VOL. V SHANGHAI, DECEMBER 1943

THE SUMMER WAR

By KLAUS MEHNEHT

The Pi'rlll Fronl-this is 1.0111 we called the Gerlllflll·So,·iet fronl ;n <nLrJirllt (/'Il.(/Iysiil oJ Ihe '11'(/1' ';11 Ellslerll Europe (August/Septeml, r is","e 1912). Webelieve Ihol. ,in uiell' oJ Ihe t/.tunber oj Iroops find ,,·e"poll.' 'illuolned, il still m.el·it"Ihi" appellation. Ou.r last -review oj Ihe el'enl,. on thii< Jrolll ("1'he Willle'r War."May 19-13) look fl.' (/S J(/r a.• Ihe end of J\llflreh oj Odd 1/001'. 'l'he ,following pagesdelll with Ihe pel'iod Jrolll April 1 to Nouember 1. the Iflst JOllr months oj ",hichS(/I<' aile oj Ihe IIlO.vt ":/lterestill[f flllllmo,.t bitterly JO'llrlht campaign... ;n modern militaryhi.-Iory. lI'e I",ve u.scd ,,1/ ."",;lable 'Inater;"l from GeTlll'1/l a•• well as Soviet SOllrcps.

No.6

lOO-DA \" PAFSE

M .·\H,CH 2U, 1!J43, the day on whichBerlin announced the completionof the German counteroffensive in

the area between the Dniepr and DonetsH,ivers. 'may be regarded as the end oftho winter war of 1942/43. On reailingthe clail.v COllllllillliques of the followinghundred days ~,lIed by both opponents.\\'e fillli that. with the exception of theKuban bridgehoad, they speak only oflucal fighting.

The roason for this oomparative quietis to lJe ought in the fact that. after theCllOrmOlIf: eHorts of the winter, both sidesnootlccl breathing space to regroup their:Lrmie: and to withdraw those bodies oftroops which had been particularly active.The Rus8ian' had also to reconstruct theroutes of communication in the areaflreconquered by them allcl destroyed bythe fighting. Added to this, there wasthe famous "General Mud.' who duringthe spring thaw paralyzed the front forseveral weeks lasting into May. Thefighting during the months of April, May,and June was directed only at localaim -to remove an enemy wedge here,to conquer a dominating hill there, or todestroy an enemy bridgehead. It couldbe called a sparring for position.

The only large battles were those inthe air. The ether was filled with theconstant roar of planes out to collectinformation concerning the troop move­ments and military preparations of theenemy. Moreover. both air force carriedout a number of large-flcale attacks.The Soviet. atta.cked German militarycenters in the occupied territories, 0 '­

pecially 01',\'01 on May 7, which lattera.ttack. howe~r. \\as repulsed before itcame to anything. On June 2 and :3the German. raided Kur k, the oenterof the 'oviet offensivo preparations; onJune 4 and u the automobile- and tank·producing town of Gorki on the III ide! 10Volga, each time with 1,000 planes; andin the middle of June the industrial townsof Yaroslavl and Saratov on the Volga.

THE LESSONS 01<' TWO SL'l,nmRS

During these hundred da.ys. millions ofpeople all over the world were wonderingwhat plans might be being forged by thetwo bolLigerents for the summer of 1943.Would Germany attempt a great offen­sive. a~ in the summers of 1941 and19421 Or would the Russians follow uptheir winter offell8ive by a summer offen­sive? Or were both parties so exhaustedby the winter that the summer wouldpa.ss without any large-scale fighting?

860 THE XXt.h "CENTURy

There was only a handful of men atthe Fuhrer's he,.dquarters and in theKremlin who knew what was going onin the minds of the leaders at that time.Today, however, we can attempt to re­construct these cOnBiderations on theba.si8 of the events of the last few months.

At the l<lihrer's headquarters therewere three possibilities to be weighed: anew offensive, a holding of the front line,or a withdrawal. Although the summeroffensives of 1941 and 1942 had broughtvast gains in territory, they had notresulted in the Red Army's annihilation;ami the course of the wn,r had shown thatfinal victory over the Soviet Unionrequired not so much the conque!lt ofits territory as the destruction of itsarmed forces. The German High Com­mand had, in the case of a new Germanoffensive, to reckon on the Soviets re­peating the tactics of the previous sum­mer, when they withdrew into the depthsof their almost limitless expanses beforethe German thrust and did not givebattle until, as was the case in Stalingrad,the German lines of communication werestretched to breaking point. Moreover,the Soviets could stand losses of territoryin the summer of I \)43 better than in1941; for meanwhile they had removeda large part of their industry-formerlylocated in the Ukraine and in EuropeanRussia-so far to the east that it wasbeyond the grn.sp of even the most ex­tended Germn.n offensive.

Weighty reasons spokc against holdingthe front line as it had developed afterthe conclusion of the winter war. Duringthe Great War it had been possible moreor less to stabilize the Eastern Frontwith the aid of a narrow system oftrenches. First of all, the front (fromRiga to Rumania) was incomparablyshorter than the present one: secondly,the RUBsianB, though superior in number,possessed hardly any armament produc­tion of their own; and thirdly, a revolutionwas brewing in Russia. Under pres~nt

conditions, with the weapOnB of 1943 andon a front of almost 2,000 kilometers(Leningrad to Novorossyisk), trench war­fare is out of t·he question. During the

first two summers the German armies hadbalanced the quantita.tive superiority ofthe Reds in men and material by sna.tch­ing the initia.tive through incredibly boldand powerful offenBives thereby deprivingthe Soviets of their advantage of numericalsuperiority.

THE TlIIRD POSSIBILITY

In our issue of May 1943, when dis­cussing the plans of the German HighCommand in the autumn of 1942, wehad already reached the conclusion thatit would be to Germany's advantage toconduct the war against the Red Armynearer to the centers of Europe's arma­ment production. In the article "An­other General' (Decem ber 1942) we showedhow every added 100 kilometers of dis­tance immensely increaBe the task ofsupplying the front. In the cuse of theEMtern Front, it was not only thelength of the Lines of communication thathad to be considered but also the menaceto them represented by the Red partisans.

These partisans are to a large extent,regular Red troops who, in ~pite of theircivilian clothes, are equipped with modernarms, often supplied from the air, andlurk behind the fighting Cerman armies.And although the Soviet "statistics" wereno doubt extremely exaggerated when atthe beginning of July they boasted that,during the course of the first two yearsof war, t.he pa.rtisans had derailed 3,000trains and destroyed more than :.I 000bridges, even the German reports showthat the safeguarding of the extensiveroutes of communication has ent-ailedconsiderable effort and loases. Incidental­ly, the struggle against the parti answas entrusted largely to volunteerscorps-e.g., units of the Vlassov armyor Cossack formations-who had joinedthe Germans and who in turn weroaided by the population.

But, quite aside fTom the parti ans,the va-st occupied territories of t,heUSSR required large numbers of gar­rison troops. Even if we count only100 German soldiers for every 100square kilometers of occupied area,this would have meant in June 1943

THE SUMMER WAR 361

well over half a million garrison troopsonly, not to mention ra.ilwaymen,administration officials, etc.

