"Only One Way"

In the air and on the ground, Allied pressure against the Third Reich tightened a few more agonizing notches. Yet there was still no sign of German collapse. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had learned his lesson, said to correspondents in Paris: "If the German continues to show the spirit he has now, there is only one way he can be beaten--the Allied armies must meet the Russian armies in the center of Germany."

Eisenhower was just back from the Roer River, where he had launched what his foes called the greatest of all Western Front offensives (see below). In the east, the Russians were beefing up their northern and southern flanks, wiping out German pockets of resistance in Poznan and other centers behind their lines.

Atomization. Sunny, springlike weather enabled the U.S. and British strategic air forces to throw their full weight against the enemy. In 13 days 19,000 heavy bombers were over German territory, blasting and burning. One of the first targets was Saxony's handsome capital, Dresden, a main feeder point for the Silesian front.

Later the main weight of the air attacks shifted to rail centers in western and southern Germany. The yards at Nurnberg, packed to 95% of their 3,000-car capacity, were heavily hit. On one shattering day, when a total of 7,000 planes were over Germany, many small "task forces" were split off to attack secondary rail lines and small marshaling yards.

Never had military coordination between the Russians and the Western Allies been so close. In January a Soviet mission had come to SHAEF in Paris, and U.S. airmen had gone to Moscow. Now London disclosed that Sir Arthur Tedder--Eisenhower's brilliant deputy commander and one of the world's great air strategists --had also gone to Moscow, to organize "close liaison between the advancing Russian armies and British and American bomber forces in the west." Said Eisenhower: "The Russians have furnished me with all the information I needed to know, and have done so cheerfully and willingly."

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