European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

COALITION war against the Reich is in full swing from the East, West, and South. The pressure on the enemy is so great that we contemplate his collapse — and then wonder whether he will pull a military miracle out of his hat.

Our purpose is to break Hitler’s army. To this objective, everything else is secondary. Targets bombed, territory occupied, and positions taken are important only as they contribute to the destruction of the Wehrmacht. Breaking the Wehrmacht calls for the destruction of the German Army in the field or its unconditional surrender — capitulation under circumstances which will make it conclusive to everyone, including future generations of Germans, that any terms given are favors granted by a complete winner.

The Allies cannot be satisfied, as they were in 1918, with getting the drop on Germany, and then allowing the enemy’s soldiers to go home under the illusion that the war was ended by bargaining. This time our objective demands a complete and self-evident German defeat.

Hitler’s hopes

Hitler, like Frederick the Great before him, has profited by divided opponents. But his genius is political rather than military. In eleven years of power, he has not only taught his enemies his methods, but has also convinced them that his elimination is World Priority Number One. Before he can have a chance to exercise his political skill again, he must persuade one of his enemies that he is too tough to make further fighting worth the heavy cost.

To accomplish this result he depends upon what he calls “the fanaticism of a nation” — upon the German people, who are reasonably well fed, bitter from bombing, conditioned through a decade for a situation like the present, and afraid, with good reason, that defeat in 1944 will mean greater suffering and humiliation than defeat in 1918.

Hitler depends above all on the German Army, which is far beyond its peak, to be sure, but is still well-equipped, experienced in battle, and has become accustomed to fighting with little air support. It has a fanatical inner core of Nazis, surrounded by an outer ring of patriotic Germans who fear for their country. It is a tough nut to crack.

If this army can stall the Western Allies, and stretch out the Russian offensive until the winter months, Hitler feels that he may have an opportunity to use his political genius again. Moscow has admitted losses of more than five million in killed and captured since 1941, and has probably suffered an equal number of casualties from wounds. For three years the Russian people have lived on a subsistence diet. Prolongation of the war and any failure this year, so argue the Nazis, might create discouragement great enough to tempt the Kremlin to negotiate for peace. This outcome is unlikely, — for the Russians are fighting with confidence and hope, — but Hitler must nourish even the ghost of a chance.

Hemming Hitler in

Germany’s central position has one great disadvantage — that the Reich is encircled. The collapse of any front will mean disaster. Such a situation tends to create in the minds of the most experienced commanders an indecision which causes them to spend in driblets, under pressure, reinforcements which should be saved for big counter-offensives.

The Allies can choose the points of attack, while the German generals remain in doubt. When this superiority can be built up to provide the initiative on each separate front, the German Army will be deprived of all power to concentrate against Allied fronts.

ATLANIC MONTHLY, SUBSCRIBERS’ EDITION, August, 1944, Vo!. 174, No. 2. Published monthly. Publication Office, 10 Ferry St., Concord, N, II. Editorial and General Offices, gtion, St., Boston 16, Mass. 40£ a copy, SwQO a year. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by return postage. Entered as second-class matter July 15, 1918, at the Post Office, rd, N. H., under the Act of March 3, 1879, Printed in the U.S.A. Copyright 1944, by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights, including translation into other languages, reserved publisher in trie United States, Great Britain, Mexico, and all countries participating in the International Copyright Convention and the Pan-American Copyright Convention.

Before the landings in France, we had established our initiative in the air over Hitler’s Fortress. Air bombardment had reduced the Luftwaffe to a relatively weak force. The setting up of American air bases in Russia meant that our reconnaissance planes and fighter-escorted bombers could cover every inch of German territory. They could eliminate the possibility of surprise by spotting troop movements; they could interrupt communications and smash industry.

In the East, where the Russians face three fifths of Hitler’s armies, Soviet forces have possessed the initiative ever since the Battle of Stalingrad, except for brief periods in sectors where the Red Army outran its communications. On the Italian front, Sir Harold Alexander established the Allied initiative by breaking the winter stalemate, taking Rome, and smashing a large part of Kesselring’s army.

Allied air and sea supremacy in the West, together with the concentration of huge armies in Britain, gave the Allies the initiative against the European coast from Brest to the Hook of Holland. But this initiative extended to the shore alone. One thing remained. That was to gain superiority on the ground in Western Europe itself. Once that was obtained, our initiative might well be paralyzing, for Tunisia and Italy have proved that Anglo-American armies can defeat the Germans, given enough good weather for the effective use of air power.

The gateway

In preparing the capture of Cherbourg, our air offensive was formidable. Allied planes drove the Luftwaffe back to bases 100 miles inland and smashed communications until railroad traffic in France was reduced two fifths. They destroyed almost all the bridges across the Seine, so that the enemy could not send his regional reserves, his secondary defense, from one side of the river to oppose landings on the other. And still the Germans did not know where the invasion would strike.

The points of landing failed to resolve the enemy’s doubt. The British went ashore on the beaches west of the great port of Le Havre while Allied transport planes dropped a large number of dummy parachutes to its northwest. For six days — time we desperately needed to bring heavy weapons ashore — the enemy believed that the Allied objective was Le Havre.

In that period, Allied bombers broke the bridges across the Loire to prevent the defenders of Cherbourg from getting much reinforcement from the regional reserves to the southwest. They pounded communications between that river and the Seine until enemy railroad traffic there had been reduced 90 per cent.

Within three weeks, the Allies had over twenty divisions in Normandy, and Cherbourg was in our hands. Possession of the port meant that the second front had been fully established in France, beyond any possible German power to drive our armies into the sea.

