Thunder in the East

For many months the Soviets had waited for their western allies to open a western front. Now that the Normandy beachhead was booming, the western allies waited for Russia to reopen the main eastern front. They did not have to wait long.

Last week, on D-day plus 17 on the invasion calendar, it was reopened with a bang. In Moscow 60 salutes from 224 of Moscow's victory guns thundered the news--20 salutes for each of Joseph Stalin's three orders of the day. Never before had the taciturn man from Georgia issued so many victory proclamations in 24 hours.

Against the Bulge. The Red High Command struck on a 150-mile front in White Russia, against the Wehrmacht's easternmost bulge. Crisscrossed by swift rivers, small lakes, marshes and dense birch and pine woods, these lush plains accounted for most of the Russian soil still held by the invader. There last week the blue dusk of early northern summer lasted all night.

On the eve of attack, proud and confident soldiers of the Red Army sang and played accordions in the villages. Listening, the Red Star's correspondent wrote: "again the battle between evil and good began, but this time the forces of good were better equipped."

The Germans were heavily fortified in depth, but the sudden release of pent-up Soviet power was overwhelming. German Commentator Ernest von Hammer described "masses of tanks and fighter-bombers on a scale never seen before during the entire Russian campaign." Red sappers advancing toward the Pronya River behind a wall of artillery fire found pulverized German bodies in shredded uniforms, said that they "looked as if they had suffered death several times."

Egg-bald Armenian Colonel General Ivan Bagramian and Colonel General Ivan Chernyakhobsky, a 32-year-old Jewish tank expert who helped to defend Voronezh in 1942, launched thrusts north and south of Vitebsk which bypassed that stout Nazi bastion by 15 to 25 miles. Then they closed the gap behind it, cutting off five German divisions. At week's end Stalin announced that Vitebsk was in Russian hands.

Farther south, the Russians straddled the railroad to Minsk and Warsaw, advanced on Orsha, while a long and powerful spearhead between Orsha and Zhlobin threatened to envelop Mogilev and Bobruisk, the Nazis' two main rail junctions in the bulge.

Collapse of the Shutters. The great offensive in White Russia reduced the Finnish campaign, which had started last fortnight, to the status of a side show. Nevertheless Marshal Leonid Govorov went right on with his methodical, heavy-handed clearing of Russia's right flank.

Peter the Great once called Viipuri the solid shutters of his window on Europe. When the shutters collapsed last week and Viipuri fell, the way to Helsinki, 140 miles away, lay open. Finland, by military judgment, was all but out of the war (see FOREIGN NEWS). The newspaper Suomen Sosialidemokraati said that "the whole nation hopes that the present abnormal situation can be eliminated . . . so that it can get back to peaceful ways."

The Russian armies seemed to have profited by their long rest; certainly the western allies were profiting by its thunderous termination.

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