East: Overture on the Vistula

The stage was set in Poland and the cast was in the wings. The Russian-German front from East Prussia to the Carpathians bore a strong resemblance to the Vitebsk front just before Joseph Stalin's armies launched their great summer offensive in June. There were the same signs this week that Russia was accumulating tremendous reservoirs of new power behind the line, the same enemy fretfulness over blows that the Germans could see and feel were coming.

The Russian explosion in June and July had driven the last German from Russian soil, ended the Battle of Russia, whittled down the German armies in the east. It had pushed the German remnants back to the upper Vistula, to a line in front of Warsaw and East Prussia before giving them a chance to regain their balance. Now this line, which the Germans bragged they had stabilized, was regarded by the Reds as the starting line for their autumn offensive in the Battle of Germany. They were bringing up new, massive equipment with which they intended to do the job.

The threat was triple: Chernyakhovsky's forces aimed at the East Prussian border; Rokossovsky's and Zakharov's forces aimed directly west toward Berlin, but could swing north to envelop East Prussia, or north and south to envelop Warsaw; Konev's huge bridgehead on the upper Vistula pointed at Cracow and German Silesia. Most of the surface activity last week was in the Balkans, but the great drive had passed from the explosive to the mopping-up stage. The noises from Berlin betrayed well-grounded anxiety about the sectors north of the Carpathians, the direct menace to German soil.

The line twitched along its length, most notably along the Narew River (a tributary to the Vistula) north of Warsaw. Moscow announced that the Red armies had blasted their way to the river, saluted the victory with twelve salvos from 124 guns, then let silence fall. But the Germans announced that the Reds had concentrated 30 divisions--more than 300,000 men--on the banks of the Narew, that they had begun to cross to the west bank.

Once more the Reds beat the drums in front of East Prussia. From the banks of the narrow Scheschuppa River on the border, a Red Fleet correspondent wrote: "Before us stretches Germany. Beyond this insignificant river is a steep bank, then fields with clover, brush, clumps of trees surrounded by wire and trenches, big barns with tile roofs, the red and pastel-colored roofs of houses. . . . We know that the earth beyond the Scheschuppa River will take a lot of our blood, but we know that without this blood humanity can never find peace."

Germany, too, was willing to spill more blood to keep the hated enemy out of the Reich. But she had only so much blood left in her body.

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