Gloom in the Reich

The outer walls of Germany's Fortress Europe shuddered and cracked under heavy Allied pressure. Three widening breaches had been torn in the East Wall, a fourth was opening and Russians were pouring in. The Atlantic Wall was cracked in Normandy; the fissure opened by that wedge seemed to point straight to Paris. In northern Italy there was a bad breach that might spread to the weakened Balkan wing of the fort. Smaller cracks were opening within the fortress itself--the result of serious underground strains in France, in Yugoslavia, in Denmark.

At the Gates. Germany's visible reaction to this situation was one of unconcealed gloom and alarm. Lieut. General Kurt Diettmar, ace German military commentator, admitted in a somber radio analysis for his people that the enemy was "at the gates" of the Fatherland, that Germany was facing vast attacks on three fronts by Allied forces superior in men and materials. Other spokesmen seemed almost to vie with each other in gloom:

P: The newspaper Front und Heimat: "Everything is at stake. Our position is serious. The armed mass which advances from the east is reaching out for our sacred soil. . . . Every man who can carry a gun must take to arms."

P:Christof von Imhorn, war correspondent in Normandy: "Ever since the Allies landed in Normandy our hinterland has been under a perpetual bombardment of an intensity never before matched. No concentrations could be built up within striking distance of the front. By day our forces go to earth; by night they move."

P: An anonymous correspondent: "Truck-driving behind the German lines is now so dangerous that the men get the same allowances as air crews. In addition they have real coffee every day."

P: Lutz Koch, radio correspondent: "Our soldiers are fighting hard to overcome the tendency to apathy which the tremendous enemy bombing and drumfire barrage can create."

East or West? This kind of glum reporting presumably reflected the mood of the German General Staff, faced with the painful necessity of giving priority either to the east or the west--there was no longer enough German strength to give all out defense to both. Despite the grave threat along the Russian front, indications last week were that priority of a sort had been awarded to the West.

German troops in World War II have an almost perfect record of never yielding territory without a bitter fight. If circumstances now compelled them to give up this policy, the probability was that they would try to pull back in Poland and stabilize a new Eastern Front, meanwhile trying to defeat or at least to contain the Normandy invasion. Thus Germany might hope to stay in position to attack British civilian morale with robot bombs and new, secret "vengeance weapons."

But going the rounds in Germany (and leaking out through Switzerland) was a sour little joke: Question--What is the only secret weapon that can save Germany? Answer--A long pole with a white flag on top.

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