Easter Theater

The Second Agony

"The main strength of the powerful Soviet Army is broken. In addition, Soviet units are greatly confused, and leadership may not be able to prevail. The breaking of the Stalin Line in several places . . . has decided the course and outcome of the campaign against Bolshevism in the interests of Europe."

These confident words were put on the wires of the world last weekend by D.N.B.. the official German news agency. The German braggadocio was given the lie direct by the official Russian communique, which said: "The result of the first three weeks of the war testify to the undoubted failure of Hitler's plan of lightning war." There was so much evidence that both Germans and Russians were lying that there was no reliable exposition of what was really happening. But a few inferences could be made.

First Pause. The Germans' first push, after an advance of 355 miles to the farthest point, halted for several days. This could be attributed to Russian counterattacks, to the fixed defenses of the Stalin Line, to nasty weather, to the number of prisoners the Nazis had taken, to continuing resistance behind the German lines--particularly in the Bialystok-Minsk area.

But there was an over-all explanation of why the first German push came to a halt. After a drive of 355 miles, any Army inevitably gets its communications tangled, has to straighten them out and bring up fresh supplies. Moreover the German attack, although led by Panzer spearheads, had to be followed by infantry to mop up and take possession. Marching at even such a rapid rate as the Nazis claimed the infantry obviously could not keep up with the tanks.

The Russians, claiming that the Germans had a fantastic 1,000,000 casualties, admitted that they themselves had 250,000* Assuming that the latter figure was an understatement, the Russians were no doubt desperately busy during the pause between the first and second Nazi pushes, trying to strengthen their defenses.

There were signs of this desperation. Stalin ordered the mobilization of the People's Militia, which would place small arms and great hopes in the hands of perhaps 8,000,000 able-bodied men, between the ages of 17 and 55. These untrained men--if armed as planned--might, chiefly by their numbers, if they turned into guerrillas, become a serious nuisance to the Germans.

Another indication of the seriousness of the situation was that Comrade Stalin placed his three top marshals to defend the three important sectors defending his three big threatened cities. He entrusted Leningrad to Klimenti E. Voroshilov, former Commander in Chief and Defense Commissar; Moscow to Semion K. Timoshenko, who now holds those jobs (TIME, June 30); Kiev to Semion M. Budenny, who was always Voroshilov's right-hand man.

Second Push. Had the pause lasted a fortnight or longer, it would have indicated that the Germans were in trouble. Instead the Nazis gave the Russians only a few days' rest before launching their second push. Soon the Russians inferentially reported the Germans attempting to force bridgeheads across the Dnieper in the center, slogging through "the wet zone" to the north, knocking at the Ukraine down south.

What price the Germans paid could only be guessed at, but all Russian counterclaims tacitly confirmed the fact that the second push was rolling.

At week's end the Nazis said they had broken through the Stalin Line near Lake Peipus, not 175 miles from Leningrad; at Vitebsk, 300 miles from Moscow; near Zhitomir, only 75 miles from Kiev. Furthermore, the High Command declared that the Russians would be entirely incapable of organizing a large-scale counterattack because Luftwaffe bombings had ruined the key railroads. Whereas the Germans had already moved up large supply depots to the edge of the "former" Stalin Line.

These things were probably true. Kiev, then Leningrad and eventually Moscow might fall. But the Germans still had several hundred miles and probably several weeks to fight. And after that they would have the bigger job of trying to bring order out of chaos.

*This week the Russians claimed even better odds in a Baltic Sea naval and air battle. They said that 26 German troopships, three destroyers and a tank-laden barge had been sunk or set afire, without a single Russian loss "either in ships or in planes."

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