The Battle of Taierzhuang: China’s Stalingrad, 1938 Early in 1938, despite the Tokyo government’s order for a Japanese defensive strategy in China that year, their generals decided on an offensive aimed at the rail hub city of Xuzhou and then on to Wuhan. The advance to Xuzhou would be supplied by the rail line that ran past the town of Taierzhuang.

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• Stalin’s First Victory: The 1929 Sino-Soviet War On 27 April 1929, Chang Kai-shek sent troops to take over the Chinese Eastern Railway office in Mukden. That railroad was still run as a joint venture with the Soviets (who had inherited it from the czarist regime they overthrew in 1917). Before the end of the year, the Chinese and Soviets had fought their first war. It was a short but intensely contested affair in which Stalin barely squeezed out a victory.
• Hitler’s Final Panzer Offensive On 4 April 1945, US 12th Army Group surrounded Germany’s Army Group B in the Ruhr. That cut off 370,000 soldiers, and it also split them into two pockets. One army was trapped in the Harz Mountains and three others were inside the Ruhr. Determined to restore a continuous front in the west, Hitler ordered a counterattack to free the army in the mountains and then advance farther to reopen the Ruhr encirclement.
• Combat in the Baltic, 1942–43 The northern sector of the east front did not move much during 1942–43, as it was anchored at besieged Leningrad. Even so, it remained active on the waters of the Baltic. The Soviet Navy had only two remaining bases during that period: Kronshtadt and Leningrad. Their surface vessels had to run a gauntlet of minefields and enemy aircraft to get into the Baltic. That meant weight of their offensive operations had to be assigned to their submarines.