Counterattack

Cherkassy lay on the middle Dnieper's right bank, and the approaches to it were swept by German gunfire. To the northwest spread dense, dark forests, infested by guerrillas.

One day last week the guerrillas cleared patches on the damp forest floor. Then a fleet of Russian transports came overhead, and spewed men and weapons down on the clearings. The men re-formed into columns, and together with the guerrillas struck toward Cherkassy.

Hastily, the German Command threw tanks into a counterattack. The Russians were dislodged from a village they had already occupied, and driven back into the forest. But what they were meant to do, they had done; while the German attention was diverted, Russian infantrymen crossed the Dnieper, seized a bridgehead between the areas where the Red Army broke across the river in the last month. On to this foothold poured reinforcements of airborne and parachute troops.

What Price Audacity? The Cherkassy bridgehead was one of the Ukrainian chessboard squares on which the two armies played their complex game of blood and wits. It was a game of thrusts, traps, flanking attacks. It was a game in which the player with more patience and stamina, greater reserves, better supply lines stood the better chance to win.

In this desperate game audacity paid fat returns--or ended in disaster. It was audacity which led General Nikolai Vatutin, one of Russia's ablest exponents of blitz warfare, to strike west of Kiev with tanks and horsemen, without adequate infantry or cannon. The muddy roads delayed supplies and reinforcements, but the opportunity to deal the Wehrmacht a finishing blow was too tempting to forgo. Zhitomir fell (TIME, Nov. 22). The cavalry corps which took it seemed poised for a raid into prewar Poland.

But this time audacity's returns were poor. Vatutin had overextended himself, as he did in another crucial offensive west from Kharkov last spring. Without artillery support, the cavalry could not withstand strong German counterattacks. Last week it abandoned Zhitomir, in the first major reverse in the Red Army's great, 18-week offensive. The retreat was has tened by fierce German blows at the Russian flank east of Zhitomir (see map).

In this sector, the Russian withdrawal might well continue. Momentarily, the cards of war are stacked against the Red Army:

> Heavy rains have mired all roads, have slowed down the flow of fuel, ammunition, food and reinforcements to the Russians.

> The wide belt between the Red Army and its base warehouses has been laid waste by the Germans. This means that, apart from supplying its fighting men, the Government must feed, clothe and house millions of civilians.

> All men, weapons and supplies headed toward the Kiev bulge are funneled through three temporary Dnieper bridges. The strain on them will not be lightened until the Dnieper freezes over in another three or four weeks.

Nazi Advantages. What ails the Red Army does not ail the Wehrmacht. Having survived the big retreat, it has now acquired certain important advantages. Its supply lines from home bases have shrunk by hundreds of miles. Its railroads are in working order, whereas the Russians are still rebuilding theirs. The Red Army's bold tactics have of necessity exposed a number of vulnerable points--Zhitomir, Fastov, Krivoi Rog--which the Germans were quick to attack. Though most of these thrusts have been repulsed, they did halt the tide of the Red offensive. Finally, the Wehrmacht apparently has reserves which it has now thrown into the battle (at Zhitomir, the German force was estimated at 100,000 men).

Local or General? This week, the Eastern Front no longer surged westward. Instead, it had become a fluid line, moving east at some points, moving west at many, static at most. Though handicapped, the Red units in the western Ukraine still presented a force seemingly too formidable to be swept into the Dnieper by the battered Wehrmacht. The Germans, despite their sudden show of strength, stood on a line which was easily pierced. In all likelihood the Nazi counterattacks were not a general, coordinated offensive, but were local attacks, intended merely to halt the Russians until the German defenses in the rear are ready.

While thrusts and counterthrusts continued in the Ukraine, the weight of the Russian attack shifted northward. There, on the fringe of the Pripet Marshes, General Konstantin Rokossovsky celebrated the first anniversary of his historic Stalingrad noose by stringing a similar noose around German-held Gomel. And from the areas farther north came new rumblings: perhaps the next big Red offensive will roll there.

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