The Ice-Cold Hand

By last week the Russians' multiple winter drives, begun last November as a series of local counteroffensives, had developed into one of the great offensives of history.* From Leningrad to the Black Sea, along a 1,500-mile front (see map), the Red Army was staging one operation with one purpose: to break the German hold upon Russia at every point where the Wehrmacht had anchored its lines, then to smash into and destroy the rear systems of communication and supply, without which the Germans cannot recover in the spring.

The Red Army, having broken the German siege line at Leningrad (see p. 33), had then to defeat the formidable forces still intact near the city. Below Moscow the preliminary disintegration of Germany's southern positions and communications proceeded: the Russians retook the important railway center of Kamensk, Voronezh and pressed on Voroshilovgrad, advanced from north and south toward the German's pinion position at Rostov. The fall of Salsk and Armavir gave the Red Army a tighter hold upon the railways of the Caucasus, increased the prospect that the retiring Axis forces there can only retreat across the Black Sea into the Crimea. Ever nearer was a Russian thrust into the Germans' Kharkov line.

Open Your Eyes. The German people were finally told that catastrophe confronted their armies in Russia. Berlin's home propagandists prepared their audiences for the greatest shocks of the war--and for a major change in German strategy. Said the official German news agency: "The German High Command plans to shorten the whole of the Russian front and to build up a new main defense line." Broadcasters and communiques admitted that the Germans were retiring from the Caucasus, that for the remnants of the once-great army at Stalingrad "there was nothing left but death."

An official German correspondent broadcast from the Don front: "When I first saw the endless Soviet columns, preceded by the heaviest tanks, an ice-cold hand seemed to grasp my heart. 'Almighty God, give us the strength to withstand this flood,' I prayed." The Nazis' official party journal, Voelkischer Beobachter, informed its readers that "the last and highest decisions were at stake."

An Axis broadcaster said on the Paris radio: "Germany will never capitulate. Even if her army is defeated in the east and has to retreat to the west she will continue to fight. The German army will fight in the marshes of Poland, on the plains of Germany and, if necessary, on the hills of France."

Rome's radio spokesman moaned to the Italians: "The wording of the German bulletins must cause great anxiety, even among the Italian people. ... In two months we have not been able to see any pause in the Russian assaults, nor any sign that they are getting tired. The whole world is holding its breath. It is undeniable that the Russians have achieved important successes, and that the forces of the west are determined to beat us."

Bury the Dead. Last week, after a visit with other correspondents to the Stalingrad area, the New York Herald Tribune's Walter Kerr gave the outer world its clearest view yet of what hit the Germans.

Below Stalingrad Kerr found 44-year-old, stocky Lieut. General Rodion Yakovlievich Malinovsky, a onetime Czarist soldier who fought beside a U.S. division in France during World War I. Kerr asked General Malinovsky to explain the Red Army's power.

General Malinovsky's chief explanation was militarily direct: the Red Army was stronger than it had ever been before. He also said that as late as last summer Russian infantry had not learned to cope with Axis tanks, but now knew how to defeat them. Other reasons: the "bewilderment" of the Germans when the Russians attacked in several places at once; the recent reorganization of the Red Army (TIME, Jan. 11).

General Malinovsky took no stock in reports outside Russia that the Germans had invited disaster by withdrawing as many as 40 divisions to defend the Mediterranean. On the contrary, he said, new German tank and infantry divisions had recently appeared in Russia. From others Correspondent Kerr learned that, although the Germans had 26 armored divisions in Russia last November, 14 had been destroyed, encircled or so badly cut up that they were no longer effective. The rest were no match for the Red Army's strengthened and reorganized tank forces, nor for its artillery and infantry.

The Luftwaffe was also overtaxed early in the campaign. At first as many as 500 transport planes flew in every day with supplies for the besieged forces at Stalingrad. Later the daily flights averaged 150, losses were constant and the Russians captured several airdromes at both ends of the German supply line, forcing the Germans to fly farther.

On the Kalmuck steppes, below Stalingrad, the correspondents saw hundreds of ruined German tanks, munitions dumps captured intact, many abandoned guns. At Kotelnikov, where the Germans had failed in their chief attempt to break through and save their Stalingrad army, Correspondent Kerr traced the history of Axis disaster. In a park which the Germans had made a cemetery when Kotelnikov was securely theirs, the German graves lay between neat rows of bricks, and wooden crosses, bore the name, birth date and rank of each soldier. Then there were shallow graves, marked rudely and in haste. On the battlefields outside the town, the German bodies rotted where they had fallen.

* The Soviet Supreme Command this week claimed that 102 Axis divisions had been "routed," more than 200,000 prisoners and 13,000 guns had been captured.

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