Week of Decision

In one week that shook the world, fate closed tight and inexorable in the tautrtwardy empire of the Nazis.

Its Balkan foundations curmpled; its eastern ramparts shook before the battering of Russian might that could not be denied.

In the west, Allied armor and speeding infantry slashed in dazzling parabolas toward the last of the defenses beofe the Siegfried Line. The battle of France was decided. As it thrudered toward its end the battle of Germany was beginning.

As the week began, it had been question how soon Lieut. General Omar Bradley's speeding Twelfh Army Group could liberate Paris. When Paris all but liberated itself, the question was whether U.S. armor might strike for Reims. At the turn of the week, the Nazis reported U.S. army in Reims and U.S. Flyers reported the Nazia in full, disorganized flight to the Rhine. Field Marshal Guenther von Kluge's Seventh Army had been liquidated. His Fifteenth, already bled by its attmep to rescue the Seventh, was outflanked in its positions on the rocket Coast. The first question was whether the Germans could make a stand short of the Maginot Line. It was doubtful.

Could they make a long stand at the Maginot, whose turrets (which had faced the wrong way) might have been reversed and rearmed, but whose terrain, which also faced the wrong way, was unchangeable? It was doubtful.

Could they stand long at the Siegfried Line? It was doubtful. Behind them, Allied air power now ground more savagely than ever into the bowels of the Reich. Lieut. General Lewis H. Brereton's First Airborne Army might drop in any night.

Then and Now. In 1940 it had taken Colonel General Walther von Reichenau 31 days after the breakthrough at Sedan (where a ready-made land front already existed) to capture Paris. In 1944 it had taken Bradley 23 days after the breakthrough at Coutances (where a land front had had to be created in the Normandy bridgehead) to cross the Seine, which permitted Paris to free itself.

In 1940 the British First and the French First, Seventh and Ninth Armies had been destroyed, save for 337,000 beaten men evacuated from Dunkirk; in 1944, the German Seventh Army of up to 500,000 had been destroyed, kit & kaboodle.

The rocket coast, from which London was still taking a sadistic battering, could not stand for long. The key play for the Allies was to take it and plow on to the Reich before the Nazis could start using their next hope: V2. This was the last weapon with which Goebbels & Co. kept the Germans bemused, hoping for victory.

Disaster Compounded. As the week began, there had been inspired rumors that Bulgaria was about to desert the Axis. But before the Bulgars could act, the Rumanians beat them to it. King Mihai himself jumped on the Allied bandwagon and, for once, a Balkan king's act represented the will of the people (see FOREIGN NEWS). For the Wehrmacht, defections in the Balkans meant disaster at astronomically compounded interest: 22 German divisions on the Rumanian front were doomed to defeat, most of them to death or capture; 25 Rumanian divisions which had been helping the Nazis turned against them. Twelve Bulgarian divisions which had eased the German load in Yugoslavia and Greece had to pull out. The Germans had 14 to 16 divisions in those countries; the bulk of them could never get back to the Reich.

Whether the Red Army and its new co-belligerents fought their way up the Danube Valley or through the Carpathian passes to the plains of Hungary and a junction with Marshal Tito, the Balkans were being lost. So was Ploesti's oil.

The Allies had shattered Festung Europa. How long could Festung Deutschland stand? U.S. Army officials were using October 1 as a tentative X-day.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.