One Year Old

Each day brought nearer the anniversary--June 22--of Hitler's march into Russia. It is not a date which Hitler can easily let pass without some major blow, somewhere. No such blow came last week. From the Leningrad front to the Sea of Azov, the leashed armies sniped at each other with local air and land forays. For all save the dead and the wounded, these forays may have been merely the interim routine of war. Or they may have been the preludes to decisive battle.

If they were preludes, most of the signs appeared on the way to Moscow. Near Kalinin, northwest of the capital, the Germans claimed 1,500 Russian dead, 2,000 prisoners. "Frontline corrections," the Nazi communiques called these engagements, suggesting preparations for something bigger. The Russians, confirming action in this area but suggesting nothing, said they killed 5,730 Germans. To the south, where the Russians had failed to take Kharkov, Marshal Semion Timoshenko's forces tightened their hold on positions very near the city. But holding on was all they attempted last week. In the Baltic, at Leningrad's rear, Russian dive-bombers spotted Nazi troop convoys on the move. The Russians said that they sank nine German transports.

A Moscow claim gave a clue to the Luftwaffe's whereabouts, its plans. The Russians said that during May they destroyed 1,366 Nazi planes, including 432 in May's final week, when the battles near Kharkov were ending. (In the last nine days of May, the Germans said, they destroyed 610 Russian planes, lost 53.) By the Russian account, the Nazis had scattered the bulk of the Luftwaffe across the face of Russia, on airdromes just behind the forward lines. Thus they exposed themselves to continuous Russian harassment. But they could give their troops in each sector some air support during the engagements of winter and spring, then mass in any chosen sector for a concentrated assault.

Where that sector was to be, spring did not tell. Summer will.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.