the North" due to its similarities with the larger and better-known Battle of Stalingrad that raged in the southern sector of the front. Judged purely by the numbers, this battle was a small affair by the usual standards of the Eastern Front (150,000 total casualties suffered by both sides as opposed to 2,000,000 total casualties at Stalingrad), but had enormous strategic consequences. The liberation of Velikiye Luki meant the Red Army had, for the first time since October 1941, a direct rail supply line to the northern face of the Rzhev Salient exposing the German troops at Rzhev to encirclement. Events at Velikiye Luki thus necessitated the withdrawal from Rzhev salient ending any German military threat to Moscow. However, even after withdrawing from Rzhev, possession of Velikiye Luki meant that the rail link between Army groups North and Centre was severed, preventing the German Army from shifting reinforcements between threatened sectors. Furthermore, the rail lines from Velikiye Luki led directly into the rear of Vitebsk, a critical logistics hub for Army Group Centre. The effects of this battle meant that Army Group Centre was exposed to attack from the north, east, and (after the Battle of Smolensk) south, exposing the whole army group to encirclement, which is exactly what happened in the Operation Bagration the following year. Orders of battle While it is somewhat difficult to separate the actions of various Red Army and Wehrmacht units within the flurry of movements involved in the larger scope of the Soviet operations, for the most part these below are derived from Glantz and Isayev. Soviet Kalinin Front (Maksim Alekseyevich Purkayev) engaged in the Second Rzhev-Sychevka Offensive to the south of Velikiye Luki. 4th Shock Army 3rd Shock Army as of 1 December, 1942 (General Lieutenant Kuzma Galitsky) 2nd Guards Rifle Corps (held a defensive front during the battle) 5th Guards Rifle Corps (Major General A. P. Beloborodov) 9th Guards Rifle Division (Major General I. V. Prostyakov) 46th Guards Rifle Division (Major General S. I. Karapetyan) 357th Rifle Division (Colonel A. L. Kronik) Separate Rifle Divisions: 21st Guards Rifle Division (Major General D. V. Mikhaylov) 28th Rifle Division (Colonel S. A. Knyazkov) 33rd Rifle Division (Major General F. A. Zuyev) 117th Rifle Division (Colonel E. G. Koberidze) 257th Rifle Division (Colonel A. A. Dyakonov) 381st Rifle Division (Colonel B. S. Maslov) Separate Rifle Brigades: 31st Rifle Brigade 54th Rifle Brigade 44th Ski Brigade