Second Wind, Third Week

(See Cover)

Wilhelm Keitel was not an easy man last week. Uneasy friend of Adolf Hitler, uneasy advocate of the great Russian adventure, the Chief of the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces had plenty of worries.

His Armies had had successes which, according to the fustian of the Fuehrer, "baffled the imagination." Yet this crucial Blitz was not quite on schedule; the Russians were not easy to demoralize and not cheap to beat. And every conqueror since the Tartars had broken his teeth on the Russian bite (see p. 20). He, his Fuehrer and his soldiers might still break their military teeth beyond repair. Or they might taste the sweetest glory yet.

Advance Too Easy? After the first week of fighting, Wilhelm Keitel was almost positive his men had already whipped the Russians. Now, as the third week began, there was no question of it, but he was not quite so sure that the whipping would stick.

The main drive (see map) bogged a bit. Beyond dreary Minsk with its old Polish manor houses made over into collective-farm headquarters, beyond the White Russian villages with their bumptious names (They've Caught Fire, It Didn't Rain, Big Blockhead, etc.), the going got tougher. The initial Nazi torrent, catching the Russians with their rubbers off, had swept ahead breathtakingly. But in the second week it began to look as if that early ease had been misleading. The Germans came up against a tough natural line at the Berezina River where Napoleon caught hell on his return trip, against the so-called Stalin Line at the Dniester River and near Zhitomir, and against ferocity and tenacity everywhere.

In the north it was the same. The Finns were not fighting their summer war as crisply as they had their winter war. They sighed when they heard that around Hanko, which the Russians leased after the winter war, the Reds' phosphorous shells were burning out the pine woods where the Finns had loved to play on vacations. They shrugged when they heard that British funds given generously during the winter war were being used to help the Nazis; that an orphanage built by British gifts now billeted Nazi soldiers.

In the south it was the same. The tardy Hungarians, though handsome and horsewise, were mechanically thin; and went slowly in Galicia. The Rumanians, though bewitched with the prospect of stealing something from Russia, were bothered by lack of real German support, were bewildered by Red parachutists in the Ploesti oil fields and in the border town of Jassy. Soviet fifth columnists in Jassy joined parachutists in giving the Rumanians two days of terror, which Iron Guardists finally answered with terror--by executing "500 Jewish Communists."

Figures Too High? Field Marshal Keitel must have been a little uneasy about the way things were getting out of hand mathematically. The campaign was at best less than half over and his communiques had already claimed nearly twice as many planes as the High Command had estimated the Russians to have. It claimed over 7,000; had estimated about 4,000. And yet, day by day, the Russian Air Force continued to operate and the Luftwaffe to shoot it down. At week's end the High Command communique announced: "The Soviet Air Force lost 281 planes yesterday, compared to our eleven losses."

On casualties there was a similar casualness. The Germans announced one day that they had deprived the Russians of 600,000 men. The Russians, not. to be outdone, next day said the Germans had lost 700,000. The Germans promptly upped their figure to 800,000, raised it again two days later to 900.000.

The arithmetics of distance and time were not cheering either. After two weeks in Poland, the Germans had crossed the Vistula and were within seven days of victory. After two weeks in the Lowlands, they had reached the sea, were about to shove the British into it at Dunkirk. After two weeks in the Balkans they had taken Belgrade and put the British to rout. But after traveling 250 miles in the first Russian week and 100 in the second, the Germans had not done much more than push the Russians behind their old borders. After two bitter weeks they had cleared only a little beyond the areas which they themselves had, since 1939, handed to Russia on a silver platter.

That was satisfactory progress--even Panzer divisions cannot cover more than a few hundred miles in a fortnight--but the battle of Russia was on such a vast scale that it still had not been won. It was simply going as well as could be expected.

Line Too Long? The much-talked-of Stalin Line doubtless gave Marshal Keitel a little malaise--but doubtless not much.

Stalin means steel, but Stalin Line does not mean steel wall. The Stalin Line is an intermittent series of fortifications in depth, a ribbon of redoubts averaging 25 miles across, and too long--1,100 miles--to be solid. It was mostly built in the Maginot era of military thought, and its early links were finished in 1933. But lessons learned on other lines have been hastily applied. Still the Stalin Line has blank spots, and places where lakes and marshes are trusted too much. The Germans seemed to think the Stalin Line could be turned nearly as easily as the Party Line.

RussiansToo Conspiratorial? "We must wage a ruthless fight," said Joseph Stalin in his stimulant speech last week (see p. 22). "against all disorganizers of the rear, deserters, panic-mongers, rumormongers; exterminate spies, diversionists, enemy parachutists; render rapid aid in all this to our destroyer battalions. . . .

"In case of a forced retreat of Red Army units, all rolling stock must be evacuated; to the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain nor a gallon of fuel. . . .

"Guerrilla units, mounted and foot, must be formed, diversionist groups must be organized to combat enemy troops, to foment guerrilla warfare everywhere, to blow up bridges and roads, damage telephone and telegraph lines and to set fire to forests, stores and transports.

"In occupied regions, conditions must be made unbearable for the enemy."

All this might well have worried Wilhelm Keitel. Before Joseph Stalin's words were out of his mouth the commands were being carried out, for underground work is the one job at which the Bolsheviks are world champions.

