European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

Is Hitler winning the war? As the third summer closed, with the Axis countries making prodigious efforts to achieve their objectives before another winter manacled the Russian front with ice, this question was haunting many minds here and abroad.

Capture of the Lower Volga and submergence of the Caucasus under a German tide which now rose toward the towering mountain ranges slanting across that famous isthmus were expected to eliminate the Soviet Union as a major opponent. If this year Hitler’s gains fell short of the great oil regions behind that barrier, he already held the Maikop fields; while conquest of the Grozny area would give him control of the 10 per cent of Russia’s oil north of the mountains.

From the coast of the Caspian his aircraft could interrupt the traffic from Baku to the eastern shores of that sea. Stalingrad would give him a strangle hold on the greatest of all inland arteries in the Soviet Union. Thus Russia’s own supply line and the delivery end of the lend-lease flow from the Persian Gulf would be cut.

This was but the beginning of the list of calamities chalked up against the Soviet Union. The rich valley of the Don and the grainfields of the Northern Caucasus, which, with the Ukraine, comprised Russia’s breadbasket, were now in German hands. Almost 1,400,000 square miles of European Russia lay behind Hitler’s armies or in the battle zones.

Approximately 40 per cent of all Russia’s industrial effort prior to the German invasion had been concentrated in the area between the Dnieper and the Donetz basin. Germany’s advances this summer completed the conquest of the whole region. Half of Russia’s most productive sources of coal and metals, nearly one-third of her electric power centers, were now German prizes or, as in the case of the Baku oil pools, perilously close to that.

Stripped of industrial resources upon which her strength had been built during nearly a generation of effort, her granaries lost, how could the Soviet Union prevent her entire economy from slowing down? Would her ponderous mechanized army be disorganized or reduced to guerrillas?

Adolf Hitler believed it would. He was risking enormous casualties to prove he was right.

The fight for supplies

If the difficulties Russia faced at home were bitter, those encountered by her anxious allies, as they sought to send her aid, seemed equally grave. Colonel General Hans Stumpff’s Fifth Air Fleet on the Arctic coast of Norway was now functioning so efficiently that Allied convoys to Murmansk have lost up to 50 per cent of their ships. To cut the other main route by sea to Russia — from the Atlantic around Africa to the Persian Gulf — the Nazi High Command executed a shift in tactics. In the Bay of Biscay and along the coasts of Spain, submarine activity was synchronized with landbased air power and aimed at all convoys moving from Britain to the East.

To destroy shipping bound from the Atlantic ports of the United States around Africa, the Germans concentrated submarines off the east coast of Brazil, where the Atlantic narrows to a width of about 1700 miles between Natal and Dakar. This precipitated Brazil into the war — as Hitler knew it would. Also, it added meaning to Axis maneuverings at Vichy, Madrid, and Lisbon. The shadow of coming events was falling across French West Africa, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Canaries. The Axis, functioning as ever on a global scale, was trying to isolate and eliminate the Soviet Union from the war. Russia’s staying power became a crucial question at the end of this fateful summer. Could Hitler stabilize a winter line in Russia, shift sufficient troops to the West to thwart an invasion, and release still others to home factories for winter production for his grand final smash into the Middle East and victory?

Russia’s staying power

Russia’s power in war had undoubtedly been compromised seriously by Germany’s pressure. Yet Russia’s ability to continue the war formidably was by no means fatally crippled. Assessing the bleak days that lay ahead, the United Nations could take confidence in these conclusions: —

(1) The prime objective Hitler himself had set for the year 1942 destruction of the Russian army — was unattained. Nor had that foresight which enabled the Soviet Union to prepare powerfully for this war been lacking after the war came.

(2) Territory. Despite German effort, the area of European Russia conquered by the Axis armies in 1942 was less than one-fourth as large as what they had overrun during 1941. The entire German conquest up to mid-September was still less than one-fifth of Russia’s vast area.

(3) Food. Early harvesting in the Don Valley had enabled the Russians to move a substantial portion of the grain crop to the interior before the Germans arrived. Also, in anticipation of events, the Government had ordered millions of virgin acres to the plow in the spring of 1942. Enormously expanded crops were available in Central and Eastern Russia as a result. According to a study made by the Institute of Pacific Relations, Russia beyond the Urals was in position in 1941 to maintain a resident population of 70 million plus a possible 20 million refugees. Her ability in 1942 was still greater.

