Victory is a Fighting Word

Last week, as in their bitter summer of 1942, the Russians again asked the U.S. and Britain for a second front in Europe. Unofficial interpretations came thick & fast. The Russians, as in June 1942, had already learned that there was to be no second front this year. The Russians knew that there was going to be a second front and were deceiving the Germans. Russian officialdom, aware of the terrific strain upon the Russian people, was passing the buck from the Kremlin to the Allies.

More likely the Russians merely meant what they said:

>A special Moscow communique, on the second anniversary (June 22) of German invasion, said: " To miss the opportunity afforded by the favorable conditions now prevailing for the opening of a second front in Europe in 1943, to be late with the opening of it, would be a serious set back for our common cause."

> The Moscow newspaper Izvestia, in an editorial broadcast to the Russian people by Government radio, said: " Without a second front, victory over Hitlerite Germany is impossible."

> Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov, in an address to U.S. Ambassador William H. Standley, said: "Let us remember that millions of people who have made count less sacrifices live in profound hope . . . of a combined Allied offensive."

> Joseph Stalin wrote to President Roosevelt: "Conditions have been created for the final defeat of the common enemy. Victory will come all the sooner, of this I have no doubt, the sooner we strike our joint united blows against the enemy from the east and from the west."

Last June Winston Churchill brought on similar but more insistent requests from Moscow by telling Joseph Stalin in writing that "while we were preparing to make a landing in 1942, we could not promise to do so." Last week President Roosevelt, in an anniversary message to Stalin, did not mention a second front; at a press conference he said only that no one wants a second front more than he does. In Moscow Ambassador Standley suggested that the U.S. and Britain would appreciate some assurance " that the wartime cooperation now working to defeat Hitler will continue until Japan is defeated."

Endure the Agony. Whatever the Russians may think of their allies' timing for 1943, Moscow can have no quarrel with the official U.S. and British conception of what it will take to make a proper second front and to defeat Germany.

General George Catlett Marshall, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, made this conception very clear last week. General Marshall addressed the Governors' Conference at Columbus, Ohio, but he might have been addressing himself to the Russians, and to their doubts that Britons and Americans comprehend the realities of all-out war. Said he:

> On victory from the air --"I think it proper to express a word of caution against hasty conclusions or impromptu conceptions. ... I am convinced more & more each day that only by a proper combination of war-making means can we achieve victory in the shortest possible time and with the greatest economy in life. . . . Your adversary may be hammered to his knees by bombing, but he will recover unless the knockout blow is delivered by the ground army. . . ."

>On the nature of invasion--"Tunisia gave us an invaluable pattern for the future. But the tasks will be increasingly difficult, usually with the great hazard of an over-water approach and a heavy battle to be maintained beyond the beaches. The way will be far from easy, the losses heavy but the victory certain."

> On the imminence of victory--"Sudden waves of optimism [lead] the public to feel that we have made our great effort and the end is in sight. This is far from the case. We are just getting well started. The great battles lie ahead. We have yet to be proven in the agony of enduring heavy casualties, as well as the reverses which are inevitable in war. What we need now is a stoic determination to overwhelm the enemy, cost what it may. . . .

"Two things we must guard against. There must be no divisions among the Allies. There must be no letup in our preparations."

The Russians would have applauded this frank and statesmanlike speech. Their new Red Army of 1943, born in the blood and death of millions, could ask only one thing more--that the preparations be completed and the blow fall while Russia is still strong, while the Russian soldier is still fit and ready.

Power on the Fronts. In 1943 the world tends to believe that Russian endurance is eternal, that Russian victory is inevitable. Among those who do not share this belief are the Russians.

By Moscow's account, the Russians, up to June 22, had lost 4,200,000 men (against 6,400,000 Axis casualties). Most foreign observers believe that the actual Russian losses have been at least twice the announced total. Certainly the losses of men and weapons have been huge--so huge that the Red Army of 1943 is literally a new army.

