European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

RUSSIA’S winter campaign sets us a superb example for 1943. Ended are the brilliant defensive tactics of Marshal Timoshenko. Under General Gregory Zhukov, who broke the great attack on Moscow and who now provides a younger, bolder leadership, the Red Army is blasting out whole sectors of the German front.

With the season of blizzards less than half over, the Wehrmacht has lost more than half a million men within less than ten weeks. Thirty-five additional divisions from Hitler’s polyglot auxiliaries have been driven in disorganized rout from base points on the northwest front, along the approaches to Rostov, over the Kalmuck steppes, in the great basin of the Don, and in the Caucasian isthmus. This enormous onslaught is being delivered by what the startled German radio describes as “fantastic numbers of tanks and infantry.”

Germany’s losses in troops are tremendous; equally tremendous is the quantity of usable equipment taken by the Russians. No comparable subtraction from Hitler’s military resources has occurred since this war began. And already his war production facilities are overtaxed. He has lost about one sixth of his known air power; enough tanks, artillery, and small arms to furnish seventeen divisions; almost as many shells as were hurled at Verdun in the greatest battle of World War I; sufficient transport to maintain supply lines for most of the Don basin. This tabulation does not include the German equipment destroyed or the stores of food-stuffs and stocks of precious medical supplies acquired by the armies of the Soviet Union.

Russia is out to destroy

The key to the Red Army campaign is not the distance between the Soviet front lines and the German frontier. Russia is fighting the kind of war Hitler himself proposed to wage against her when he began his ill-fated invasion. Her primary strategic objective in this vast series of operations is to destroy the German Army.

This strategic purpose is being fulfilled on a substantial scale. The true measure of Russia’s accomplishment a year ago was Hitler’s subsequent admission of the disaster that struck Germany’s manpower, and the mutinous response of Axis garrison troops in Europe when they were ordered to the East. The British estimate 4,000,000 German casualties up to January, 1943. The recent injury done the Wehrmacht is more grievous than that inflicted upon it last winter. Should it continue till spring on the same scale against an enemy whose morale is sagging, it may compel a general German retreat toward Poland.

Straining the Axis

Russia is out to destroy German fighting power. Russia also seeks to compel Hitler to maintain full strength in the East all winter. This would stop his practice of employing a winter “pause to send men back to the war industries of the Reich to boost production for the coming spring.

Finally, Russia is placing a maximum strain upon the forces of the Axis in the East while the British, French, and Americans are battling to clear North Africa preliminary to an assault across the Mediterranean against Europe.

These strategic purposes offer clews to part of the Red Army’s winter campaign. The rest of the story is one of military geography. Consider: —

1. To regain full use of her most vital supply arteries for next summer, Russia must clear the Volga of the German threat. The main part of the present winter campaign is accordingly organized around Stalingrad as a pivot.

2. Freeing the Don basin and the Kuban steppes is not only necessary for the security of the Volga: these two regions are prolific agricultural areas. Their loss accounts largely for Russia’s food shortage this winter. Their continuance in German hands would curtail food supplies even more seriously next winter.

3. The Donets coal and industrial areas of the Eastern Ukraine are a big prize in German hands. Whatever part of them can be recovered this winter will help ease Russia’s fuel problem in and around Moscow, where her industries are mostly run by coal.

4. The military program seeks, finally, to dispose of three serious menaces. One is the siege of Leningrad, northern anchor of the Soviet main front and Russia’s second largest industrial city. Another is the Nazi triangle endangering Moscow from Rzhev, Vyazma, and the rail junctions to their rear. The last is the Nazi springboard in the Lower Caucasus, which jeopardizes the huge oil pools beyond the Caucasus Mountains. Thus, while Russia’s chief strategic objectives involve destruction of German war power, her main territorial objectives envisage recapture of economic assets.

The mathematics of Africa

In the battle for Tunisia, the Germans hold the advantage of position. The advantage of the United Nations lies in their greater resources and striking power, which are still mustering. The Axis forces, including the remnants of Rommel’s broken Afrika Korps, are caught between two moving walls of military power. General Montgomery’s British Eighth Army is pressing them from the east. General Eisenhower’s expeditionary forces are squeezing them from the west. Air power from both sides is pounding them from above, while the Fighting French are thrusting up from the south.

The length of the Allied North African campaign is problematical. “General Mud” and the political quagmire both defy prediction. The rains have made the whole forward area a sticky bog; the construction of the advanced runways, vital for fighter planes, becomes a problem in hydraulics. Hungry Riffian tribesmen eye the long supply line skirting their strongholds in the Atlas range of Spanish Morocco. There will be better offensive weather in early February for the decisive fight. Meantime the German foe at Bizerte is little more than 100 miles by air from his great supply depots and air bases in Sicily, whereas our convoys must travel 3000 dangerous miles across the Atlantic. Those are big odds.

