New Front

The military and political structure of the Axis, battered by the greatest and most diversified offensive in history, groaned and creaked. The whole world could hear. The Axis' final collapse might still be remote, but there was no concealing the signs of disintegration.

P: The rust of revolt was corroding the mighty German war machine; Army officers had tried to kill Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi regime (see FOREIGN NEWS). The attempt itself marked a fateful trend within the Reich; even more significant were the admissions by Hitler and his new chief of staff, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, that the proud German officer corps was disaffected, that officers on active service were involved in the plot.

P: Half the earth away, in the other Axis citadel of Japan, the strain of defeat and disappointment broke wide open in the fall of Premier Hideki Tojo's war Cabinet (see FOREIGN NEWS).

Allied leaders cautiously refrained from predicting any immediate military effects. The Japanese shake-up looked like a private shuffle, engineered by the very few insiders who really knew how badly the war was going.

But in Germany the days were darker now than the well-remembered black days of July, 1918. The Nazi leaders, in a hysteria of fury and fear, had been compelled to fight on a new front, within the fatherland. In & out of Germany the rumors flew: two divisions had mutinied in East Prussia; naval forces were in a state of mutiny; old Junker generals were being purged; 5,500 Army officers, including 34 generals, were arrested or executed.

Torn Fabric. Rumors aside, the admitted facts added up to an Army crisis of the utmost gravity. If even a small percentage of officers had been affected, then German fighting power was far more seriously weakened than if all those officers had been lost in a single day of combat in the field. Germany's is a close-textured Army; a few threads plucked from it could destroy the fabric, especially when it is stretched taut over three fronts.

As professional soldiers the Wehrmacht officers had been as ready to take orders from Adolf Hitler's Government as from any other. But they did demand that the orders make military, if not political, sense. The suppressed bitterness of many a disgruntled German soldier was summed up last week by 51-year-old Bavarian Lieut. General Edmund Hofmeister, sometime commander of the 41st Tank Corps. Captured by the Russians last fortnight, Hofmeister spoke out.

"Gross Errors." "The catastrophe in White Russia was the result not only of the superiority of the Russian forces but of gross errors of German strategy. Seven or eight days before the beginning of the Russian offensive the commander of the Group of Armies, Field Marshal Ernst Busch, arrived at my headquarters and heard my report regarding the disadvantage of my overextended position and my request for permission to withdraw in order to shorten the line.

"Field Marshal Busch told me that Hitler had forbidden any retreat and ordered that every foot of ground be defended. Although in my opinion this order was erroneous, I was compelled to obey.

"I must also state that the defeat in White Russia is not the only example of Hitler's ineptitude as a commander. When Field Marshals von Leeb, List, von Rundstedt, von Bock and von Brauchitsch, Colonel General Haider and many others attempted to point out these mistakes Hitler dismissed them from their posts. . . . The newer generals, however, such as Rommel, Dietl, Schorner, Keitel and others who had not gone through a long military schooling failed to perceive these mistakes.

"Naturally all this evokes discontent among the experienced generals and fans mistrust in Hitler's leadership. But generals who resent such a situation are compelled to be silent, as Field Marshal Keitel declared that all criticism of the German leadership would be punished by death."

In Germany last week the penalty for criticism of the Leader was still death. But Adolf Hitler had indeed been "criticized"; the echoes of the blast were reverberating through the ranks of the German Army.

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