Victory and Reverse

Another great victory this week was within the Red Army's grasp: reoccupation of Estonia. Already Russian vanguards were within gun range of the border. Before them now lay only the fortified northern gateway into the tiny Baltic States.

Victory in Estonia--a victory in sight, but yet to be won--would enable the Russians to: 1) roll back the entire German Baltic Front across the flat, creek-laced terrain of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; 2) outflank the German front in White Russia; 3) raid Germany's supply routes across the Baltic, depriving the German munitions industry of Swedish ore and virtually isolating Finland.

Other Red armies hacked relentlessly at the railways without which no army can operate effectively in the marshy, wooded region between recently freed Leningrad--where German prisoners filed through the streets (see cut)--and the Pripet Marshes.

Southern Retreat. Good news from the north was partially offset by bad tidings from the south. There, on the road to Rumania, the Red Command admitted withdrawals--its first in ten weeks. (Berlin promptly blossomed out with a report of ten Soviet infantry divisions and several tanks corps "wiped out.")

This defeat delayed the Russian drive, but it did not necessarily imperil the Russian position. Behind the army of General Nikolai Vatutin lay a snow-swept steppe which offered the Germans no rich prize. By throwing all their waning strength into this battle the Germans betrayed their own fears--for the Bug, Bessarabia, the uneasy Balkans.

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