The submarine offensive

Hitler takes full advantage of this situation by opening the most severe submarine campaign of the war. Germany is launching about twenty-five submarines a month — a new high. Organization in England of a Committee on Submarine Warfare, headed by Premier Churchill, indicates the reality of this peril. Watch the multiplying Allied bombing raids against German U-boat bases and yards around the rim of Europe. The United Nations will speed up production of corvettes and destroyers.

The length of the Allied supply lines in North Africa may tempt Hitler to try surprise attacks over the Mediterranean. Formation of the “Hermann Göring Special Service Division” of the Luftwaffe, which will carry tanks, artillery, specialists, and infantry, may mean a sudden incursion into Libya from Crete, far behind General Montgomery. Renewed RAF raids on that island imply British alertness to this peril.

Hitler’s oil

One mystery the developing fight should help to solve is Hitler’s status with regard to oil. Rommel’s defeat in Egypt and his flight to Tripoli were due largely to failure of air support. Many Axis planes were captured intact for lack of fuel. In Russia, lack of air support is evident on the German side, while the capture of hundreds of usable planes, together with vast quantities of mechanized equipment, including tanks, all immobilized, suggests that Hitler may be feeling at last the pinch of that long-predicted oil shortage. If that is so, it should be evident in the kind of campaign he stages in the Mediterranean. Plenty of oil would be needed for any massive counter-blow to offset the invasion of French Africa. A conservative campaign, focusing on Southern Italy and Tunisia exclusively, would suggest that he is compelled to save oil for the eventual defense of Germany in Europe.

Victory takes time

Germany’s strength is beginning to experience serious deterioration because of her reverses in Russia; yet the balance between her military power in Europe and that of the United Nations in North Africa remains disproportionately in Hitler’s favor. Allied strength as now represented there does not constitute a striking force sufficiently powerful to storm Hitler’s European citadel. Tunisia must be won, North Africa must be cleared, Allied positions must be consolidated, vast supplies and possibly another twenty divisions must be brought in before assault upon Europe can be undertaken with prospect of success.

The bulk of the French troops in Algeria, Morocco, and Dakar are still in process of being equipped. That will consume time. As they are being provided with American arms, they will require training with these before they can make their weight felt. That, too, will take time.

To add to the perplexities of the United Nations, the political repercussions of the Darlan affair continue. New confusions of political intrigue, plot, assassination, and wrangling multiply. The economic upset produced by arrival of General Eisenhower’s expedition in a country afflicted with semistarvation has generated unrest which the Allies are striving to allay with economic bribes. That may prove rash. Would not a firm, clear policy hold greater possibilities of success? The Arabs respect strength. Their appetite for bribes can be counted on only to grow.

These complications are being watched closely by the Axis, whose agents in North Africa are active, well acquainted with the foibles of the natives, and in cahoots with the more reactionary French residents. The Germans will exploit this situation. Hitler has every reason for putting up the stiffest kind of delaying action in French Africa to facilitate his defense preparations in Europe.

Hitler is aroused

The tenth anniversary of Hitler’s accession finds Der Führer planning more feverishly than ever. Adaptations of the Siegfried Line are being made along the coasts of Southern Europe from France to Thrace. Redoubled pressure is being exerted to conscript labor from every nation on the Continent for German war industries. Belgium is ordered to produce 250,000 workmen, Norway 100,000, hapless Denmark 150,000; Czechoslovakia is directed to raise her quota of exiles at work in the Reich to 500,000 by March. Estimates of the demands on France run as high as half a million.

Berlin has ordered conscription of approximately 1,500,000 men from subject populations for a new German auxiliary army to be led by Colonel General Fritz Fromm. This force will fill service posts in the Army, relieving more reliable troops for combat. The de-Aryanization of the Wehrmacht is proceeding rapidly!

But the Fortress is out of order. Demands on the vanquished, and the Allied invasion of Africa, are responsible for the worst wave of sabotage the Germans have ever faced. Fires, bombings, dynamitings, train wreckings, assassinations, thefts, and strikes are multiplying in every direction. To counter the storm, the Gestapo has instituted a “Punitive Council” for the Balkan areas and launched a series of repressions, executions, and hostage murders surpassing all its previous achievements. Whole districts of Croatia, Serbia, and Albania are depopulated. Hangings in Czechoslovakia approach 200 per month. Denmark and Belgium are getting their first experiences of Nazi ruthlessness. France is being scoured. The massacre of the Jews in the East reaches the proportions of mass extermination. But repression continues to fail. Guerrilla war has spread from Yugoslavia across the entire South of Europe.