No Blitz Oblige

"The Blitzkrieg is a washout." So boasted Foreign Vice Commissar Solomon A. Lozovsky, Russia's rambunctious spokesman.

In one respect he was certainly right: for a whole week the German Krieg had been without Blitz, a lightning war with the lightning extracted. Nearly three weeks had passed since the Germans announced they had broken the Stalin Line "at all vital points." and vaunted that Kiev was "on the point of falling." It had been two weeks since they announced that the Russians were throwing "their last reserves" into battle. It had been one week since they had spoken complacently of "the battle of annihilation" before Moscow.

Last week the tune changed. The battle in front of Moscow, said the Germans with a hint of apology, was "the biggest battle of materiel in the history of the world." German propaganda reporters complained that the enemy, even when surrounded, fought with "stupid Asiatic courage." The German radio went so far in uncertainty as to say: "The decision in this field battle may not be expected for the next few days."

The "annihilated" Soviet Air Force appeared still to have a few wings. The "completely disorganized" Russian Army was able to organize counter-attacks which even the Germans called severe. The "numerous pockets" of Russians, supposedly sewed up tight, still ripped and burst.

Echoes of the Business. The 19 towers of the Kremlin, the vast emptiness of the Red Square, the workers' homes in the Krasnaya Presnya section of Moscow all resounded last week to a sound they had never before echoed: the shriek and crump of bombs. They had echoed the sirens before; they had echoed the loudspeakers roaring: "Bystree, bystree, tovarishchi--Quicker, quicker, comrades." But those had been mere drills. Last week Moscow got the real business.

For five and six hours a night the populace went down into Moscow's pride, the sparkling subway. Women and children slept on the platforms, men on the tracks. Above in the streets A.R.P. and fire-fighting volunteers worked enthusiastically but a little wildly--at least by London standards. All around town, crews worked searchlights and ack-ack batteries furiously but also a little wildly--at least by German accounts.

The raids on Moscow were in a sense a Russian triumph, for they were a confession of German frustration. They served little military purpose; they were an attack on civil morale.

Cause of the Pause. The first pause in the Battle of Russia was followed by a second German offensive. The second pause, though it seemed to be a fizzling of the second offensive, would probably lead to a third offensive. Certainly one of the contributing reasons for this pause was that the Germans were bringing fresh troops into action. According to reports, some 50 new divisions moved up to replace shock troops worn out by five weeks of fighting.

Moving them up was no easy job Cloudbursts of both rain and bombs had played havoc with the 400 miles of communications the Germans had now strung out behind them and 2,000 miles from flank to flank. Mechanized equipment was getting just as tired as human equipment; it also had to be replaced.

But the Russians also, by their own account, were throwing fresh men and machines into the fight. The battles of Minsk and Smolensk had given the huge Soviet mass time to mobilize. The Russians began to talk of new and better materiel which they were now using.

The obvious fact was that the German Panzer divisions, although they had sliced through the Russian lines in a dozen places, had divided but not crushed the Russian Army before Moscow. They bit off hunks, but the vast Russian hunks were too large to swallow without chewing. The chewing job had to be done by the German infantry that followed the Panzers.

For the first time in World War II the German infantry had to fight a major battle, a battle more like the great battles of World War I. That meant that the German losses were probably considerable --if not so vast as the Russians and British optimistically estimated.

Meantime it was hard to tell whether the German Panzer divisions that had pierced the Russian lines had cut off Russian Armies or been cut off by them. It was a strange battle, fought not with the opposing armies lined up facing each other like two football teams, but with sizable units of both armies mixing it up in all directions like players on a basketball court.

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