Operation Winkelried

'Winkelried' was a German undertaking, planned and implemented as a substitute for 'Schlingpflanze', to secure a southward extension of the corridor linking the main positions of Generaloberst Ernst Busch’s 16th Army at Staraya Russa on the Eastern Front with the pocket at Demyansk held by General Wilhelm Graf von Brockdorff-Ahlefeldt’s II Corps after Adolf Hitler had expressly forbidden planning for any possible evacuation of the Demyansk pocket (27 September/11 October 1942).