Moreover, long before the world hadany intimation of the coming treacheryof Victor Emmanuel, indications wereamassing at the FUhrer's headquartersthat I taly and her forces could no longerbe fully counted upon. The possibilityof a considerable change in the warllituation on the southern European Bankhad to be taken into account. The lossof I taly and an attack on the Balkanswould be hard to cope with if the mainforce of the German Army stood as faraway as on the Kuban River and only~omo 300 kilometers from Moscow. Thet,lncat of a Second Front in westernEurope also made it l;mdesirable to keepthe First Front almost 3,000 kilometersfrom the menaced coasts of France.

Fina.lIy, it was clear that in the facevf a det.ermined Red offensive t.he fronteould only be held at the cost of greattl!1crifices on the part of the German Army.

Thus the weighing of the variouspOlisible metholls of conducting the warduring the s'ummer revealed the advan­tages of taking the front back. Thevast numerical superiority of the enemywould be otIset by employing the widet\paces of Ea ·tern Europe for a war ofmovement; troops would be economizedby stlcrllcing territory; part of the armycould be wit.hdrawn from the front tobe user! Ill' the nucleus of a new armynow in the process of formation; and aheavy toll (:ould be exacted from theattacking enemy for each kilomet·er gained.

IN THE :KREMLJ~

At the same time the discussions inthe Kremlin proved the necessity of alarge-scale offcnsive. Although the So­viets could, as they have proved, getalong industrially without t.he areas oc­cupied by Germ.any. t.hey had not beenable in their agricultural production tomake good the loss of the Ukraine, themost fertile area of the Soviet Union.(According to Soviet figures for 1938, the{Tkraine, which covers only 2.6 per cent

of the total area of the USSR, supplied 34per cent of the Soviet grain production.)In spite of la.rge food shipments from theUSA, the food situation in the USSRhad deteriorated alarmingly and madethe reconquest of the Ukraine a questionof life and death.

Hence with the approach of summertwo complementary plans crystallized inthe Fii.hrer's headquarters and in Mos­cow: the German willingness to withdraw,and the Soviet necessity of advancing.

From the middle of May onwards,the Germans repurted having observedlarge Soviet concentrations of troops andmaterial in the areas of Kmsk and TulajKaluga and concluded that the RcdArmy was preparing a major ofTensivefrom there.

THE S'l'ARTINO-PJSTOL OF BELGOROD

The statements of the German andSoviet High Commands and military com­mentators on the outbreak of the summercampaign of J943 are still very con­tradictory. On looking back on the firstweek of J lily in the light of the materialproduced by the Ill.. 1. few months, devel­opments seem to have been 'omewhat asfollows. (See map on page 375.)

At that time the Eastern Front con­sisted of five overlapping wedges. TheGerman front protruded far to the eastat t.hree points (between Lakes Ladogaand TImen, around Oryol, and betweenBelgorod and Tagamog), and the Sovietfront protruded far to the west at twopoints (around Velikiye Luki and arowldKursk). We know today that the RedArmy had concentrated strong forcesalong the entire front; but it was thewedge of Kursk which had been madeits real fist of attack. Here, under coverof a defense zone 40 kilometers deep, theReds had amassed almost half a millionmen and thousands of tanks and otherwar material, while further east an ad­ditional large army of re'erves stoodwaiting. To all appearances, the thrustfrom the Kursk area was to begin simul­taneously with the Anglo-American attackon Sicily.

362 TIlE XXLb CENTURY

The Germa.n High Command antic­ipa.ted the I oviet a.ttack by on offensiveof its own. It object wa, first, theannihilation of the Re I troop concen­trated in the Kllr~k buJge; secondly, adi ruption of the entire • oviet plan ofoff nsive; and thirdly, the gaining oftim for bringing in and tran porting

wa.y as larg a po ible a part of thekrainian harve t and for thorough.l)

carrying out the cordi d-enrth poLicyfor which the oviets bad, ct nn examplein 1!)41 and l!HZ.

After Germ n troops had on J uJy 4. upied a hill in the vicinity of Belgorod

whi h commanded the surroundings, theat rm broke on the morning of ,luly 5.A German panzer army, including forthe fir·t time lar e numbers o{ tbo "Tiger"tunk '. made a mighty th.ru. t northwardfr m .Belgorod in the rureetion of Kursk.It broke through the Red d { nse zoneand {orcod the. 'o\riet Command to ordertho l:tod armi >" standinO' in tho we~tern

part o{ the Kur~k bulge and fltCinO' west.t turn around and att· ck tb GermanI nrh ad. At abou th (1Il0 time,

another thru t with mall r free wmade by .th (; rman from the Oryolarca outhwl\.rd, Idso towarcl Kur k. Ont.IlO rolling plain bet ween BC'lgorod andOryol th re now deyolol d t h mightie:>ttllllk battle of the pre' nt war. Thedaily •'o\'iet lussc' in tanks reaehed thr cord ligures of ':;30 and tilii t,anks onJuly 15 and :.!:.!,

THE BATTLE OF K~R'K

\\'hile the German press how d greatro 'on'e in commenting on thi attack,and the GernHul communique of July 6spoke expressly of a "10 'al offensiveacti 11," .Mos 'ow and the Anglo'Americanpl" ought to make it appear as theGerman ummer offensivt) and to imputefanta tic goals in order afterwurtls to beable to announce i "failure," Butalthough everything inrucated the limitednature of the German action. the lossesit call.ed to the Red Army were tre­mendous. The Uerman spearhead thrustinto an area overflowing with men andmaterial, and for the first wook (July 5

to 12) the German communique reportedthe oapture or deatruction of 1,6<l0 t-anb.1,400 oannons, llnd 1 221 planes, whilethe number of Rus ian pri oners was2 ,000 and that of Ru ian dead andwounded many times that number.\" hen the German pearhead reached itnorthernmo t point. some 60 kilometernorth of B 19orod. m t f the RU88ianforce a embled in the Kur k area h.adbeen thrown into the ba,tt1e and hadlargely been scatteren by the terrificimpact of the German attack.

If we as ume-with ju tification, web lieve-that he 'oviets had planned ttart their attack from the Kursk area.

simultaneously with the landing in Sicily,i.o.. on July 10. tbe Gerlllan attack antic­ipated th Ru iall ofIem ive by fh'e dayl:l.The annibilati n f a Red arm\' at thepoint of a ta k r t rde th R'd th.ru·ttoward Kiev to the beginnin of 'ept 111­

bel' and gave the German HifTh ('omman(ltw preoious summer tUOII h ,

"EL TIC DEFE~ F."

In an cffor t ,'e at Ie 't proftheir Kur. k armie and their ulllmerplan . the 'ovictR started a whole seriesof reLiof offen.. ives along the entire front.Th:-' show('d C'xtmordinary mobility,frequently ,han inO' the con I' of gra,ityof their attuc ks in order t gi \'C' IlO

respite to th Gorman alld hoping per­haps to find a weak ::-;pot l-lorucwhere.The German High COlllmand lIlet allthc1'c attacks with its "cia ,tic defen e.'

