After Stalingrad?

The Germans were winning what they set out to win in Russia this year. They were, that is, achieving their minimum objective for 1942: to weaken Russia so that Soviet power no longer would be the greatest single threat to German hegemony.

With or without Stalingrad and the Volga, the Red Army would fight on. The question was how it would fight, how effectively to preserve the rest of Russia, how potently as an ally of the United Nations. There were no pat answers. Hitler had not achieved his maximum objective: destruction of the Red Army. But his minimum objective constituted a great victory for Germany, a great threat to the Allied cause.

Nowhere were there signs such as portend an army's breakup, no sudden quickening of the enemy advance, no telling breakthroughs, no confusion and disintegration in rear communications. On the contrary, the German advance was slower, if anything, inch by inch into Stalingrad. Russian communications were still in order, bringing fresh troops, guns and planes to the front.

The danger was that the Red Army, though intact, may have been so weakened by its colossal expenditures on the southern steppes that it could not muster the men and materials necessary for a future offensive from positions beyond the Volga or even farther back toward the Urals. Russian offensives this year have been limited in scope and results. Nowhere have the Russians exhibited much offensive power, and from beyond the Volga their task would be even more monumental. Russia is losing not only its great industrial and agricultural resources in the south; it is losing at least 40 million of its 180 million people. The wellsprings of manpower are slowly drying. Severance from the Caucasus would mean that the Red Army must depend on oil from behind the Urals--at most, 40% of Russia's total production. Without the granaries of South Russia and the Caucasus, the remainder of Russia would face acute want but not famine. Army and civilians would have to fall back on accumulated food resources, an estimated 112 million tons.

The warning that the United Nations could read in the Red Army's heroic retreat was that soon they might have to face the Axis without effective Russian aid. If Marshal von Bock could push the Russians across the Volga and then successfully stabilize his lines, Hitler could withdraw armies and air fleets for use in other theaters.

London heard that, if Stalingrad fell, Hitler intended to stabilize the Russian front behind strong fortifications (except perhaps for a push toward the Baku oilfields along the Caspian shore rather than through the freezing Caucasian passes). Such stability would allow Hitler to turn perhaps 70 of his 215 Russian divisions into the Middle East, reinforce his western front, and return skilled workers to the factories from the army. A push toward Suez and the Indian Ocean would pull the United Nations' attention away from the Continent and, if successful, would be a disaster doubtless prolonging the war for years.

Russia would still be in the war, but in isolation fighting a private and essentially secondary war against Germany.

The hope was that the Battle of Southern Russia had been so costly to Bock, disdainer of human life, that even though he won the battle he had lost the war. Hope of bleeding the Germans to death in Russia was still--a hope. The hope that Germany was crumbling within was still--a hope.

Freezing the Germans out was a remoter prospect than it was last year, when the Germans definitely were not frozen out. Moreover, the Germans were feverishly preparing to beat General Winter. Hitler appointed three of his best generals to organize the winter front: Colonel General Franz Haider, canny Chief of the General Staff (TIME, Jan. 13, 1941), General Alfred Jacob, who helped build the Westwall fortifications in 1938, and General Gustav von Wietersheim, a supply expert whose vast job would surely tax all his talents.

Thousands of skis and white hoods have been sent into Russia. Furs have been collected from all Europe, and German furriers have been given special concessions so they can supply the army. All portable stoves in shops and factories have been ordered to Russia. Preparations are afoot to send 40 million pounds of bread weekly, ten million pounds of meat, 30 million pounds of potatoes to keep German soldiers well fed.

New fortifications are being built behind the German lines, many of them concrete installations around towns the Germans held last winter without fortifications. A veritable Eastwall is well under way. This winter the Germans will be prepared.

Winter's approach was heralded by a sudden bite in the northern wind, cranes and geese winging south over Moscow, the first frosts glittering on the Russian grass at sunup. Still ahead was at least a month's good fighting weather in the north, two months at Moscow, three months or more on the Lower Volga, where severe weather never can be counted on as an ally. In the Caucasus, except in the high mountain passes, fighting and death need never halt.

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