It is bigger, and it is probably stronger, than the Red Army of 1942. In artillery, always one of the Russians' chief standbys, its troops are better equipped than ever. Its armored forces, reorganized for the winter offensives of last year, are probably mightier today than they have ever been. Its air force is certainly stronger, and it probably holds front-wide superiority over the Luftwaffe. Its mobility is at the highest: never has the Red Army been so well equipped with trucks and motorized weapons. Its famous cavalry, favored originally because the Russians were short of trucks and tanks, is still effective and honored in its own right. The infantry force is undoubtedly the largest in the world (unofficial estimates run up to 20,000,000 men for the entire Red Army), and many of the infantry units are now among the best equipped in the world.

For this prodigious endurance and recovery, the Russians have two factors to thank. Mainly, they can thank themselves and a national effort singly devoted to manning, equipping and re-equipping their successive armies. To a lesser but great extent, they can also thank U.S. and British aid. Published figures by no means convey the full effect of the planes, tanks, other weapons and materials delivered to the Red Army. Many, and in some sectors most, of the bombers harrying airdromes, railway junctions and supply centers are U.S. bombers, with Russian crews.

On the front as a whole the Russians outnumber the Axis. According to a nonofficial estimate from London last week, the Red Army has some 265 divisions disposed along or immediately behind the front, with its heaviest forces massed south of Moscow against a still heavier concentration. The precise strengths and dispositions of those forces are unknown, but the map on p. 25 represents the best guesses available last week.

Each army has the same problem: to hold a 2,000-mile front with sufficient forces everywhere yet find the troops to concentrate for its own purposes and to counter enemy concentrations. On such a front the whereabouts of ever-shifting air and tank formations and the availability of concealed reserves may mean more than the relative bulk of the forces routinely assigned to a sector. If, as the Germans reported last week, the Russians are moving reinforcements into the sector between Orel and Kharkov for a summer blow, the kind and quality, rather than the size, of the forces may be decisive.

In this constant hide-&-seek the Russians with their larger numbers have an advantage which the Germans can offset only with superior air and armored forces. Lacking this superiority, the Germans recently indicated that they would attempt only a limited offensive, perhaps intended mainly to reduce the Red Army's tank strength, and thus improve the Axis' chances in a prolonged campaign.

Berlin propagandists suggested that even this modest design has withered. Now, they said, the Wehrmacht has adopted a solely defensive strategy in Russia, (which might include local, limited offensives, but no large-scale blow at the Red Army). They also indicated that the Allied menace in the south influenced this decision.

Said one of the Wehrmacht's favorite apologists, Lieut. General Kurt Diettmar: "We started this war with different conceptions from those we hold now. Many illusions were shattered. . . . We realize that such an adversary cannot be knocked out with one blow." Inasmuch as Adolf Hitler conceived the invasion of Russia, this remark constituted indirect criticism of the intuitive Fuehrer.

Power at the Top. Marshal Joseph Stalin and his colleagues in the Supreme Command probably noted these Axis signs with interest last week. But it was certain that he and the Chief of his General Staff, 46-year-old Marshal Alexander Mikhailovich Vasilevsky, did not take the signs to mean that the Red Army had already beaten the Germans. Joseph Stalin has seen too much of war: his country and his Red Army exist today only because they proved the power of defense on the long Russian line. If his young protege, Marshal Vasilevsky, had been blind enough to make that mistake, he could never have achieved the most rapid rise in the Red Army's recent history.

Since the middle of 1941, when he was still a major general--the lowest general rank in the Red Army--he has risen four grades. In army power, and in the esteem of Joseph Stalin, he has risen even faster. Now his responsibility is threefold: he is one of the six or seven members of Stalin's Supreme Command, which lays down overall strategy; as Chief of the General Staff he reduces the Supreme Command's strategy to specific plans; as Chief of Political Administration he directs the army commissars, who no longer share command, but still have an impor tant place in the Red Army.

Typically, he was all but unknown to most Russians when he suddenly appeared in the army limelight last year. Like most of his contemporaries, he had been a Czarist soldier but had fought for the Revolution. Some said that he was the son of wealthy Cossack horse breeders, others that his parents were Volga peasants, others that he came of Polish stock. The army knew that he had been principally a staff officer, a man of the schools rather than the field, that he helped to reorganize the Red Army after the Finnish War. Last week a Russian official in the U.S., queried about Vasilevsky, looked blank and said:

"Who? Vasilevsky? Ah, yes!"