The German lllitz camp ign of 1 3D,.1940. and I U41 hao proved thai the 10 e'of the attacker who e armored ruvision.sweep thr ugh t.he defencl r. isolating

bim in individual groups lIud then de­stroying him, are much low I' than tho eof the d fend r. But this applies onlyto a Blitz war. Otherwi'e the old rwe·till holds go d tha.t an army attackinga well-def Ilded area over all extendedperiod suffer far higher losl>es tha.n thedefender resisting him from his fortifica­tions,

Even more unfa.vorable does the situa­tion become for the attacker when the

THE SUMMER WAR 363

deteriorate i11t panic and flight or isaffe ted in it m rule. Both these con­ditions were pre cnt fOl th 'ermanHigh Command 011 the Ea tern }'ront.

FIVE RED RELIEF OFFE1\SlVI,S

] nord r to relje"e their armi . wruchw re being hamm r d by the G rman inthe Kursk bul 'C, the oviet. initiatedfive great relief offen 'ive' withill thel'pnce of two weeks:

Starlin~ Dates of the Soviet Relief Offensivesin July 1943

Oryol

Our map ~how.' that the l:ertlHU1 10 i­t.ion ill the Oryol area jutted out fartoward the ea. t. Hence the '0 iet HighCommand endeavored by an attack fromthe north and th south at tho nan-owe tpart of the bulge to cut off the Germ narmy at Oryol and to inflict upun it a'C 'oml •·talingrad. The battle of Oryolrepre. ell t, t he fir·t f 8e\'eral attemptmudo lJy the Hcd Army in th' summerand autumn of IU·13 to cncircle n. Germanarmy. ]n spito of tremendou effortsand sacrifices, it wa no moro u os fulthall the sub equent ones, as the Germau.advantageou Iy mployed thoir elastictactics. The Soviets finally tool recourseto frontal attacks from the ea,'t, 1'1) thatthe lJattlo raged un all threo frunts oft.hi· Germa.n outpOEt. In the \'ery firstdays a' many as 2:! infnJltry divisiollsand !I armored brigades of th RedArmy were already inyolvcd. and duringt,ho following weeks new divi ioIUl con­l:itantly replaced those that had beenbled white. The,' "iets thrcw altog therII armies intu the Lattle fur Oryolwruch according to German c1ajms, suf­fered total losses amounting to iOO 000dead, wounded, llnd prisoners.

During thc cntire battle the Germantroop' kept th railway line Oryol/Bryan k op n. When the Red armiesfinally ent.eroo Oryol on August 6, theGerman soldier had left and the Soviets

defender employs clastic ta.cticfl. Thesetactic a.void clinging to anyone point,only holding it I ng enough to inflicthigh 10 e on th enem. at comparativelylow sa.critice on the part of one's owntr 0P/ol. A long af' hi own fortificationsar intact and offer adequate protection,the d fend r repul e. the enemy 8 attacks.When hi" defen. work are de troyedin th COllI" e of t he battle, ho movesba k to new, intact pO!~itions, thu forcingthe cnemy to start, his exhaustin , effortsall over again. When the •'ovict -thisi happening again and again oncen­trato hundred of batterie in a maUa.rea in order to plow up u. certain Ger­man sector with a hailstorm of "hellsand U;us to open up a path for theirattacking tanks amI infantry formatioJls,tho Germans can do one of two thing.Either they can patiently bear th bar­ra'e L nd attempt to repulse the en uingatt.a k with the sun'i"ing oldjer.. (Thisis what usuaIJy happened during the(:1' t Wa.1' el'p cilllly along the \\'e ·ternFront. where til re were no largo areasavailabl for man 'uv >ring.) Or. and thisi part of the ·In tic tactics. they callwithdraw from the threatcned !5ectorwholl the bunagc begins, so that theen my'!> tire goef> into empty }J /olitionsfllld the following waves of tank andinfantry IUell ha.\' no ad"antage of theprcviou' artillery pI.' paration hut Illeetwith an opponent wh ,having withdrawnin time from tbe area of bombardment,il'\ intact when the attack reaches him.

Tho !5ix month of fighting on theK ulJan hridgehelld (A pril -1 to October

, 1!l43) pro\'t'. that the German l:ioldier'ould ha e held thc various ceton; ofthe front much longer if rus leaderslmd dClI1lUJdcd it, uf him. But they didnot d Oland it, becau8e they were con­Jucting the umn er war according to adjff rent plan.

'J'here are two conditions required forthe employment of elastic defense: first,large areas in whieh it iB possible to re­treat dozens or even hundreds of kilo­meters without invit.ing catastrophe; andlleCondly, an excellently trained armythat does not allow months of ret,mat to

Or\"olKuual1MiU!l ..Middle DOllolsVC'likiyo Luki

July laIti171822

364

captured little beyond an empty pile ofdebris. By August 15, the Germall8 hadevacuated the whole bulge of Oryol andtaken up positions in the Bryansk area.(An attack made on Bryansk from thenorth by the Reds in July had, apartfrom the occupation of Kirov, led tonothing.)

Kuban

The relief offensives on the Kubanwill be dealt with later.

Mi'U8

The Red relief offensive at the ~fius

front (the Mius is a small river flowingint·o the Sea of Azov at Taganrog), whichran in an almost straight line fromGorlovka to Taganrog, wa carried outin two groat thrusts on July 17 and 28.Its aim was to outflank the DonetsBasin (Donbass), with its great industrialcentors, from the south. The fir t attackwa mado by an army of 1 0,000 menand 00 tanks. On August 2, after having10 t about haJJ of their tr op and 90per cent of their tank , the Reds had togive up. The front line remained thearne as before the attack. It did 110tuit the plan of the German High Com­

mand t-o retreat at that time: the sectorhad till to be held in order to com pleteth dcstru tion of the Donba and bringin the han'cst of the kraine. Taganrogwas not ovacuated until August 30.

M iddle Don~.t3

Here the Soviets posses 'ed two bridge­heads on the ri Tht (western) bank of theriver from the time of their winter offen­sive. Their bridgehead 11 t Balakleyathreatened Kharkov from the south, andthat at Izyum wa a threat to th Donbasfrom tho north. Although they batteredthe German positions for weeks, the Redswere unable to get anywhere. The onlything they succeeded in was the formingof two further smaU bridgeheads, thatof lavyansk on August 8 and of Chu­guyev on August 12.

Velikiye Lub

The large-scale Red offensive startedhere on July 22 with two armies was

direeted westward at Nevel and 80uth­ward at Smolensk. Although the fightingcontinued here almost without inter­ruption, the Russiall8 were unable fortwo months to gain any territory what­ever. At this point, at which the Redsstood further west than anywhere else,the German High Command did notemploy elastic tactics. It wished toprevent an advance of the Reds in thedirection of the Gulf of Riga and firmlywarded off aU Red attacks.

