For a week Berlin radio jittered with its strongest superlatives. "One of the war's bloodiest struggles," "mammoth offensive," "grand assault," "unheard-of numerical superiority," "monstrous force."
For six days Moscow was officially silent, permitted correspondents to cable that "when the news is finally released it is expected to be ... sensational. . . ." But it was clear that three years and four months after Germany had invaded Russia, the Russians had invaded Germany. The battle for East Prussia Germany's "bowels of iron and heart of steel" had begun.
So far, history was repeating itself. Thirty years before, the Russians...