1125_01: Rzhev 42 The God of War Unleashed - PzC 09 Rzhev '42

Rzhev Salient, November 25th 1942: The Soviet High Command had been convinced by Marshal Zhukov's proposal that two strategic operations be carried out, almost concurrently, in the winter of 1942. Both were assigned codenames of a planet, and were scheduled to be the opening gambits of two further reaching strategic plans. Operation Uranus, which, if successful, would open Operation Saturn, became the focus of world attention and is better known as the Battle of Stalingrad. The northern action, Operation Mars, if successful, was to be the opener for Operation Jupiter. Mars is one of the least known and least publicized Soviet battle’s, it is also one of the greatest defeats the Soviet Army suffered in World War II. Basically, the Mars plan was to annihilate the German 9th Army in the Rzhev Salient. To accomplish this entailed four Soviet Armies attacking simultaneously at four different locations around the salient. The two main thrusts were to be carried out by the 20th Army on the east side and the 41st Army on the west. Massed infantry was to be used to punch holes in the line, then mobile forces would race through to meet, and cut off, all German forces north of this line, these would then be destroyed. Two other thrusts, in the Luchesa valley by the 22nd Army and close to the town of Molodoi Tud by the 39th Army, were to tie up the use of mobile German operational reserves. Zhukov had overwhelming odds in his favor and was so confident that he took a Mechanized Corps, earmarked to exploit the gap at Belyi, and moved it to the Velikie Luki sector. The plans were complete, the Armies were ready, but, ominously, so were the Germans and the forces of Mother Nature. [Size, large]