THE nasT RED BREAK-TaROUOH

Exactly n month had passed since thebeginning of the German panzer thrusttoward Kursk. In place of the batteredoriginal army at Kursk, the Soviets hadbrought up a. new one and b gan anattack toward Belgorod on August 4.This attack led to the fir t of the twobrea.k-throughs which the Sovi ts suc­ceeded in effecting in the cour e of thesummer of 1943. On August 5 theyentered Belgorod, and \\ithin a weekthey ad\'anced a far a Akhtyrka. adistance of 125 kilometers. During thisweek they captured an area about aslarue as the bulge of Oryol, an area ex­tend.ing between the town of Belgorod.Krasnopolye, Akhtyrka, and Kra nokut k,and rmLching as far as the outskirts ofKharkov.

Tho German armies in and aroundKharkov fOWld themselves in a criticalpo ition. In Krasnokutsk the Red troopsstood 80 kilometers to the west of Khar­kov. Had thoy succeeded in makinga turn toward the south, Kharkovmight well have been cut off. Hutthe break-through was immediately andcompletely intercepted. Part of the• oviet spearhead was slI.rrowlded andde. troyed; the rest got stuck. Our maphows that in the following twenty days

from August II to 31 the Soviets wereonly able to gain a strip along the westernand southern fronts of the BelgorodlAkhtyrka wedge. The break-through hadcome to nothing, and the danger ofKharkov being cut off had pal sed. Theevacuation of Kharkov could be carried.out in perfect order by August 23.

THE SUMlIER WAR 366

The next offen i\~e which the Sovietsstarted from the Vyazma area on August7-westward toward Smolen k and south­ward toward Bryansk-met with stub­born German resistance and hardly pro­gressed at all. Up to the end of themonth it gained only a narrow striJr­Dogorobuj, Yelnya, and J izdra.

TIlE POSITION O~ SEPTEMBER 1

If we look at the development of thesummer war up to September J, 1943,that is after almORt two months of themost violent fighting, we see--a glanceat the map is enough to show this-that.apart from the two areas of Oryol a.ndBelgorodjAklltyrkajKharkov, the Sovietsonly made a few smaU territorial gainsalong the entire front betwoon Dogorobujand Taganrog. At three places-nearVelikiye Luki, at the sector RylskjSumy,and in the lJonbass-the front did notchange at all.

It is an obvious conclusion that, aslong as the German High Commanddeemed it ne as ary. it was quite aLle towithstand the Soviet offensive, takingthe front as a whole. By a skillfulemployment of elastic tactics, it hadacl:tieved three things with a mjnimumof German losses: it had inflicted tre­mendous losses in men and material 011

the Soviets; it had gained two monthsin wWch to carry out a scorched-earthpoticy and either transport industrialequipment from areas behind the frontto the west or destroy it; and it hadafforded the Ukrainian- peasants enoughtime to gather in the harvest and start\\;th their cattle on the westward trek.

10 the southern Ukraine and in theCrimea, the grain harve. t starts in themiddle of July. '\'\lith eaoh degree oflatitude toward tbe north, the harvestbegins a little later owing to the harsheretiOlate. However, in the actual grainarea between the Black Sea and Chernigovharvesting is completed by the end ofAugust. If the Soviet war communiqueof September 10 mentions tbe captureof 400 freight cars loaded with grain atSlavyansk, Le., the easternmost point ofthe German front, we can be sure that

at that time many thousands of carloadsof Ukrainian grain were rolling westwardto Europe, far beyond the grasp of theSoviets.

A MONTH OF EVAOUATION

On September 1 began the large-scaleGerman withdrawal. During the firsttwo weeks of September tbe Donbasswas evacuated, the front being takenback to the line LyubotinjBerdyansk,wl:tich shortened it to two thirds of thelength it had had on September 1. Atthe beginning of September, after a delayof two months, the great thrust of theRed armies from tbe Kursk area in thedirection of Kiev also finally began.TlliB thrust, which in two weeks broughtthe Red armies from the line H.ylskjSumy to Nejin (210 kilometers), was thesecond and last successful break-throughof the Soviets in the course of the summercampaign. It gave them considerableterritorial gains-the whole triangle eastof the line BryanskjNejinjPoltava-butnothing else. The Soviets were just aslittle able to exploit it as, one monthbefore, the break-through of BelgorodjAkhtyrka. In no case wd it lead to theencirclemcnt of German units.

Elsewhere the front of September J5hardly ditlered from that of September J.The German defense positions of Nevel,Smolensk, Bryansk, and Poltava/ValkijKrasnograd had with ,toad all lU;sault .

How little the Soviets were able tomake use of the break-through of SumyjNejin can be seen by a comparison of thecourse of the fronts of Septembel' 15 andOctober 1. Our map shows that duringthis period the Germans took back theentire front from Velij to the Sea ofAzov in an almost uniformly wide strip.Thus during the second half of Septemberthe Soviets did not succeed in effectinga single deep break-through, and onOctober 1 the {ront, though 100 to 125kilomoters further west, ran practicallyparallel to that of September 15.

AT THE KUBAN BRIDGEHEA.D

At about this time the evacuation ofthe German-Rumanian bridgehead at the

TBB XXth CENTURY

mouth of the Kuban River took place.When the European armies withdrewfrom the North Cauoasus area in January1943, they retained a bridgehead of somethousands of square kilometers. It cov­ered the swampy lowlands of the Kubanand the mountainous Black Sea coastsituated between the Sea of Azov andthe Black Sea. During February andMarch, the Reda had concentra.ted strongforces which, starting on April 4, 1943,they hurled against the comparativelysmall German-Rumanian army in fivegrea.t offensive. The dates are :

First Kuban Batt,le April" to 7• ond .. April 14 to 17Third.. April 29 to May 10Fourth .. May 26 to JUDe"Fifth July 16 to Auguat 12

The for os used on tJIe Soviet sidewere immense. The fifth offensive wasbegun with 17 infantry divisions, 2armored brigades, and 3 armored regi­ments. In one day (Sonuay, Augu t 8),a single German division was attackedby 742 Red plane. The German andRumanian troops were supplieu by . eo.and air as well as by a cable-car line builtby German sapper across the Strait ofKerch.

As long as the GerlUan armies wereRtill fighting in the Donbass, the Kubanbridgehead hau to be held in order toprevent a Soviet offensive in the Crimea,in the rear of the Germ8J1 southern army.But once the Donbass had been evac­uated, there was no longer a.ny reasonnot to evacuate the Kuban. The evacua­tion began on SepteDl her 13 a.nd wascompleted by October 8. Three dayslater Berlin announced that in the courseof six months the recapture of the bridge­head had cost the Soviets 21 infantrydivisions, 12 infantry brigades, and 12tank divisions, and that in dead aJone(335,000) they had lost more than theentire German-Rumanian army on theKuban had numbered.

DATTLE ON THE DNlEPR

On October 1 the front stood outmore clearly than it had for over a year.It ra.n in an approximately straight linefrom • eveI via Gomel to Loyev, from

where it followed the Dniepr as fa.r asZaporojye and. thence along the Oerma.nbarrier position to Melitopol. On thewhole, the two armies were separa.tedbetwoon Loyev and Zaporojye by theDniepr. However, the Germans still hadfour bridgeheads on the left bank of theDniepr-opposite Kiev, at Dnieprodzer­djinsk, Dniepropetrovsk, and Zapol'ojye.

