ABSTRACT
Marshal Tolbukhin was under orders to destroy German forces at Melitopol, seize the Dnieper crossings and a bridgehead on the western bank, then shut off the German Seventeenth Army in the Crimea by seizing the Perekop isthmus. The 'Dnieper line', cracked and crumpled, held by early winter, but the Stavka had plans to smash it in completely when four Soviet fronts would crash down in a great avalanche of men and tanks on Army Group South, clearing the western Ukraine completely. The main Soviet striking forces would gather on the outer flanks, in the Leningrad area and in the western Ukraine. In return for the Western powers bringing the heaviest weight against Germany, the Soviet Union would contribute to the elimination of Japan, taking on the Kwantung Army in Manchuria and providing bases for bombers in the air assault on Japan itself.
