Cast-up at Thaw Time

Overnight the temperature bounced up 40DEG, flowers bloomed in Kiev and Moscow, everyone came down with a cold. Thaw time had come: the great Red winter campaign was near its calendar end.

The winter had been marked by many a great victory. But the Army's primary objective, Moscow's Red Star noted, was not simply to roll the enemy back but to destroy him. In that, the campaign of the short winter had failed.

In Moscow, as elsewhere, military men totaled up the gains of the three-month offensive and found them fat, nevertheless. In three months the Russians had:

P: Regained rich grain lands; coal, iron, nickel and manganese; millions of working hands for the ever-hungry manpower pool;

P: Killed, wounded or captured hundreds of thousands of Germans, taken vast booty;

P: Captured a dozen major cities, lifted the siege of Leningrad (last week freight began to shuttle between Moscow and Leningrad over a direct railway);

P: Freed the Dnieper, save for a tiny German foothold at Kherson.

This week Red troops battled on the doorsteps of Estonia, Latvia and Poland, pointed a new drive toward the Rumanian frontier. Ahead a hopeful man could see the day when the last Hun soldier would be driven from Russia's soil. But complete destruction of the German Army was still more of a hope than a thing in prospect.

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