstein's first punch-with massed tanks-sent the Russian reeling back. But soon Malinovsky received help, counterattacked, made the marshes a cemetery for Manstein's men, tanks, hopes...
Early in World War I Manstein was severely wounded. On recovery he fought at Verdun, drew attention by his energy, will power, harshness. He remained with the army after defeat, served on the hush-hush postwar General Staff, helped to build up the Wehrmacht for the war of revenge...
...more than a week Canadians and Germans had grappled for every building stone in Ortona. Never before had the Wehrmacht chosen to slug it out for a town in the path of the British Eighth Army's long march up Italy's Adriatic shore. Most of Ortona's 9,000 folk fled as the Germans mined the approaches, built barricades in the streets, burrowed tanks into the cellars, brought up flame throwers, posted suicide rear guards...