Great Decision

The appeal of Russia for a second front, once measured, patient and deferential to the internal politics of her allies, last week was hoarse and despairing, like the shout of an exhausted swimmer. It echoed menacingly in Britain (see p. 37), and in the U.S. it rang through the editorial pages of such conservative newspapers as the New York Times and Herald Tribune.

To military men there was danger in the cry, for it was driving them to an immediate choice between two possibilities, both vastly dangerous.

Choice No. 1 was to postpone the second front, no matter what happened to Russia, until the accumulation of men and materiel in Britain--some time next spring--gave them a force that had a reasonably good chance of driving across the Channel and knocking out the Nazis. The growing strength of the United Nations argued for that delay. But against delay the course of the Battle of Russia argued just as insistently. By spring, if Russia's resistance should be broken, most of Germany's crack troops from the eastern front would have been moved to the west to meet the new threat. And while the decision hung in the balance, the shipping power of the United Nations, critically essential for the second front, was being whittled down by Adolf Hitler's submarines, against the best defense the Allies could make, against the most heroic production of new ships the U.S. could achieve.

Choice No. 2 was to open the second front now, with whatever was available in Britain. That was what the civilian voices of Britain and the U.S. demanded. They asked for the deed without being certain that the tools were on hand, for they had caught the desperation of the Russians.

Military men knew that a premature second front held terrifying possibilities of early and catastrophic failure. They calculated grimly the carefully trained men that might be lost, the precious materiel that might have to be abandoned to the Germans. While the civilian speakers waved the grim possibilities away, military men had to face them. It was not a pretty prospect.

Yet soldiers knew that gamblers' passes had won wars. In Britain some 2,000,000 British soldiers (including about 200,000 Canadians) were ready for action. More than a token force of U.S. fighting men was on hand. And Britain's R.A.F., still had at least a qualified command of the air over the Channel.

The gamble might succeed. The Allies could certainly land in France, Belgium or Holland. They might be able to hold a beachhead until they grew strong enough to blast into the formidable German defenses in depth. But it was a terribly long chance.

A Third choice was there, too, but only airmen talked of relying on it entirely. It was bombing Germany to defeat. The R.A.F. had already stepped up its raiding. Night after night, with hundreds of big bombers, it smashed at Duisburg, one of Germany's greatest inland ports; at Vegesack on the Weser; at North Sea industrial plants; at railroads, docks. This week it launched its heaviest raid in weeks against Hamburg. Meanwhile the fighter-bombers were never idle. By the hundreds they swarmed at treetop height over the invasion coast, strafing troops, railroads, military establishments. (In one raid nine U.S. pilots went along; eight returned.) The R.A.F. did not claim that it was beating Germany out of the war. But airmen thought it was starting a good preview of how it could be done, when the air forces had grown to their full strength.

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