On to Kiev

From the Sea of Azov northward, crackling flames licked the tortured face of Russia. In anger and frustration the retreating Wehrmacht was setting to the torch the villages and towns it could no longer hold. And as the fiery line moved to the west, it traced, as nothing else could, the path of the Nazi flight.

For this angry gesture the Germans found time. They also found time to sow mines with a generous hand. Cautious Red sappers, one Soviet Union officer reported, gingerly disconnected booby traps from chimney pots, sacks of potatoes, haystacks, fresh loaves of bread--even from crying infants. But the mines did not delay the Red Army long, and the Germans had to abandon many of their supply dumps. Food and ammunition by the trainload fell into Russian hands. On a single airfield in the south the Reds captured 19 undamaged planes. Near Bryansk, they seized land mines stacked in Teutonically neat mounds.

News of rapid progress sent Moscow into an orgy of optimism. Cannon boomed without cease, to herald victories. The Russians poured into the streets, shouted in delight, embraced strangers. And, for the first time, Stalin uttered the magic words: "In the direction of Kiev."

Tally of Death. To Russia, lean-ribbed after 27 months of pain and sacrifice, victory tasted sweet. It was hard to see towns go up in smoke, but it was good to know that in the blazing fires Hitler's hope of victory burned to dead ashes. The Donets Basin, Russia's Pennsylvania-om-Kansas, was free. The first train of Donets Basin coal reached Moscow. Red Army units were only 40-odd miles from the Dnieper, only 80-odd miles from Kiev.

Still sweeter was the tally of the Wehrmacht's losses. In the two thunderous months which followed the launching of Hitler's abortive summer offensive on July 5, the Wehrmacht lost, by Russian count, more than 1,500,000 men (420,000 killed), 9,400 tanks, 5,700 planes, 7,200 guns, 35,800 motor vehicles.

Last week alone, the Russians captured roughly 15,000 square miles, including:

> Stalino, the heart of the Donets Basin area. When the Germans occupied it 23 months ago, they hopefully set up in it a branch of the Nazi industrial octopus, the Hermann Goering Combine.

> Mariupol, the sea funnel through which the Donets Basin poured out its riches.

> Chaplino, a railway junction 60 miles from Zaporozhe. To take it, Red Cavalry and tanks broke through the German rear.

This week, the Russians stormed into Bryansk, pivotal stronghold of the Nazi's central and southern fronts, after overrunning the railway network on the east bank of the Desna, climbing over the bodies of some 2,000 German troops.

These victories put the German defense system east of the Dnieper out of joint, menaced the Nazi forces in the south with entrapment, jeopardized the German hold on the Crimea. This week Berlin reported new threats: Soviet Union troops had landed at Novorossiisk; new drives had been launched off Vyazma and Leningrad. And Moscow itself jubilantly announced the Red Army was nearing Roslavl.

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