Swindler's End?

It was not the fact that American troops were on German soil, nor the fact that they had pierced the Siegfried Line, which gave the strongest evidence that the war in Europe was rapidly drawing to a close. The clearest sign was evidence of disorganization in the Wehrmacht.

Kited Checks. Since the debacle in Normandy it has been plain that Germany has committed her military capital. Since then the enemy's defense has been a series of check-kiting swindles against time. They may have begun even earlier, when he drew on the Bank of the West to bolster his account with the Bank of the East (before Warsaw and East Prussia).

Since the collapse in Normandy, and Rumania's change of sides, the enemy has recklessly drawn checks on every one of his other accounts to bolster his position in the west and south--hoping that his overdrafts would not be found out. He threw good money after bad.

He had cashed a check on his forces north of the Seine to put into the disaster of Falaise, had drawn 160,000 good men from his scanty forces to hold the besieged ports of France and Belgium (see below).

No Checks. Last week was payoff time. In the Siegfried Line before Aachen, U.S. troops captured hastily trained boys, old reservists, convalescents from the Russian front.

But Germany's manpower shortage was not as serious as her military disorganization. In 48 hours, the two-ply Siegfried Line at Aachen was broken in five places. Even with inadequate forces, a well organized enemy should have been able to hold that strong position for at least two weeks. Western Germany had been successfully invaded for the first time since Napoleon.* The soil of the Rhineland, Germany's storied, sacred frontier, lay just beyond.

The enemy line was broken at a spot that he could not afford to lose. If he had been as quick and as sure of himself as before, if he had not been disorganized and close to the breaking point, he should have been able to kite another check.

Kited Cavalry. With ancient Aachen surrounded, the enemy belatedly rallied to counterattack. But at that moment of crisis came another. The first elements of Lieut. General Lewis H. Brereton's paratroops plunged to battle behind the Nazi troops holding the German right flank.

Another airborne D-day had struck the enemy and he had no aircraft to oppose it.

The first lines of the West Wall had come apart at a critical point, and he had no first-rate fighting men to cement the breaches. The might of Eisenhower's armies pressed in on him, threatened to engulf him at a dozen points, and he did not have the transport to shift his reserves (if any) to meet the worst of the threats.

The German fighting machine, thrown off balance in Normandy, had never been allowed to recover. Now disorganization had gone so far that the groggy Wehrmacht, backed against the ropes, lay open to a haymaker.

* In 1918 small U.S. forces entered Alsace (then German territory) six months before the Armistice, were held just over the border; the Russians got as far as East Prussia in 1914; in 1939 a French patrol crossed the German border, crossed right back again.

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