Marshal Vasilevsky owed his rise to Joseph Stalin's decision last year to revitalize the army command. As in any other army, war had been unkind to many of his generals. Some were dismissed. Famed Marshal Semion-Timoshenko, hero of Smolensk, Rostov and the retreat to Stalingrad, simply disappeared for a while. Then he reappeared in a sector command.

In this process Stalin achieved a flexibility unmatched by any other army. To serve with him in the Supreme Command he chose Vasilevsky; aggressive Marshal Georgy Zhukov (TIME, Dec. 14), chief of the operational staff which executes Vasilevsky's plans; Marshal Alexander Novikov, who represents the Red Air Force; the army's leading artillerist, Marshal Nikolai Voronov; and veteran Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov. (According to some reports, ailing Boris Shaposhnikov, whom Vasilevsky succeeded as Chief of the General Staff, is also on the Supreme Command.) In the field Stalin placed such commanders as General Nikolai Vatutin and Colonel General Filip I. Golikov, who pressed the Germans back from the Donets last winter; General Kiryl Meretskov, who lifted the siege of Leningrad, and General Leonid Govorov, who commanded troops inside the city; General Ivan Konev, who was one of the defenders of Moscow; General Konstantin Rokossovsky, one of the commanders at Stalingrad. Along with these field commanders, a small host of juniors rose to the command of corps, armies and army groups.

In critical times the top staff officers do not remain at their desks. Last year Vasilevsky, Zhukov and Voronov went into the field to coordinate the counteroffensives which led to the victory at Stalingrad; then Vasilevsky rushed to the Voronezh front, led an army group into action there. In the north Marshal Zhukov first planned, then directed the counteroffensive which touched off the Red Army's entire winter campaign. When the time for major action comes again Stalin's luminaries will be on the fronts again, wielding complete authority as "representatives of the Supreme Command."

Power at the Source. The Germans would like nothing better than to make the world believe that their defensive strategy in Russia automatically means the defeat of the Wehrmacht in Russia.

Marshal Vasilevsky and his colleagues know that all the Red Army's victories to date have been defensive. They know that even the triumph at Stalingrad and the drive toward the Dnieper this spring were defensive in character and result. They know that behind them, on the heavily-manned Siberian front, there is always Japan.

They know that, for them, summer has been a time for bleeding, winter for victory--and that in their two winters of war they did not crush the Wehrmacht. For world consumption, and in the interest of an early second front, they specifically deny that the Red Army alone can do so. They know, above all, that the Red Army in the end can be no stronger than the country which produced and largely sustains that army.

The Wehrmacht is equally dependent upon its home base, and that base is certainly weakening. Thus, until one side or the other strikes for a decision, the war in Russia will be a race between two processes of attrition--one in bombed and distracted Germany, one behind the lines in Russia. At the moment the Germans evidently hope to win that race. It is a desperate hope. But it is their best hope.

From the U.S. or Britain it is hard to see how the Germans can win anything in Russia. Yet the Russians evidently do not welcome a war of attrition. In again calling for the second front, and for the maximum chance to strike soon and decisively on their first front, they plainly say as much.

Perhaps they are not sure that they can win the race. If so, their chief worry is probably over food. For all its brave bragging to the world, the U.S.S.R. has never recovered completely from the loss of the Ukraine's grainfields. Belated rains in central Russia last week improved the uncertain crop prospects, but at the best a severe food shortage will continue. Vast but often badly tilled new acreages plus Lend-Lease shipments have not filled the shortage or ended the drain on the U.S.S.R.'s dwindling grain reserves. The result is that only the Red Army, a few foreigners and higher officials are tolerably well-fed in Russia. The rest exist and labor at a level of bare subsistence.

Industrially the U.S.S.R. is at its peak of military production. But it is a production achieved by continuous and progressive strain upon underfed workers. So far Government and people have met the war's demands by rigorous decrees, harsh penalties for failure (Russian railway workers, under martial law since April, may be arrested for any negligence) and fierce resolve.

Germany is betting that the Russians cannot keep it up.

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