Ring Around Leningrad

A new crisis for Leningrad was pointed to by Moscow's announcement last week that a Nazi battleship* and a 9,000-ton transport had been sunk by the Red Banner Baltic Fleet. Perhaps all-out R.A.F. attacks on Luebeck and Rostock, German Baltic supply bases, indicated the same thing.

Besieged since Aug. 8, Leningrad is still ringed some 30 miles away by Nazi guns. Capture of Leningrad would 1) isolate the Kronstadt naval base, opening the Baltic as a German supply line to the northern front; 2) clear direct communications to Finland; 3) penetrate the Russian right flank, making the menace to Moscow even graver than last year's; 4) prepare for supplying and manning a major offensive to cut Russia's vital, northern supply line via Murmansk.

Izvestia, Soviet Government paper, made an important disclosure of one reason why last year's assault on Leningrad failed. Only 21 German divisions were used along a 200-mile front. If supply roads have been improved sufficiently this winter, Hitler might try to throw in enough more men and machines to crack Leningrad defenses despite its strong garrison and hard-fighting citizen army.

* Germany is known to have three battleships, possibly a fourth, and two pocket battleships in commission. This week London announced whereabouts of four Nazi capital ships: at Trondheim, Norway, the 35,000-ton Tirpitz and pocket battleship Admiral Scheer; at Kiel the Scharnhorst, at Gdynia the Gneisenau, both out of action for repairs. Unaccounted for by the British is the 10,000-ton Lutzow, possibly Russia's Baltic victim. Or the Russians hit and misidentified one of the ex-battleships, now training ships Schleswig-Holstein and Schlesien.

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