The Germans believe that Cherbourg alone will be insufficient to maintain an army strong enough to give the Allies superiority on the ground in France. If the Anglo-American armies can be denied the ports of Le Havre and Brest, the ring around Hitler will still be incomplete.

Accordingly, Rommel has committed great forces from his strategic reserves in an effort to block the expansion of Allied forces from Normandy. If he succeeds, he will provide time for a possible miracle in the East. And if he fails, or if the Allies go ashore elsewhere, not all will be lost. The Germans could fall back inland to a second defense zone, based on the command towns of Rennes, Argentan, Beauvais, Arras, and Ghent, backed up by Paris and the old fortifications of the Maginot Line.

The Germans are skilled in the use of what air power they possess. They also know how to make fortifications compensate for inferior numbers. At the worst, Rommel might fight a delaying action all the way to Germany.

The robot planes, jet-propelled from the Pas de Calais area against London and Southern England, have had an important diversionary effect. Steered by a gyroscopic device, they cannot be aimed with much accuracy, and have not disrupted communications, as the Germans admit when they speak officially of “harassing fire” and “vengeance fire.” Nevertheless, these flying bombs have caused thousands of casualties and have diverted a large part of the American Ninth Air Force to bomb installations in the Pas de Calais area. They have severely disturbed British nerves. But “harassing” never won an all-out war.

Russia roars in

In the East, the Red Army’s first summer offensive struck like a fighter after he has secured a knockdown. Almost uninterruptedly since the Battle of Stalingrad, the Russians have piled offensive on offensive to keep the enemy “off balance” — unable to recover from one blow before the next is delivered. In each campaign Russian troops and their leadership have improved.

Yet the Nazi has fought skillful rear-guard actions and escaped from position after position that appeared to promise encirclement. Last spring, when the Russians surprised the Germans by their ability to move in the mud, the Red Army did capture sizable rear guards. But even then the enemy suffered no vast disaster.

Once the second front was established, Stalin appears to have felt that his improved position justified the taking of greatly increased risks. He struck in the center, instead of the south where his blow had been expected. The drive indicates a plan to smash the whole German Army quickly in the East.

The offensive is more daring than any the Red Army has tried thus far. In ten days, it broke the “ Fatherland Line,” — the strongest system of enemy field fortifications in Russia, — captured Minsk, and smashed at least thirty German divisions. Unlike its predecessors, this drive moved with great speed and took prisoners on an unprecedented scale.

The Germans still have space to trade for time in the West. And the Russians risk outrunning their support. But they have immense power: they are veteran troops skillfully led and possess air superiority to provide reconnaissance and cover.

How will the collapse begin?

There are certain Nazi shortages, any one of which may bring on the collapse of the German Army.

Tanks. Air bombardments, especially Royal Air Force night attacks on Berlin factories, have so reduced tank production that the enemy has been compelled to make use of obsolete French armor and training models.

Gasoline. The British Ministry of Economic Warfare says that air bombardment, chiefly American, has put out of operation two thirds of the Reich’s capacity to refine natural and synthetic oil, with the result that the Army is receiving less than half the gasoline it needs. The Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht are stealing each other’s gas. What reserves Germany possesses cannot be known, but they cannot last forever.

Manpower. Immense losses, particularly in Russia, have compelled Germany to fill up her ranks with citizens of occupied countries — professional soldiers, most of them, but neither Nazis nor Germans. Allied successes are making further wholesale reductions in the Reich’s military strength and accentuating her dilemma.

If Germany attempts to hold her present lines, she will possess little spare manpower for reserves. If she contracts her front to shorten her lines, the effectiveness of Allied air bombardment will increase. Unexpectedly, the Nazis reinforced Finland, perhaps with the hope that it would contribute toward a miracle on the Russian front. To compensate for this move, Germany may have to withdraw in Italy or the Balkans.

How will Germany collapse? A good army reaches its cracking point when its commander realizes that further fighting is useless. The soldier in the field cannot see the picture as a whole and therefore cannot be sure that the game is up. The commander knows, and he is defeated when he admits to himself that he no longer has a chance. He cannot keep his knowledge from those around him, and the grapevine quickly carries the news through the army.

Exit Hitler?

Germany cracked in 1918 because Ludendorff threw up the sponge; the successful revolt on the home front was an effect and not a cause. But the Reich’s commander today is Hitler, a civilian, not a general. Civilians are not so quick as military men to see defeat. Hitler, in addition, is a fanatic who possesses the undoubted leadership of the Reich. In Himmler’s men he has a private army personally dependent on him. The German generals may try to shoot him, but he probably cannot be removed without his own connivance.

Conceivably, he is considering such connivance. Should the Red Army completely smash the German Army in the East, Hitler might remove himself by suicide, by exile, or by personal surrender to the Western Allies. Germany would then invite them to occupy the whole Reich — without further cost of life — to spare it the vengeance of the Russians.

Such an offer would pose great difficulties to the Western Allies, particularly in an American election year. And such an act of self-sacrifice on Hitler’s part would leave German militarism another legend upon which to build.

If the enemy’s political tricks fail, as the Allies seem determined that they shall, what then? So fantastic is the Nazi view of things, so long have Germans lived in its climate, that it is impossible to make a reasonable guess as to the course Allied victory will take.

It may be indescribably bloody, as a defeated army and nation continue trying to defend themselves. Or again, should the army know that the Fiihrer considers further fighting useless, it may surrender quickly, so that the soldiers can go home and begin rebuilding for the day when circumstances will give the Reich a chance to try again.