As three Red Army Fronts move on the German flanks west and south of Stalingrad, two more attack the Rzhev-Vyazma salient west of Moscow. Is it a diversion, or is Mars the twin of Uranus?

Map 1: The Rzhev-Vyazma salient

Map 2: Operation Mars

Historical images

Workers from Moscow suburbs handing over new tanks to Soviet servicemen. Source: Commons:RIA Novosti

Sources

Antony Beevor, Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942–1943. Penguin Books, 1998.

Antony Beevor, The Second World War. London, UK: Little, Brown and Co., 2012.

Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov. London, UK: Icon Books, 2012.

David Glantz, Zhukov's Greatest Defeat: The Red Army's Epic Disaster in Operation Mars, 1942. Lawrence, Kansas: University of Kansas Press, 1999.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin’s War 1941–1945. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: The History Press, 2017

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