Summer Opening

In Moscow, bursting rockets told of the reopening of the Russian Front. Over the radio the familiar voice of Announcer Yuri Levitan read Stalin's order on the breach of Finland's Mannerheim Line. The day was D plus five of the invasion of western Europe.

Two days earlier batteries of 8-inch guns, massed thickly on the narrow Karelian corridor into Finland, had opened fire. From the Gulf of Finland came the roar of supporting guns of the Red Baltic Fleet. The Red air force plowed the enemy defenses. At the end of three hours, Soviet infantry and tanks plunged forward into the gaps.

By second nightfall, the breach was 25 miles wide and 15 to 25 miles deep. The gulf fortress of Viipuri now lay only 40 miles away.

Surprise. General Leonid Govorov's blow last week caught the Finns and their German allies by surprise. In next-door Sweden, observers predicted Finland's collapse within three months, voiced doubt that Nazi General Eduard Dietl would rush his nine divisions from the north to help the hard-pressed Finns.

This week the Russians made sure of Dietl's preoccupation by probing his defenses far above the Arctic Circle. Thirty miles from the Red lines lay the border of Norway and beyond, the rich nickel mines that are an essential part of the German war economy. Dietl had better hold fast at Norway's back door. The Finnish troops on the Karelian Isthmus were likely to have to shift for themselves.

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