Summer Has Come

Like a monster warmed by the summer sun, the Nazi stirred. Along the Russian front, from the Black Sea to Leningrad, the shape, and probable direction, of his summer thrust emerged:

> At Sevastopol the Germans still strove to finish that fortress, thereby clearing the way to control of the Black Sea and an advance into the upper Caucasus.

> Near Kharkov, 400 miles to the north, Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's tight teams of planes, tanks, guns and men punched a dent, then tried to hack a great pocket in Marshal Semion Timoshenko's defenses. Eventually, if the Nazi plan worked, the pocket would become an ever-enlarging fissure.

> From Nazi-held Kursk, 125 miles north of Kharkov, the German armies also struck at the deep Russian defenses, with a blow so violent that London called it the real beginning of the Nazi summer offensive.

> At Volkhovo, 80 miles southeast of Leningrad, where incessant and uncertain struggles have been reported for weeks, the Germans claimed a victory: 32,000 Russian prisoners and much booty. Whatever the true outcome, a preliminary to major engagements in the north had apparently been completed.

All these related actions constituted a concerted effort to gnaw through the successive layers of Russia's front-wide defense-in-depth. For the Russians, the most disturbing sign was Timoshenko's seeming lack of enough equipment to turn the German tactics near Kharkov to his advantage. Given ample arms, he was in ideal position to smash Bock's advancing forces by simultaneous attack from all sides of the pocket. Perhaps Moscow was holding its fire for a larger crisis at Kursk; perhaps Timoshenko preferred to wait until the Kharkov pocket was deeper, the Germans more vulnerable. But last week, when he wanted to attack by air at the upper edge of the pocket, he had to shuttle planes from the south, then quickly return them to the threatened Izyum sector.

Immediately at stake in the Kursk and Kharkov fighting was the important Moscow-Rostov railway, which not only supplies the Russian armies along a vast front south of Moscow, but leads to the Caucasus and its oil. If the Germans cut this railroad, as they did last year when they briefly held Rostov, they will be well on their way to the Caucasus. And, on their way to the railway, they will have to inflict great defeats on the Red Army--the only kind of defeats which can win the summer campaign for Hitler. This week those defeats were still to be inflicted; the Red Army's deep, intricately fortified lines had bent, but they had not crumbled.

Somewhere ahead of the Germans was an even bigger objective than Russia itself: an effort to squeeze the Middle and Near East in mighty pincers. This prospect was still far from reality, but it was near and dark enough to bring Kharkov and Kursk very close to Cairo in the total focus of World War II.

City of Faith

To the company of heroes of World War II, the world added the defenders of Sevastopol. With the accounts of rotting German dead, of incessant tank and plane attack, of slow German advances, came stories of life within the city.

Oh, Hateful Moon. The London News Chronicle's Moscow correspondent, Paul Winterton, interviewed Jacob Mametovich Seitov, a battalion commissar who had left Sevastopol to attend last fortnight's session of the Supreme Soviet. He said that Sevastopol's civilian population, normally 130,000, had dropped to about 45,000: some 15,000 women, children, sick & wounded had been evacuated by warships since June 4. Although German dive-bombers and Italian torpedo planes haunted Russian shipping in the Black Sea, supplies still arrived and evacuees departed. "We have done very well," said Seitov. "So far I can honestly say that we have not lost a single warship by bomb or torpedo, though that unfortunately is not true of merchant ships."

The ships go by night. If the evacuees "go aboard in the evening, they can reach a safe Black Sea port by morning." But it is not a comfortable trip, and enemy planes are busy under the summer stars. Said Seitov: "One of our troubles is the short nights. We have all grown to dislike the moon intensely."

Other civilians could leave, but do not. "I myself have asked women: 'Why don't you leave?' and they simply say: 'We don't believe Sevastopol will fall.' "

The water supply was all right, but the constant bombardment made electricity "a bit uncertain." Thousands upon thousands of bombs had wrecked a great part of the city, and more fell every day. "We have no air-raid warnings. What would be the good when the raids are on practically all the time?" Yet 112,000 acres of land are still being busily cultivated to provide additional food. In spite of everything, there still are manicure shops open in the city. Every man, woman and child has a job of some kind, and that keeps them happy."

On Malakhov Hill outside the city, "practically everything has been destroyed." But bombs and shells--including huge projectiles from the biggest mortars ever fired--cannot dent the Russians' vast underground shelters, storerooms, ordnance shops. "If the Nazis bombed for 100 years, they would not make much impression there." Red Marines landed near Yalta, hoping to relieve Sevastopol as they similarly relieved Kerch last December. It was a forlorn hope. Said Admiral Umashev of the Red Navy, in an order of the day: "If Sevastopol must fall, it must cost the Germans 100,000 men. If you make the enemy pay this price, your sacrifice has not been in vain."

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