By 1943, the Soviets had learned the surest path to victory at Stalingrad: encircle the Germans in a pincer, then squeeze until the last man fell or surrendered.
But that formula suddenly collapsed at the Taman Peninsula.
Here, the land itself betrayed them: a narrow, swamp-choked spit of mud caught between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. A bottleneck. There was nothing to flank. Nothing to encircle.
The Germans had sealed it behind a wall of bunkers, barbed wire, and minefields so dense they could be plowed like farmland. At the center stood the Red House: a jagged slab of concrete buried in the shattered ruins of Novorossiysk, fused to the city like a tumor to the bone. A fortress built to bleed men dry.
Hitler was confident it could hold for a year.
Stalin gave his soldiers thirty days.
No retreat. No excuses. Drive the Germans out, or be buried beside them.
Credit to : WW2 on TV