Throughout the month the battle ragedalong the line of October I. The mainendeavor of the Soviets was to encirclethe German armies in the great Dnieprbend, that is, in the triangle Kiev IKherson/Zaporojye. For this purposethey wanted, first of all, to encircle Kievfrom the northwest by attempting tobreak through the "wet triangle," whichlies between the confluence of the Pripetand the Dniepr. Up to November 1 theyhad not succeeded in this, although the.vlost large units in this battle which werecut off here by the Germans and an-nihilated. I

Secondly, the Red armies attemptedto crush the German armies in th Dnieprbend by forming Btrong bridgeheads onthe western bank of the river. Duringthe first half of October they succeededin gaining their most important bridge­head 80uth of Kremenchug, and duringthe second half of the month another oneBooth of Dniepropetrovsk. But the Ge.-­mans prevented the ex pansion of thesebridgeheads towa,rd Krivoi Rog, andOctober came to an end without any­thing of importance having occurred inthe Dniepr bend.

Thirdly, the Red desired to close inaround the Dniepr bend from the south.They attempted to achieve this goal bymaking fronta.l attacks on the Germanbarrier position of Zaporojye/Melitopol.From the second half of September on­ward, they hurled countless divisionsagainst the 110 kilometers of this front.But it, was not until October 14 and 15that the German High Command, faith­ful to iu principle of 8paring its owntroops, evacuated the two pivots ofMelitopol and Zaporojye, thus openingto the Red armies the road into thesteppe between the Jower reache8 of the

THE SUMMER WAR 367

Dniepr and the Black Sea" After theoccupation of Zaporojye the Soviet,s werein cont.rol of th entire left bank of themiddl Dniepr.

In the northern part of the front theReds, in spite of extremely bitter fightingwhi h b gan on 0 tober ,also madeonly minor territorial gains, capturingNev I and Liozno.

Thus the front of ~ovcmher J show donly negligible changes compared to thatof 0 tober I. The great mO\7 ment ofwithdrawal arried out by the GermanArmy during 'eptember had for the timebeing been halted.

'fH E )JEN IN CUAJWE

As far as can be glmmed from thearmy communiqu6:-, the thrcc om­mand I of the German Ea. tern Frontduring the past summer \rerc Field~arshal Georcr \'OD Kiichl r for thenorthorn Hoctor, Field Marshal Giinthel'YOIl Klug f I' the entral cct r, andField Marshal Frit,z Erich yon Man teinfor tho southern tor. The dofen of theKuban blidg head wa. lind I' the com­mand of olonel General Ewald VOII Kloi ·t.

Tho oviet haye tlivicl d their armieshetwe n \ elikiye Luki and the Cauc uinto nine ·'frunt.<l" as they call themwhich-going from north to south-arecommanded by Ule following generals:Genera'! Yeremenko (Kalinin Front);General Sokolov ky (W tern Front);Ueneral Popov (Bryansk Front); GeneralP.,Ok08sovsky (Central Front); GeneralVatutin (1st Ukrainian Front); GencralKoney (2nd llkrl1.inian Front); GeneralMo.l.inovsky (:3rd Ukrainian Front); ('olonelGeneral Tolbukhin (4th Ukrainian Front);Colonel General Petrov (orthern au­casus Front). Over them are "for theco-ordinati n of the fronts a repre8onta­five of th Supreme Command" (in thewords of the Soviet communique) theManmals Vasilevsky, Voronev. Jukov,Timoshenko. and Air Marshals Uolovanoyand Nomov.

SOVIET FIG BES ON rBlSO~ERS

The Soviet and Allied press has fre­quently ridiculed the German claim that

the front was being taken back 'accordiJlgto plan." But the oviets themselveshave given daily proof in th ir reportson the course of the summer war thatthe German withdro.wal was actuaU a,planned movement, We shall thison subjecting the oviet war r por ,including the daily official arm com­munique i ned by the o,i t Bureauof Information, to a thr fold anal sisunder the hoading of: German pri 'oner ,. 'oviet civilians, and scor hed-earth policy.

On compo.ring tho COUl',' of the twosummer campa.igns of 1941 and J943,which were conducted in the area b ­tween Velikiye Luki and the Black Sea,one is ·truck 'pc ially by one fact: illcontrast to the Germo.n offclIsi \'c of 1941,with it numerous ucc s. ful battlc ofencirclement (shown in the map wepu blished on page I 10 in our i sueof Augu tj ptemb·r 1942). the 'ovietHigh Command did not RUCC d evenonce during the ummer of 1!14:3 in n­circling German unit. Th(' Red 'uc­ceeded n ither in achievincr th break­throu h from Yclikiye Luki to th Gulfof Riga (:180 kilomet rs), which had beenhoped for in the Allied camp an I whi hwould have cut off the German armie.in Estonia and at Leningrad; nor in en­circling Oryol; nor in cutting off thoeastern Ukraine by a thrust from Kharkoyto the Dniepr. ot one were the Oer­man Ijnes ruptur tI, not even when theywere as dangerou Iy extended ru afterthe Sumy/Nejin break-through in mid­September.

The Red Army lacked neither troopsnor weapons for the carrying out of 'uchlarge-scale, bold operations lLnd for en­circling action; but it did lack the pI' perlea.der ·hip. Addetl to thia wa the factknown already from the Great Wnr, thatthe Russians are not able to carry utwedge attackl:l with the same determina­tion and succ . as the Germans, Ru ianwedges being notoriously susceptible ontheir flank!. Moreover, the GermanCommand did not once lose sight of thedevelopments as a whole, did not allowits actions to be dictated by the enemyand, in critical moments, possessed the

388 THE XXth CENTURY

A comparison of German figuree ofSoviet prisoners taken in the first fourmonths of the summer campaign of19.1 with Soviet figures of German

prisoners takenin the first fourmonths of thesummer cam·paign of 1943shows that theSoviets lost 36times as manyin 1941 88 didthe Germans in1943

necessary power of decision and the re­serves to deal with major threats. Afterthe Soviet break-through from Belgorodto Akhtyrka, for instance, it saved thesituation by mighty thrusts into thesouthern flank of the Red wedge and bythrowing into battle an air fleet of morethan 1,000 machines a day (August 11to 16).

Even according to Soviet figure3. thenumber of prisoners taken by them isin no relation to the f:1ize of the territorialgains. The Soviet communique of No­vember 5 claims tha,t during four months(July 5 to November 5) the Red Armyhas taken an average of 790 prisoners and18 tanks a day. This communique ex­pressly states that "more than half of theprisoners were wounded." If we take"more than half" to mean 60 per cent,we find that the Soviets have only beenable to capture a daily average of 316unwounded German soldiers in a cam­paign which has brought them hundredsof thousands of square miles of territory.This astonishing fact supplied by theSoviets themselves-who, we can besure, have published the maximum figures-allows but one conclusion: the Germanarmies withdrew with unbroken moraleand in complete order. For wbat thefigures of prisoners look like when anarmy does not retreat according to planhas been shown by the millions of PolishFrench, and Red prisoners and the hugequantities of booty taken during theGerman campaigns of 1939/41.

