Germany's Chance

Last week TIME's Chief Military Correspondent Charles Christian Wertenbaker cabled from Paris:

The war is not going so well for us. This is said not in a spirit of defeatism or alarm but because what has happened in the last three weeks can be regarded not only as a setback but as a threat. In the three weeks since Dec. 16 the enemy has lengthened the front by 225 miles and has passed to the offensive along the entire western front.

The lengthening of the front is an advantage to the enemy because he has greater reserves in Europe than we have, both in manpower and materiel. We spent more than a year in building up the superior and better-equipped armies which we threw into the Battle of France. By the time they got to the Siegfried Line they were spread thin and were spending materiel almost as fast as it reached the front. Now our reserves of men, arms and transport must come thousands of miles from an America that is fighting another war in the Pacific. Germany, on the other hand, has withdrawn almost to her own frontiers and can switch reserves from one front to another with comparative speed.

Longer War? The questions of using French manpower and of manufacturing war materiel in France were undoubtedly a chief subject in the discussions between Churchill and [Field Marshal Sir Alan] Brooke and De Gaulle and Juin this week. If the concerted reaction of the French press, and also President Roosevelt's speech, are indications, France will be given the materials to build war industries to equip her own soldiers. This means that we are planning for a much longer war than anybody at home--or here either --thought possible last September.

But Rundstedt's offensive gives every indication that Germany is not planning for so long a war, that--believe it or not-- Germany's leaders think they have a good chance of winning the war in the west in the next six or eight months. When the Germans threw together their Volksgrenadiere divisions, they were playing for time: the time before the removal of these men from industry would tell on the German war machine. The German leaders must have believed that before that time arrived they had a good chance of winning, if not the war, at least a decisive victory.

The potentialities of the present German offensive still remain. The offensive has not petered out, as some experts have blithely written. It is in a secondary stage. We have reacted as the enemy must have expected us to react and he is engaged in holding and trying to beat back our counterattacks. So far we have made little progress in closing his corridor behind him. He is keeping us busy elsewhere on the front and he doubtless made some shrewd calculations as to the reserves we could bring to bear. And if we fail to pinch off his corridor he may be expected to try to continue his drive to the west.

What For? Since September, when victory seemed at hand, the Allies have shown a growing disposition to forget what they were supposed to be fighting for. We could have come to Europe as champions of the people; neither in Italy nor Greece nor Belgium nor even in France have we done so.

These things are symptoms of indecision and weakness. So are Anglo-American differences over Italy and Greece and the recognition of one Polish Government by Britain and the U.S. and of another by Russia. The enemy is doing everything possible to exploit this indecision and weakness.

Germany is cold, tired, hungry and bleeding, and Germany is fighting with every military and political weapon she has. Unless the U.S. realizes what this war is about and what it takes to win it, the U.S. might wake up some morning and find that the war has been lost.

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