King, Ernest (1878–1956) overreached in early 1943 following their victory at Stalingrad, as they had also done in January 1942, upon winning in front of Moscow By rushing forward more reserves to stop Manstein’s counteroffensive, a large bulge was created in the line around the junction town of Kursk That fact invited the Wehrmacht to attack later in the year, in the overly ambitious Operation ZITADELLE The Third Battle of Kharkov thus set the stage for the greater Battle of Kursk in midsummer, which was followed by the even more decisive Soviet counteroffensives KUTUZOV and RUMIANTSEV KHOLM POCKET See Demiansk offensive operation KHRUSHCHEV, NIKITA SERGEYEVICH (1894–1971) During the first part of the war, this future leader of the Soviet Union served as a commissar under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko Khrushchev was present during the great disasters for the Red Army in the south at Uman and Kiev in 1941, and again at the Second Battle of Kharkov in 1942 He was also present at Stalingrad and during the reconquest of Ukraine His wartime service as commissar helped him rise to the pinnacle of power after Joseph Stalin died See also NKVD KIEV ENCIRCLEMENT See Ukraine, First Battle of KING, ERNEST (1878–1956) U.S admiral King was appointed USN Commander in Chief (COMINCH or later just CINC) on December 30, 1941 That gave him strategic direction of naval wars in the Atlantic and Pacific as well as command of the Coast Guard Three months later he replaced Admiral Rainsford Stark as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), the first time those two posts were combined under one man King distrusted Royal Navy arguments about evasive convoy routing and so initially insisted upon a policy of running convoys at high speed along the U.S eastern seaboard without employing evasive techniques That policy, and the large number of independents forced to sail outside convoy protection, allowed enemy U-boats their second “happy time” of the Battle of the Atlantic (1939–1945) Although King agreed with the Germany first strategy, great tension with the British arose over his constant push for more resources to be sent to the Pacific Specifically, he never forgave refusal of his May 18, 1942, request for one of three Royal Navy aircraft carriers stationed off Africa—the British were deeply concerned at the time about a Japanese foray into the Indian Ocean King was personally abrasive and intolerant Nonetheless, he worked closely with General George C Marshall, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff He was always a powerful voice for the interests of the U.S Navy in the Pacific War, sometimes to a fault He retired in December 1945 See also Bucket Brigade; Hiroshima; Québec Conference (1944) 633