The Big Test

To the Red Army in its twelfth month of war, the spring offensive had become more than a big push. It was the big test. The democratic world waited apprehensively for the big result.

Never before had the Red Army attempted a major offensive. Its winter gains before Moscow and adjoining fronts had breasted the Nazi flood tide by short, stiff jabs, sector-by-sector punches. Now, after meticulous preparation, at a moment and place carefully chosen, the Russians had struck in force along a 100-mile front arcing around Kharkov.

Possession of that southern industrial center is of vast importance, but far more vital were the questions the offensive would answer: Is the Red Army yet capable of sustained offensive action? Has it learned to manipulate great tank concentrations, as well or better than the foe? Can Red staff work measure up to the German High Command's? If the answer was "yes," the world could breathe again.

At week's end conflicting communiques and battle din obscured the answers, but there was little to fire the U.S.'s cautious optimism--always skeptical where Russia was concerned. The fact was that the Red Army in two weeks of fighting had not won its initial Kharkov objective, nor had Nazi resistance perceptibly weakened.

So far the Russians could boast only of heavy losses inflicted on Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's forces: 15,000 Nazis slain in one three-day stretch, 553 tanks destroyed in a mechanized engagement. And in such fighting it was likely that the attackers' losses equaled the defenders'.

Both sides told of tank fighting on a scale unknown since last September, probably heavier than any in history. But when the tide of battle briefly ebbed, the Germans still held Kharkov. They also had slashed savagely in a counterattack farther south. The Russians, superb in defense, held them. But this week Moscow announced disquieting news. In the sector below Kharkov the Germans had hurled another attack which Moscow frankly labeled "surprise." Spearheaded by 150 tanks, the Nazis plowed in under a canopy of planes. The issue was in fearful doubt.

Meanwhile, the battle of Kerch in the Crimea had been lost. In two weeks Nazi locusts had swarmed back over bloody soil that had felt the sting of a previous German visitation. Though Red soldiers through the winter had hammered hard at the enemy, they never succeeded in loosening the Nazi grip on key railways and communications. When the German spring offensive came, the Red Army was in a tough spot, hampered by transport and supply hazards across the Kerch Straits in their rear. Last week Moscow acknowledged that the Kerch defenders had withdrawn across the four-mile-wide strait to the imperiled Caucasus. But still Sevastopol, the Red Fleet's Black Sea base, held out, after a seven-month siege.

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