The Rzhev Meat Grinder: Surviving Hell

“I’m killed near Rzhev…”—so it probably begins the most tragic, bitter, and piercing of the front-line poems. The Red Army lost in the Battle of Rzhev up to two million men—more than at Stalingrad!—no wonder historians consider it its “greatest defeat of Zhukov,” and veterans dubbed it “a cesspool,” “a slaughterhouse,” “the RZHEV FLESH GRINDER.” Boris Gorbachevsky went through all the circles of this hell, surviving where chances of survival were close to zero—in order to tell the full truth about one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Great Patriotic War.