Bitter Pill

Like it or not, Adolf Hitler had to write off his winter campaign as a dead loss. For last week was the sixth of German retreat in Russia.

Red Armies assaulted Axis positions before Murmansk so fiercely that even the Berlin radio conceded retirement of German forces to new positions. Around Leningrad, Russia readied the offensive that would relieve the siege of her second city. South of Moscow Germans had been pushed back in some places more than 120 miles, and their newest stand, on a line from Bryansk to Vyazma, was breached. In the Crimea, having recaptured the naval base of Sevastopol, Russian troops threatened to reclaim the entire peninsula. A Soviet communique reported wholesale German surrenders on the Eastern Front.

What Was Wrong? Like a bridge player down two on a grand slam, doubled and redoubled, Adolf Hitler was obliged to second-guess the play of his hand, and make the best of his mistakes.

His mistakes were not of detail. They were, rather, mistakes of conception. Adolf Hitler had played his cards as well as ever; the disaster was in the size of his bid.

He had apparently planned to be in Moscow early in the autumn, firmly entrenched before winter set in. He had relied on an attack of paralyzing speed--an aerially supported striking force of first four, then five, large Panzer Armies, followed by supporting infantry forces of Axis and Axis-allied troops.

First flaw came with the storming of areas where hard cores of prepared Russian resistance ruled out tanks as a major offensive weapon. Odessa fell only after a fierce, brutal fight; Leningrad, encircled, has withstood over four months of siege; Moscow threw back three gigantic offensives.

When, contrary to plan, winter found the Germans deep in Russia, Adolf Hitler vetoed the plea of his generals that a winter line be established, and tried twice to keep the offensive. But German aerial operations over Russia dwindled to the merest trickle. Tanks and trucks, oil frozen, bogged in the deep snow and were abandoned in wholesale lots.

When is Winter? On Dec. 10, after the second Moscow offensive, the Hamburg Fremdenblatt said that German winter quarters were being established on an arcing line, running roughly from Leningrad to Smolensk to Orel to Kharkov to Odessa, in an area embracing excellent north-south rail communications. Subsequent German dispatches termed it "a loose network of strong points--an elastic winter line." By last week the winter-quarters alibi was wearing thin. The Germans would have to hump if winter quarters were to be established before warm weather.

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