Stores of fodder blazed up in unspontaneous combustion. German supply trains met strange accidents. German columns fell into ambush. Temporary German bridges collapsed. Serious fighting broke out in many places hundreds of miles to the German rear.

The pro-German Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet reported that in the Baltic States sniping by hidden marksmen had forced the Germans to furnish escort posses for military messengers and tanks to guard communications. "The partisans let the tanks pass and open fire on the trucks, kill the drivers and set fire to the fuel. ... In a frenzy the tank commanders open fire on forest and thicket."

Russians amazed the Nazis with their fanatical courage. German reporters described the reckless, dinosaur-like charge of a Russian tank during Minsk street-fighting. German anti-tank guns made a sieve of the turret, but still the brown monster came, firing in all directions. In the end the tank burned, and inside it the Russian crew.

A pilot named Captain Gastelo, whose plane was set afire by German ack-ack, was said to have dived it into a cluster of German fuel tank cars, blowing them, his plane, himself skyhigh.

In total answer to total war, Russian women and children took part in the fighting. A German correspondent told of seeing the body of a pretty girl of about 17, in lieutenant's blue, lying in a truck still clutching an automatic rifle. Other Amazons, well armed, but sometimes poorly dressed and shod in cloth, were very much alive. Boys and girls between eight and 16 years old, members of Yunie Pionery ("Young Pioneers"), Russian counterparts of Boy and Girl Scouts, were organized as paratroop detectors.

Even the Russian mosquitoes from the endless Pripet Marshes conspired in guerrilla activity.

All this was extremely bothersome. It meant that the German military team had to improvise more than ever, here substituting artillery pounding for Stuka pounding, there firing anti-aircraft guns terrestrially instead of empyreally, now beating underbrush like hunters, now holing up like game. The guerrillas snarled, besides communications, the grammar of Nazi propaganda reporters. One purple account: "Here stands an enemy who is not intelligent, but instead one who toughly builds a collective of destruction from insensibility. . . . They have what the modern person lacks, animal-like zeal for attaining their goal. . . . They fight in groups without unified tactical leadership, but nevertheless somnambulistic skill."

General Keitel is not generally thought to be the best German general. His own colleagues have referred to him as Buero-general (Desk general) and Witzblatt-general (Funny-paper general). They recall that Captain Keitel was one of very few officers to go through all four years of World War I without a single promotion or citation for distinguished service. Between wars he was a bureaucratic nobody--until suddenly, in 1938, he was shaken right to the top in Adolf Hitler's shake-up of the War Ministry. But he is now the most important German general, for he is the liaison between Adolf Hitler and the Army.

When Adolf Hitler goes to Berchtesgaden or Brenner Pass or Hendaye or Paris to tell his puppets what next, Keitel tags along. When Adolf Hitler signs an important document, such as the French Armistice at Compiegne, Keitel is at his elbow. When Adolf Hitler is in the mood to listen, Keitel whispers into his ear all the wild schemes of military extremists. So today, when the German Army has succeeded the Nazi Party as the controlling force in Germany, he occupies a key position. And if by any chance the Army should bungle the Russian campaign, General Keitel will get the credit of putting Hitler on the spot.

Six feet tall, 58, a dandified, greying blond, Wilhelm Keitel has never been able to crash the Prussian military caste; the iron men have thought of him as political putty. But he is shrewder than they think, and they often find themselves fighting campaigns he urged against their wills. He has a reputation for brutality at home and at work. He forced his son Johann Georg to leave school and go into the Army.

Like many German soldiers, he fancies himself as a potential colonial expert, especially as regards Africa. He considers Dakar vital to German conquest, and it was he who planned the fast-stretching highway from Tangier to Dakar. On a visit to Egypt shortly before the war, some Egyptian guards refused to allow him to inspect archeological finds near certain forts. He turned to the British officer with him and said: "If you don't know how to treat these slaves, others will soon show you how."

He affects the Hitler manner. Like his boss, he transfixes visitors with a steely glare, ignores questions he prefers to leave unanswered, goes for long walks, bathes in Beethoven and Wagner. One day during the Polish campaign, Keitel and Hitler celebrated some good news by retiring to Keitel's quarters on the staff railway car and playing triumphant phonograph records.

Wilhelm Keitel was probably more nervous about the Russian invasion than any other general, because he has special responsibility for it. He has long been the most anxious of all to pull it off. As long ago as December 1939, at a crucial conference of generals at the Chancellery, he was the only one who maintained that a two-front war was inevitable, that the Fuehrer should immediately attack Russia. On May 1 and June 11 this year he submitted to Hitler two memorandums on Russian preparedness, and urged attack before the Russians were ready.

But though the invasion's second week, in which his Armies caught their second wind, looked far less brilliant than the first week, Wilhelm Keitel probably did not have as much as he thought to be nervous about. To the Desk General, things could not possibly look as encouraging as they did to the Front Generals.

As the Front Generals began methodically storming, one by one, the bunkers, casemates, blinds and nests of the Stalin Line this week, Wilhelm Keitel had his fingers crossed. The fate of the Desk General's pet scheme would determine the Desk General's future--to say nothing of the world's.

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