Coiling Springs

The lull was no lullaby for the nerve-racked Germans. Outside the Crimea, there had been no major Soviet offensive anywhere for six weeks. Swarming like ants all over their hundreds of thousands of square miles of retaken ground, the Reds multiplied and strengthened their supply lines, built new installations, brought up to the front great masses of guns, tanks, ammunition, food, fuel--and men.

The fretful Wehrmacht could feel the accumulation of Soviet power, like the coiling of enormous steel springs.

It was a formidable array of Red generalship that faced the Germans: Konev, Malinovsky and Zhukov in the south; Rokossovsky and Bagramian further north; Popov, Meretskov and the liberator of Leningrad, Leonid Govorov, poised for attack on the Baltic countries.

General Tolbukhin's armies, which had finished "cleaning" the Crimea last month, were now reported being shifted to the central front.* Also available as a reserve was General Andrei Yeremenko's army, which helped to capture the Crimea. Both these armies were a considerable strengthening factor for the Russians who have had untold millions of casualties.

North to the Baltic. The ground, which had dried out two months ago in the south, was now fit for large-scale operations all the way to the Baltic. In the south, Marshal Konev's armies had a fully coiled spring aimed toward the Galati gap which leads on to the Rumanian plain, to Bucharest and the oil of Ploesti.

Konev might make a strong thrust for the gap, pinning down German forces there, while the main Soviet offensive was launched in southern Poland, on the broad plain between the Carpathians and the Pripet marshes. In a pincer attack from north and south, Zhukov, enveloping Lwow, would find himself on the road to the Silesian corner of Germany proper.

Other armies, possibly sparkplugged by Rokossovsky's forces, might launch a drive to Warsaw along the north fringe of the Pripet. Meanwhile Govorov and Meretskov could help things along with a westward reach for the Baltic.

The Wehrmacht commanders seemed sure that the decisive action would be fought in southern Poland. Outside of that they were sure of only one thing--that the Russians would strike very soon and very hard. Probably the attack would be timed with the invasion from the west.

*The Russians, who look on the Hitlerites as vermin, say of recaptured terrain that it has been "cleaned."

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