Again the Offensive

The Germans did their best along the western front. Everything considered, their best was good--and the weather helped them out by being thoroughly bad. The Germans struck smartly, swiftly, skillfully, sometimes recklessly to buy a little more time, stalemate the front until winter comes.

For two weeks the Germans had achieved stalemate--of a kind. Pressed back by the contracting geometry of strategy to a greatly narrowed area of action (see map), they could and did mass some of the largest concentrations of guns yet seen in the west. Behind their West Wall they had also recovered some measure of freedom to maneuver their forces (but those forces were still a hodgepodge of first-raters and recapped seconds).

If Only--. The Germans knew of the great weight of Allied power gathering in front of them, all along the 460-mile front. But they could not know its full weight as it grew by the hour, despite the best the Germans could do, despite the worst of weather and supply troubles. The Germans sought to throw the weight out of balance. If only they could prevent the gathering of force at the most dangerous spots. If only they could pierce through the wedge north of Aachen that threatened their most vulnerable point--where a narrow thrust had been driven toward the end of the West Wall above Nijmegen.

The Germans tried to hold back the weight of Lieut. General Courtney Hicks Hodges' U.S. First Army in the Aachen sector. They threw in flame-spouting tanks in three fierce attacks. But the Americans stood.

The Germans tried to stall the widening northward advance of the British Second Army. The British held.

This week the pent-up bolt of Allied power struck. A thunderous preparation by 1,000 bombing planes shook the earth for miles around a new sector northeast of Aachen. Behind the bombardment -- and a rolling barrage by 10-inch guns -- the battle-seasoned U.S. First hurdled a small river, moved forward toward Cologne. The Germans backed stubbornly, foot by foot, before them.

Only the First. The first blow of the gathering Allied offensive was struck. The enemy might absorb it, stop it. But the fortnight of stalemate had clearly demonstrated this fact: the air-powerless Germans could do little to forestall similar blows wherever, whenever the Allies might choose to unleash them.

The enemy knew that more blows like it were soon to be unleashed. They warned themselves of "grand-scale attacks" on Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr.'s front. There the enemy had been given a foretaste: the hillside forts above Metz have been given preliminary dive bombings; 300 U.S. planes had given heavy tactical support. In the Nancy sector Patton's Third Army in four days had added more than 130 tanks (the equipment of a Panzer division) to its bag of 200 the week before.

The Germans trumpeted their anxiety over a sudden thrust in the Belfort Gap front by Lieut. General Alexander M. Patch's Americans and French. There the action was wilderness fighting, at times from tree to tree, and the chilled Americans* (who got their issue of overcoats last week) probed through for weak spots, finally found one. By this week they stood only nine miles from Belfort city, controlled roads the Germans had mightily contested. But the going ahead would be hard--the Germans had mined the way from there to Strasbourg.

In the coastal north the Canadians ended the long siege of Calais. Now the Canadians were free to hit in greater strength and from better positions for a greater port prize: the enemy-lined Scheldt estuary needed to open Antwerp for supplies to the north.

The storm was rolling up to full fury.

* The Seventh Army's medical men noted harbingers of winter warfare: trench feet, exhaustion, respiratory ailments. They could also note that Germans are not immune.

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