Red Dawn Over Warsaw

BATTLE OF GERMANY (East)

Of almost 9,000 Germans who had defended Praga, only one in 20 was taken alive. The rest of the defenders were killed last week when the First White Russian Army and elements of Lieut. General Zigmund Berling's First Polish Army stormed the town--which bears the same geographic relation to Warsaw as Hoboken does to Manhattan.

Thus after six weeks of buildup, Marshal Rokossovsky (of Polish descent), who almost reached Warsaw in August, began to close in. The famed Russian artillery, massed on the east bank of the Vistula, began pounding the Germans on the 135-ft. bluff in Warsaw--point blank, 500 yards across the river.

Warsaw, which had writhed under the Nazi heel longer than any other United Nations capital (since Sept. 28, 1939), was due for liberation by the fifth anniversary of its subjugation. Brave, stubborn Mayor Stefan Starzynski would not be there to witness the freeing of the city he had defended to the death after other Polish resistance ceased. But his place was filled by the equally brave underground leader who goes by the nom de guerre of General Bor.

City of Rubble. From sections of Warsaw which they controlled, Bor's men could see the Russians approaching at last, and Russian patrols crossed the river to establish contact. The Germans were demolishing barracks, factories, public utilities and all large buildings. This destruction, added to that of past bombardments and bombings, and the fight between General Bor and the Nazis, reduced most of Warsaw to rubble. Now at last, Russian warplanes came over the city dropping food and ammunition to the patriots at far less cost and risk than the R.A.F., which previously did it from bases over 800 miles away. But whether the Russians would try to cross the Vistula and storm the bluffs held by the Germans was still uncertain. The Russians have a more economic technique of enveloping such cities, demonstrated at Kiev. Last week they already had a bridgehead across the Vistula 25 miles southeast of Warsaw, from which the southern arm of a pincers could be forged; the northern arm was being brought to white heat as Rokossovsky drove northwest of Praga.

To the Lakes. Farther north, the whole irrational Nazi line was being hammered. Smashing into the corridor between the Vistula and the Masurian Lakes was General Feodor Zakharov's Second White Russian Army. It took the Narew River fortress of Lomza in midweek, and advanced through Novgorod to within sight of the lakes, where a 30-year-old defeat could be avenged.

North of Zakharov, in turn, the Third White Russian Army pressed against the easternmost reaches of East Prussia. Still farther north the First Baltic Army pushed deep into southern Latvia, to within 20 miles of Riga. The Germans said the Russians were driving with 40 divisions. In any event, the largest land army in the world was again on the move, its spearheads only 325 miles from Berlin.

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