In the Second November

November is a wintry month in Russia, and November is now upon the Germans. Gone are their "hundred days"--that period since July when, according to one view, the Germans had to win the war if they were ever to win it. Now they are sending skis and toboggans to the Caucasus foothills, where the soldiers already are knee-deep in snow.

Intermittently, but more often as the autumn dies, cold winds and rains beat the steppes around Stalingrad and drive the Luftwaffe from the sky. At Leningrad, where the northern nights are already longer than the days, Lake Ladoga will soon be freezing, and the Russians will be using sleds instead of boats to provision that besieged city. Between Leningrad and Moscow, the Germans report that the Red Army is assembling many men and weapons for an offensive, possibly after the November snows and frosts have hardened the land for winter war. Within a matter of weeks the conquered Don and the unconquered Volga will be frozen, and from Voronezh to Stalingrad Red soldiers will slash across the ice at the wintering Germans.

Their second November and their second winter in Russia will not be a happy time for the Germans. Whether it will be the winter of their doom, the Germans and the rest of the world will know when spring has come.

The Objectives. At the least, the Germans at the start of their summer campaign intended to: 1) cut the Volga; 2) seize Stalingrad; 3) occupy the northwestern Caucasus along the Black Sea; 4) penetrate the central and eastern Caucasus as far as the Grozny oilfields and probably the city of Ordzhonikidze, key to the best route through the mountains to Tiflis and Transcaucasian oil. They may also have planned to complete their conquest of the Black Sea by driving to Batum, to seize as well as isolate the Russians' Transcaucasian oil at Baku on the Caspian.

The Germans' summer campaign was a drive for places, for Russia's vital transportation lines, for materials equally vital to Russia and the Germans. The Germans did not attempt to "destroy the Red Army." They did not even attempt a complete, immediate military defeat of Russia as a nation. The utmost effect of the Germans' minimum aims would have been the eventual, but slow, disintegration of Russia and the Red Army.

The Accomplishments. The Germans crossed the Don and reached the Volga at one point above Stalingrad. But as yet they do not even claim to hold the Volga. Above Stalingrad the river still teems with Russian commerce. Cargo boats still pass Stalingrad at night with Caucasus oil. The Volga is still the Russians' channel for supplying the defenders.

After early December, when the Volga freezes until late April, its transport value vanishes. But the Russians then will know how to sneak men and weapons across the ice, and Stalingrad will be like any other defended place on a plain--even if the Germans have taken it in the meantime, and have themselves become the defenders. Last week the Germans, advancing a few hundred yards into the city, had to confess that they lied when they said that they had captured the great Red October iron foundry last fortnight.

The Germans have attained their minimum objectives in the northwestern Caucasus. They hold Rostov, the naval base at Novorossisk, the Maikop oilfield 65 miles from the coast, the upper reaches of the Transcaucasian railway between Rostov and the Caspian. Last week they were fighting for Tuapse, a minor port on the Black Sea, 270 miles across winter-locked mountain passes from Batum.

Slowly and at great cost, the Germans have advanced in the central and eastern Caucasus to within 150 miles of Makhach-Kala on the Caspian, where the best shore route to Baku begins. They have the Malgobek oilfield near Mozdok, but they do not have the Grozny fields, although the Russians last week admitted that in that sector they were still retiring. The Germans also advanced past Nalchik toward Ordzhonikidze.

The Wounds. Russia has lost the coal and electric power of the Don Basin; she has lost the Ukraine's great feeding ground (see p. 36). Before the Don was lost, the Russians themselves said that it was second only to the Volga in national importance. If they have not been cut off from the oil, fish and ports-of-entry in the Caucasus, their access has been gravely impeded.

But none of these losses will count decisively on the battlefield unless the Red Army--and every other phase of Russia's military potential--has suffered as much as the Germans intended. That the Red Army still exists, and is still strong, the headlines announce every day. Is it strong enough to turn upon and defeat the sorely wounded German Armies? Its only important counteroffensives this year (at Voronezh and Orel, at Rzhev on the Moscow front) were failures. Marshal Semion Timoshenko's limited counteroffensive above Stalingrad in six weeks has failed to advance the Red troops the bare ten miles or so which they had to cover to relieve Stalingrad.

So far this year the demonstrated offensive power of the Red Army has been almost nil. One explanation may be that the Russians are deliberately conserving their real power for a better time, as they did in the weeks before the Germans reached Stalingrad's outskirts. If so, they have by choice passed up their opportunity to attack in full force on the central and northern fronts while the Wehrmacht's main strength is in the south. According to German reports, the Russians may be about to seize this opportunity. Until they do, only the Red Army's commanders will know whether they have saved more than they lost to the Germans this year.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.