Traitors & Patriots

A garrulous, gravel-cheeked woman of enormous appetites had a hand in Russia's afflictions. If Catherine the Great (1729-96) had not urged Germans to colonize her Tartar-ravaged Volga lands, there might have been no islands of Germanic peoples pocking the lower Volga-Don region, hard behind the present battle line.

In that region the Russians last week announced a huge roundup of fifth columnists abetted by Nazi parachutists. In one Don sector alone 45 fifth columnists were summarily shot. Russian accounts did not identify them as part of the Germanic minority, but German-Russians. who have preserved their language and national customs, undoubtedly would be the best Nazi bet for stirring up trouble. More than 400,000 lived in the region which until last autumn was the German Volga Autonomous Republic, just north of Stalingrad. Many of them had been removed (TIME, Sept. 15) to prevent behind-the-lines treachery.

Contrasting with such hints of internal trouble was this picture of a united fighting & working people drawn by an Izvestia correspondent who visited embattled, determined, heroic, industrial Stalingrad:

"Stalingrad was never a holiday city. We always knew how noisily this industrial heart of the Volga pounded. Now, in wartime, the city has many concerns. Every man does the work of three. Almost every enterprise works for the front and. in fact, is on the front.

"Blacksmith Medunov works in one of Stalingrad's factories. Through letters he became acquainted with Surkov, a sniper on the south front. Between them sprang up a peculiar war friendship. Now the blacksmith is clipping stories about snipers from newspapers, and Sniper Surkov writes the blacksmith letters. Surkov has already exterminated 230 Fascists. Medunov has twice increased his normal output.

"Thus are working tens of thousands of people making munitions, ships and food products, and caring for the wounded. The river plays a vital part in industrial life. At Volga piers land oil tankers and other ships loaded with iron and foods. The noise of machines and the song of Volga dockers do not stop from dawn to dusk. Here we can see how the huge wheel of war whirls unceasingly. . . .

"We are standing beside a house bearing a memorial plaque. There, in 1918 in the days of Tsaritsyn's defense, worked Comrade Stalin. Tsaritsyn [now called Stalingrad] was in danger. Stalin rescued it. From here the Red Army made a decisive stroke at the enemy.

"Stalingrad nights are very alarming. Simultaneously along a 30-kilometer shore air-raid hooters sound. Then the searchlights begin rotating, and with a loud chorus the roar of anti-aircraft guns starts. After 60 or 90 minutes the all-clear is sounded. The Fascist airplanes can not break through the circle of fire thrown up. Stalingrad lives and works on."

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