El'tlPTY LAND

In the Soviet telegrams reporting onthe situation in the recaptured territory,

we frequently read statements such asthe folloWing:

"After our entry into Jizdra we foundafter long searching a few dozen in­habitants of the town." (Jizdra had apopulation of 15,000 before the war.)Or: "One day after our entry into Kara­chev no more than 150 inhabitants couldbe assembled." (Karachev had a popula­tion of 30,000 before the war.) OnSeptember 1, Tass reported that the Redunits reoccupying Kharkov had beengreeted by 25,000 inhabitants, and onNovember II that Kiev now had apopulation of a little over 100,000. (Be­fore the outbreak of the war, the twocities together had 1.7 million inhabit­ants.) The army communique of Sep­tember 21, reporting the capture of 270towns and villages in the Gomel areaand 250 in the Poltava region on theprevious day, simultaneously announcedthe liberation" of 100,000 and 20,000Soviet civilians respectively. And com­pared with the communiques on otherdays, these figures are exceptionally high.As a rule, the figures of "liberated"Soviet citizeus amounted to only a fewhlUldred or a few thousand.

What has happened to all the otherpeople who used to live in these denselypopulated rich areas? The number ofcivilians evacuated by the Soviets in1941 was not large on account of thespood of the German Blitz advance. Onan average, the civilian population duringthe German occupation probably amount­ed to some 65 to 80 per cent of theprewar population. (For example: ac­cording to a Japanese correspondent,Kiev still had a population of 600,000in the winter of 1941/42.) The fact thatit dwindled to only a fraction by the timethe Reds returned means that the ma­jority moved off with the German troops.

Of course, the Soviets claim that theGermans forced the civilian populationto evacuate. But we believe tha.t evenwithout compulsion there were reasonsenough for the people to evacuate. Thisapplies especially to the population ofthe Ukraine, which has always been moreopposed to Bolshevism than the Great

THE SUMMER WAR set

RUBSian population. (It is revealing tonote that in the example given above,the number of people "liberated" in the250 places of the Ukrainian Poltava zoneWal' only 20,000, while in the 270 placesof the Gomel area, which doe not belongto the Ukraine, it was 100,000.) Peoplewho had been living for two years withoutthe terror of the GPU and the politicalcommissars had no desire for the restora­tion of the Bolshevist rogime, all themore 80 since they could well imaginewhat would happen to many of them assoon a they feU into Bol hevist hands.Those who during the German occupationhad continued to carryon their workand had co-operated with the Germanauthorities had to count on being accusedof treason. They had to look forward toa fate similar to that of those inhabitantsof Kra nOOM who, according to a Tal' port of July 19, were executed on thetown square, in the presence of 30,000W rklllcn and peasants (a' embled espe­cially for this plupose), "for trea on duringtbe time of occupation."

The fact that the majority of theSovi t civiliam were able to evacuate intime, in pite of the rapid advance of theRed!'!. CJ:lpecially during ptember i afurther proof that thi' evacuution \Vaexecuted by the German well in advance.

d CORCHED EARTH'

The Bolsheviks were tbe first to carryout the scorched-earth policy in Europein tho surumer of 1941, and were proudof it. Let us recall the appeal made byKalinin, tho Pre ident of the USSR,shortl after the outbreak of the war andbroadcast to the entire population of the

oviet Union:'Vhen tho en my advan ,o\'orything of value

IUllilt be detroyed. One must not lot oneself bedi turbed bv the thought that those are valuescreated by tis. There ill no room for .pity or regretin such CU8CS. To destroy everythrng, to leavenothing beh.ind for the enemy, that ill true pa­trioti m!

This is what Italian correspondents hadto sayan November 1, 1941, regardingthe ra ults of the Soviet scorched-earthtactics:

In every sootor oocupied by the GermanArmy, towns and villages have been razed to

the ground by tho Sovietc before the'r ~t.In Lomberg. Przemyu, Nikolayev, ~nd Kiev thererelD&ins nothing but a m&88 of rums.

Villages through which [we] p&88Od are nolonger villages but mounds of ruins.

Before lea\'ing [Kiev] the So\;ets cleared th&city out from top to bottom. For a few days ...mine.s exploded overy minute. Flames seemed tobe sweeping over the whole city.

The German Army has now employedthe scorched-earth policy learned fromthe Reds, and countle oviet war re­port· agree that they have done thiswith unparalleled thoroughness. Ofcourse, it is impo 'sible to teU afterwardswhat destruction is due to fighting andSoviet bombs and what is the result of"scorched earth." But the Red preBSfrequently contain admi ions that every­thincr of milit-an' use in the wideet senseof tile words-":railway bridges. dams,power plants, coal mines. etc.-has beendemolished; and we constantly find sen­tences uch as the follo\\-in :

Of the 43 sugar fMt()rie in the' Kursk lUld Sumydistricts, only one h68 remained.

The less heavily dama ad coal min of th&Donbl18S will probably not be ablo to rOllurne pro,duction till Ill+!. th moro seriously dama adone not till tile end of 19·15 at the very ourliest.

1n Jizdra nothing at all haa romainad-n?t asinglo wall, not.. ingl~ cb.ilDn~y, not a sl/lglofoundation. It looks as tf a hurrICane of fIre hadpassed through here with unimaginable vehomence.

The dilltrict around the sLation of Smolensklooks as if it had been hit by a gigantic hammer.

What i deci ive i the fact that thSoviets them elves always emphasize thatthi' destrll tion was carried out accordingto plan and without interference. Soviettelegram report, for exampie. thatthe Germans fiercely defended tbe tOWIlof Stalino in order to gain time for itRcomplete de truction; that they tore outrails and took them away (e.g.. on thKharkov/Lyubotin line); indeed, that theyeven removed telephone and telegra.phwires from tbe post and ca.rried them off.

Any European b lieving in the futuroof a united, sound and prosperous Europemust suffer at the thought of the destruc­tion of objects of material and culturalvalue durincr tho present war. Althoughas a Frenchman or a German he willmourn more than anything else thedestruction taking place in his ownoountry, as a Europea.n he will also

370 THE XXtb CENTURY

deplore the demolition oc IIrring in theother parts of his continent. Tho whohave nQt abandon d the hope tbat theEuropean part of the • R will, in piteof t nty-six year of Bolshevist rule,one day again join bands with in tead offighting against Europ mu t regard thede tru tion entailed by the war in the etcrritorie a,' a I .~ not only for Ukrain­ian. ulld Ru sians but fur a.1I Europeans.

