Toughest Fight Ahead

. . . Undertaking the attack on our country, Stalin said, the German Fascist invaders calculated that they would, certainly be able to finish "with the Soviet Union in a month and a half to two months and succeed in this short period of time in reaching the Urals. It is not necessary to add that the Germans did not conceal this plan for a blitz victory. Quite the contrary. They advertised it in every way. The facts, however, now show how this plan was wrong. Now this crazy plan must be considered a complete failure. . . .

In the Crimea. Germans with their first wounds all healed went back into action last week. "They silently marvel," wrote a German correspondent of the returning men, "at the deeds of those who broke through into Crimea, but know that the toughest fights are ahead before all of Crimea is taken."

If the Germans knew this, they knew that Russia was not yet beaten. They realized too that this was the first campaign over which the German Army had taken so long that wounds could heal, men return to the lines, and be wounded again.

On the Russian side, men with fresh wounds were fighting in the Crimea. For the Russians were retreating, and in their retreat they were fighting one of the most important battles of the war.

If the Germans gained Crimea, they would be within six miles of the doubly vital Caucasus--vital for its oil, vital as Russia's best eventual supply line from the Allies. At Kerch, on the peninsula's extreme eastern end. only the Kerch Straits separate Crimea from Caucasus, and the Kerch Straits are only a little wider than the lower Dnieper, which the Germans bridged.

With so much at stake, Russian officers could not afford to pamper wounded men. If a man could walk and carry a gun, a dressing was enough. They returned to the fight, which was tragically like the British withdrawal from Greece. All day the German dive-bombers, horrible with screech-sirens, aimed at flesh and nerves. All night the Russians had to plant land mines.

This was heartbreaking work. But the Russians knew that in the six weeks since Adolf Hitler had boasted that Russia was beaten, the Germans had taken only Kharkov and part of the Crimea.

On the Moscow front German soldiers were ordered last week to prepare the apparatus of defense. They must have wondered, as they did so, what had become of their confidence that Russia would be broken quickly.

The Russians were counterattacking. To make it worse, some of the Luftwaffe on the Moscow front had been withdrawn, partly to support a drive down from Finnish positions to close the last lines of supply into Leningrad. Much Air Force weight had apparently been shifted south, in preparation for a great new effort to take Rostov-on-Don.

All the common German soldier on the Moscow front knew last week was that he was being attacked by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov, the new Red Chief of Staff, by Colonel Winter, who knew the weak points of German uniforms, by Captain Mud, who was a bear on tanks, and by Private Cootie, who carries typhus bullets in his magazine. Something was not right with the German plan.

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