Previously "Battle for the Odessa Line" . . . .By mid-August, Cuiperca's Fourth Rumanian Army was against the Soviet defense lines in front of Odessa. The capture of the key rail center would be a Rumanian affair. The Rumanian army lacked the military skills and weaponry needed for a quick strike. The Rumanian attacks resembled the trench warfare of World War I, not something related even remotely to a co-belligerent of a Wehrmacht which was unleashing its largest Blitzkrieg of the Second World War.