Sl'PPLJE A RO THE \VA TE'

For the 'o"i t· th corcbed-earthpolicy has brought with it not onlyserious damage to their national economybut nl 0 extremely IUlfn.vorable 'onse­quellces for th ii' condllct of the war.During the first two !-lummers of theOerman-Soviet war, the Red Army h8,dthe advantage of being ubi to withdrawinto a, territory who e entir 'y tem ofcomnllJllicat,ion' a well f\ all it inhabit.edplac(J~ and uldu:>trial plant· werc intact;whil wit.h ev rv kilometer whi h tbeGerman armies a'dvanceu m re land laidwa to by tho O\iets was put betw onth£' front and the German l:\upply center,

]n th umm('r of J943. however. itwas t,h 'o\;et who advanced into aregion of des lation. _;\nd if. a we haveseen, t.hey con idera bly I'In.cken d the"peed of their advance niter October J,lhe reason is to be found not only Ul theGerman re~istan('e, in th rain and mudof !\,lItumn, or in the pr('Rence of theDniepr, but alRo in the great difficultiest,he :::loviets enconntered in supplyingtheir tr ops after cros -ing the wido beltof deflfllation left behind by the Germantroops. Considerable time is requiredfor l' toring the lines of communicationof this territory uffieientl,) for the needsof t he front, Even the people to do thework of reconstruction mu<:t tirt bebrought into those areas, Meanwhile,the l:erman air force has rganized train­hunting units, who e spe ial task it i todestroy the railway lines restored by the:::loviets and the traills moving on theselines.

In the coming winter t.he consequencesof the scorched earth will make them­selve' felt more than ever, a the Soviet

armies have been deprived of the shelt rwhich they were aeeu tomed to have illthe territon hitherto held by them,

THE RED RE EJl\'ES

On the dl~y war broke out \\ ith C r-man , the .' viet ni n had. includingtil Bahic tates and the PoLi b regionoccupied shortly before, a population ofabout 190 million people. Bllt by thenutumn of 1942 as a result of t h aban­doning of va t area' with .core ofmillions of inhabitants and t h 10. fmillions of casualties Hnd pri 'onel', ithad lost n large part of this number.

The world ha: been wondering withllmazement whenc ~'talin has been ableto obtain the va t quantities of menwith whom he has for the la:-t vcar beenondueting ofJensiv . who~ 10:;; are

the highe t vcr known in hi!'t ry. Inview of the ignificance pos es. d f r thfurther cour e of the war by thi' "miracle 'of •'oviet reser,es we mu t ~a v a fewword on t.hi· ubjeet. '

The lower the standard of living main­taineo by a population, the higher i" thepercentage of onscription 011 which itgovernment cnn count and \'ice versa.To give an example: in a primitive negrotribe the entire adult male populationcan go off to war, but in a highly devel­oped country, ay in the C '.-\. a largepercentage of the male population mu tnecel:\sarily be excluded from conscriptionsince it is required for maintaining theextensive and compUcated apparutus ofeconomics, administration, culture. enter­tainment, etc, This gives u the fir. tanswer to our que tion as to where theReds find their reserve: the ' viet GO\'­

ernment benefit by the low tandard ofliving prevniling in its country.

Furthermore, the oviet Union i~ farmore rothless in its e nseripting metbods.It calls up younger men than any otherarmy; it is employing 8. growing numberof women among tbe fighting troops; a.ndby placing even children in factories­in contrast to other belligerent tates­it frees adults for military purpose. (0far the Soviet-s have carefully tried to

THE UMMER "fAR 371

\VB T TffE SOVIET PAID

Four montll after the commencementof the summer war Berlin publishedfigure which reveal the enormous pri ethe oviet. have had to pay for the ter­ritory they have I' captured.

Soviet Losses from July 5 to November S,1943

Th num b I' of ~o\' iet pril'lonerR t ken..eem" small compar d to thl:' milliOlls ofprisoner,; taken in tho :summer of I !l41;but it if' larae if on h 0.1':' in mind thattl.tis time it \Va the Heds and not theGermans who wore making thc otfell i\'c.It relative 'ize is xplain tI by th facttha on s v ral 0 (',I ions tron 1 cdspearheads w I' cut off by the G rmanarmies a.nd encircled. This i.. what hap­pened. for instanc . t tw division,; atIzYUlll in miJ-. ugu ·t. to the F lIIrth<:uards' Tank Corp' northwe.. t: of Khnrkovtoward the end of .\ugu,,;t. and to twodi"i,iolls in th "wet Iriangle" in mi 1­Octohcr.

A' rl'gard' the 'number f wound dand d d 'o\'i t oldi 1'8 w mll·t rc­membOl' that fOl' four months the I edArmy cell. ele Iy hurled di"illion afterdi\isiun into the fire of th l:ermanposition, and that thc elastic tacti 'I'

employed by the Cermans ontuiled a.maximum of losse fOl' the attack 'I'.

The 0 tober battles auscd pa.rticularlyheavy losses to the Reels. According toGerman calculations, they !'!utl'>red dlll'ingihis month 340,000 en ualti OJI the frontwe t of ~molcn k. allli 400,000 casmdtieon the KievjMelitopol front.

After the 0 cupati n of very maj I'

town, the 'oyiet pre s publisheR the mUllesof tho~e divisions which haye particularlydistiugui 'hed them 'elve in apturing it.The length f these lists (23 divisions,not counting many other unit , in thecase of 'molen k alone) how the enol"mous ize of the Red force hurledagainst the German defense ,

avoid one mistake: they have not com·binetl _oldiers inferior either ph.\ sicallyor in tmining-such as very young orVCI'Y old ones-in large units but havealway' tlistributed them a,lllong goodtro p in ortler merely by their number::<to well the quantitative superiority oft.he Hed infantry.) The, ovietR ure alsosaid to have imported a large Llumber ofChinese laborers.

1\nd finnlly, the coli ·ti viza Lion ofvi t agri 'ulture carried out fourteen

ycal's ago ha' now provod itself to hayb 'en a, mea,~ure of military im partance.fa.cilitl-~ting n. it d the con cription ofthe pea"ant popuJation for the army orfor industrial purpo es. If. for instance.J00 a ble· bod ied men are called up ou t ofJ 3U wOl'kin' in a. village con-i. ting ofsma II fn I'ms of the pro-collecti vizat,iontype. t.hi. \'illagc ·uller. lUor' t.han alal'~c agricnltural ent rpri;: would at the10'-':' (If two thirtl.· of its uhle-bodioJ men.For in til latter CfLe th work can bIIIUrL' n:<ily di"t ri IJU ted umon cr the 1'0'

III inin hunds.

On thin' i~ c rtain: n ither HritiJ'hnor Am riean troopR han- :<0 fur beenu:<ccl on th' :-';uvi t front. 1n 'cptcmberJ!l-l:~ thcr(' was a cont.ro\·c.'.·y hctweentil _'lIvi ·t,s and thcir allie.. on 'thi' point.\r h 'n t,ll :\ nglo-American pr.;; \\Totet hat the.' viet nion was to blame forth fact th Lt no Allied troop had appearedon the En t rn Front, the 111 t outJ poken,'oviot periodical, War and lhe LaborClas8. rctOl'ted sharply that the contrar.vW(\," tl1(' ease. The. oviet , the papertlcclal'cd. I1r\.(1 proposed to the Anglo·AmOl'i 'all~ t.ha.t tho latter should fightsh ulcler to :,hould I' with th Red Arm\',bllt the ollly an weI' had been an off~rin Ule antumn of 11J42 to station Britishail' formatioll in Ba.ku and Tilii', Thi.off I' had L en reje ted by Mo cow be­('aURe .. ther were no Cermf1D.S to fightagain!'!t in these places," (The 'oviettill do not like to hear the words "Baku"

and ".British' in conjwlction; for theyrem mber only too well how after theRevolution of 1917 the British occupiedth oil fieltl of Baku for two year andshot twenty-six Soviet commissars.)

