Five Minutes to Midnight

On the black Ukrainian steppe the Red Army fought one of its greatest battles, won one of World War II's greatest victories. At week's end Red units swarmed across the Dniester, spilled onto the bleak, muddy Bessarabian plain of pre-1940 Rumania. It was the 1,002nd day of Russia's war.

The Red tide now lapped at Festung Europa; it washed most heavily at Poland and Rumania. This week it was 50 mi. from Rumania's 1940 border, 275 mi. from frightened Bucharest, 200 mi. from Warsaw. Only 240 mi. away, Ploesti's oilfields--fueling pump of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe--tempted Russian bombers.

Now there were signs of demoralization among the retreat-adept Germans. North of Nikolayev, the Sixth German Army was ringed and destroyed. South of Vinnitsa three encircled German divisions were being whittled down. Thousands of dejected prisoners wearily marched to Russia's rear. The fortified German line on the Russian Bug (which empties into the Black Sea)* was pierced in two days, the Dniester line in a night.

Red Trio. Three famed Red commanders led the great drive:

General Rodion Malinovsky's army was pushing westward from Kherson. It was a "grudge" army of Stalingrad veterans, out for the blood of the Sixth German Army, which they had once destroyed and which had since been reactivated.

On a soggy steppe the two armies fought an eleven-day battle. Last week Moscow listed the gains: 36,800 Germans killed, 13,859 captured. Of the Sixth's 25 divisions, only four remained intact.

Marshal Ivan Konev's army fought its way across the Bug, raced over 60 muddy miles in two days, crossed the Dniester with scarcely a change in pace. Said a British newsman in Moscow of ex-Lumberjack Konev: "He has done the unexpected, the unbelievable, the impossible."

Marshal Georgy Zhukov, stalled in Tarnopol's ruins, struck on the northern flank. In a cold spring rain, one column crossed the bloated Ikwa to take the 950-year-old fortress of Dubno, in old Poland. Another column slithered up a hill to take the fortress of Krzemieniec. From both, roads now led straight to Lwow.

To the south, another powerful force captured the key rail center of Zhmerinka, fought its way into the famed hedgehog of Vinnitsa. By forced day-&-night marches, Zhukov's mobile units caught up with the fleeing Germans, crossed the upper Bug over bridges the Germans had had no time to blow up.

Reverberations. When the Reds crossed the Bug, they entered Rumania's military sphere (on the left bank the signposts were German, on the right Rumanian). The rumble of the crossing Russian tanks echoed to Rumania's darkest corner.

German civilians bombed out of the Reich were "advised" to leave Rumania within ten days. In Bessarabia, boys of 16-18 were called for military service. Ships were being massed in Rumania's ports to evacuate the battered, impatient Axis troops in Nikolayev, Odessa, the Crimea.

The Wehrmacht also felt the reverberations. Sadly Lieut. Adolph Kannel said to his Russian captors: "The clock of the German Army is now at five minutes to midnight. Soon the clock will strike."

* Not to be confused with the Polish Bug which empties into the Vistula.

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