Status Updates From The Road to Stalingrad: Sta...

With its armoured wings peeling of to the isolation of Leningrad & encirclements in Ukraine, Army Group Centre itself would go over to the defensive.. after blood drenched weeks when Timoshenko sucked 9 German divisions into a savage battle of attrition in the "Yelnaya bend", the Soviet barrier 50 miles east of Smolensk on high ground vital for the development of any blow directed against Moscow.

Locked up in the Kremlin, master of a world which he had created by his own selective killings & which reflected back upon him only those images he had himself ordained, steeped in his own genius & fed on its outpourings, Stalin could rage away dissension and doubt from whatever quarter it came.

The designation of Special to a military district signified that these were operational groupings capable of carrying out operations for a limited period without the mobilisation of additional reserves; ordinary district armies were for all practical purposes administrative organisations. The special districts had their headquarters in Riga (Baltic) Minsk (Western) & Kiev.