(4) Oil. Russia’s main sources had been in the Caucasus since 1935. But she had expanded other sources on a fabulous scale since. Her transUral and trans-Volga potential was estimated by experts at 20 billion tons — greater than that of the whole Caueasus. She had been developing that potential pell-mell ever since Germany crossed her borders. The schedule for 1940—1942 called for the opening of between 500 and 600 new wells a year. How much oil Russia has stored is a military secret. However, she almost entirely ceased to export oil prior to the present war. One of Hitler’s complaints in his effort to justify his attack on her was that she had not fulfilled oil deliveries.

(5) Industry and raw materials. Beyond Hitler’s reach, from the Urals to far-off Siberia, the Russian government has been multiplying factories, shops, arsenals, foundries, mines, and electrical centers since 1932 brought warning of a coming war with Japan. This program has been stepped up since 1939. With the machinery rescued by evacuation brigades, with her new sources, plus her supply dumps, plus lend-lease aid, Russia gives no indication that she will be out of the fighting this year.

Negotiated peace?

Political considerations are even less likely to induce the Kremlin to accept peace or a stalemate. For Russia, like her Allies, is fighting for her life. She can expect no mercy from the Axis, European or Asiatic, if she yields. Her whole government has an identical stake with the army and the people in victory. Though she has lost an approximate five million in dead, wounded, and missing (a million and a half are prisoners) she is still so far superior to her Nazi opponents in manpower that Stalin in late summer rejected an offer of Allied troops, explaining that he preferred equipment.

So there was sound reason, as autumn came, for believing that Russia would persist strenuously in the war until her partners, the United Nations, could swing their accumulating offensive power against Hitler’s armies. But that move would have to come soon, and be pressed with tremendous energy, if it was to serve the United Nations or their Russian partner in time.

This was the picture of affairs drawn at the Moscow conference from which Premier Winston Churchill of Britain and representatives of the United States returned in late summer. A dramatic result was the revision of the British Middle Eastern Command and the creation of a new Tenth Army as buttress for the Russian defenders of the Lower Caucasus. The presence of Marshal Wavell at the sessions indicated that the United Nations were looking ahead to plans for the approaching winter, synchronizing efforts for the eventual invasion of Western Europe, and preparing for coming events in the Middle East.

Air superiority

Meantime, as battered Russia fought doggedly on, the air superiority of the United Nations grew.

Bombing raids on centers of Axis strength in Europe roared into a pounding crescendo. The American air force, hitting its stride at last in collaboration with the RAF, poured in increasing numbers over the Channel. From England, from East Africa, from Russia, raid followed upon the heels of raid, weaving a pattern of fire and destruction. German-held ports on the Continent jarred beneath the impact of thousands of tons of highexplosive and incendiary bombs. Key cities of the Third Reich along the littoral of the Baltic and industrial centers through the Rhineland experienced death and ruin, which reached far inland for plane factories and chemical works, rail centers, tank arsenals, munitions plants, and truck and locomotive shops — industries Hitler had moved to a hoped-for security in Eastern Europe.

In the great air battle over Dieppe, nearly onethird of the German air force hastily concentrated by Field Marshal Hugo Sperrl’s Third Air Fleet was destroyed or damaged.

Frankfort, Nürnberg, Bremen, Danzig, Vienna, Budapest, Mainz, Köenigsberg, Breslau, Essen, Bucharest, and Warsaw were added to a list which already included the Ruhr Valley and the coastal parts of Europe. The pattern of destruction widened across the entire Continent.

The Axis was being outbuilt by a rising margin of 2500 planes a month this fall. But supremacy was not yet won. Upon the speed with which full domination of the air over Western Europe could be achieved, and upon the crippling of Germany’s transport and war industries, would depend the answers to the many grave questions raised by Hitler’s progress in Russia.

Goring’s defense

Against multiplying raids from England the Germans seemed unable to mount adequate plane defense or to retaliate in force by counter-raid. Was Hitler being compelled, by limitation of fuel and technicians and by destruction of his factories, to restrict his operations to the eastern front?

Or was Hitler gambling on light air defenses in the West of Europe, until concentrated attack should pull down his huge Russian opponent and permit him to release planes for retaliation as the winter nights lengthened? Underground reports telling of frenzied construction of great long-range bombers and transports buttressed the latter surmise. Yet another warning sent by friends of the United Nations out of occupied Europe pointed to Dakar, and a drive by air into Latin America.

WHAT TO WATCH

Possible reconnaissance raids in force to test German defenses in Europe. If a soft spot is found, immediate attempt will be made to establish a bridgehead for invasion.

Defense of the approaches to the Middle East in Egypt. This arm of the German pincer thrusting toward the Middle East is a greater immediate threat to the British than the Caucasus drive.

A worsening of Bulgarian relations with Turkey — a certain prelude to a German smash at the Middle East via the Center.

Germany’s annual autumn peace drive.