Dead\\·onndcd'·rison ni

TonkH( 'unnon:\ irl'luJ1l'Sl\\uchilll' QUits

L3oo,OOO1,570,000

1:10.0001.2U11,52\1

10.2551,1,,199

372 THE XXtb OEN TURY

II W TAl'KS Al'D PLANES OlE

::\01. only the German ta.nk arm. butthe entire German Army has had itspa.rt in the c1estruction of the •'oYicttanks. The Luftwaffe ha contributedits share through the employment of it!antiair raft weapon and it· .. tank bu!'t­ers." phlnes specially built for combatintanks. Many Red tanks have fallenvictim to the excellent, constantly im­proved antitAnk cannons (known us"Pa,k") Hnd to t,he mines laid bv Cerman!'apper". Rut above all. the' Germaninfantryman hilS developed countIesmethod!' of fighting agaulst tunks. Inthe "dead angle," in which nono of t.heweapons of the tank CUll reach him. hework his way up to the mon ter. Throughthe smoke of smoke grenade or of hurn­ulg bundles of straw soaked UI ga oline,

r by do ing up the aperture withmud. grease. paint, or rags, he deprivesthe tan.k crew of its vision. He throw.bundl 11 of hand gr nadeR at tho ntln r­able spots of the t.ank. With an ax orcrowbar he bends the barrel of i smachin gun.. He puts wood or sandinto t,he mouths of the barrels, so thatthey bur t at t,he next shot, or he ~ t.fire to the tank with incendiary bottl .

an hour i8 far superior to the KV 88 far88 speed is concerned. For the battlesof this summer its armor was increasedin thickness.

The German armies had begun thewar in the east with fast tanks of mediumweight; but when in the course of thewar the 'oviets used more and moreheavy equipment, German industry alsobeglLll the production of heavy tanks,known as the "Tigers" and "Panther.. "No deta.ils a.re known to u concerningthese two types, both of which were usedfor the fir t time in large numbers duringthe ummer, proving more than a matehnot only for the '1'-34 but also for theKV types. According to Japanese re­ports, they seem to weigh about 50 tonsand to be equipped with 8 -mm cannonssiJnilar to the antiaircraft gun. whi·hhave proved .0 effective in the battleagain 1. the Soviet tanks.

o

• ~UVI~ I -ANICIDSSES_"'ul'f-~ S.pt.19.19~3-

000 -- - ;OCi

-- -, 1'0

a ':'0

-,too

- -400 - -400

• ," • lC - ~ '" ~ " c

SU1CO the outbreak of the German-'oviet war tho Soviets have been lI!:ling

three main types of tankfl. The KV-l(named after Marshal Klim Voroshilov)weighs 43 tons and has a 76-0101 cannon­and tho K V-2 weighs 52 tons and has a15-cm gun. (Both types a,ro natmally0.";0 equipped with machine gun.) Attho outbreak of war, the KV-2 had thehea.vie. t gun of any tank in the world.Their. ize made the KV's !"Iow.. 0 thatthey offered easy targets for the Ger­man antitank fire. Consequ ntly, thethickness of their armor wa increasedmore and more until it waf' said tohave roached 200 millimeters. i.e .. alln tthat of a battleship.

The Sovi ts call their medium-sizedtank the 1'-34. It weigh~ only 26 tonsand originalJy had an armor-plating of60 millimeter. But it al 0 carrie a76-mm cann n and with its iO kilometers

Thia chart shows I he . viet lank 10"during tho first woeks of the summer campaignof 1943 according to the figures of the GermuuHigh Command. They were highe t during thebattle in the Kursk bulge and ugain during Ihebatt ere t pho!58 of the oviet attacks against

Oryol llnd Khark v

TANKS

The exceptionally high figures of tanksdeatroyed which the German troopsachieved during the first few weeks ofthe summer war can perhaps partly beexplained by the fact that at that timethe Red Army threw a comparativelylarge number of American tanks intobattle. These tank' did not stand upwell to the German antitank defense,while the H.us!:lian mooels made a bettershowing.

THE SUMMER WAR 373

This collaboration of all availableweapons in the hands of men who inmore than four years have become mastersin tbe art of waging wa·r explains thehuge Dumber of destroyed Soviet tanks.Tbe high Red losses in tanks are probablyalso responsible for the fact that, accord­ing to German report.s of the last fewweeks, the oviets bave shifted theemphaaiB in their attacks from tanks toartillery.

Looking at the figures of Soviet planesshot down, one cannot but ask oneselfhow it is possible for tbe Soviets to loseeight, ten, or even fifteen times as manyplanes as the Germans every day. Butfor this, too, there is an explanation.The Soviet war industry is apparentlyable to produce at least as many planesas are being lost on an average. But itcan only do Ulis by sacrificing quality toquantity. The majority of the planesused by tho ~oviet. have only one motor,and the percentage of planes built ofwoorl is constantly mounting. Suchhastily produced machines are shot downby hits which would be easily survivedhy planes buiJt of better material andequipped with more than one motor.Furthermoro, t,he high num ber of planesshot down makes it necessary to replacepilot,s at such a rate that they can begiven only insuflicient training.

Seen 8.S a whole however the firingpower of the Red Army has increased"ince t,he beginning of the war. Thecmploynlent of infantry has been re­duced comparatively, while that of artil­lery, tanks, and pln..nes has been increased.The sa.me naturally applies also to theGerman Army which, moreover, possessesa number of new. very heavy weaponsuch as the "fog thrower." a single one

of which hilS the firing power of sixheavy field howitzers.

HOW MANY GERMAK DIVISIONS?

A favorite pastime among politiciansand journalists in the Allied cam p is tocalculate for each other's benefit thenumber of divi. ions Germany has at herdisposal. The Anglo-Saxons try to makeout that the Germans do not bave so

very many troops in the east, becausethey must station a large part of theirforeea in the west; while the Soviets areintent upon showing that almost theentire Gorman Army is on the EasternFront, because the military actions ofthe Anglo-America.ns have so far notresulted in any relief for the Soviet front.Stalin, who s.hould know better thanChurchill or Roosevelt, declared in bisspeech of November 7, 1943, on the oc­casion of the twenty-sixth anniversaryof the Bolshevist Revolution, that thenumber of German divisions-not count­ing Finnish, Itumanian. find other divi­sions-had increased from 179 in thesummer of 194:! to 207 in the summerof 1943. Including the non-German divi­sions. he ca.lculated the European forceson the Eastern Front to be 257 divisions.Stalin's claim that the number of Cer­man divisions on the Eastern Front hadbeen increased by 28 within a year wasa slap in the face for all tho'o Alliedcommentators who had celebrated theAnglo-America.n offensive in the Mediter­ranean as an important rclief action forthe Red Arm}.

THE EASTERN FHO!"T A~D TUK WORLD

The withdrawal of the Gcrmn,n frontin the east has had repercussions in thewhole world. First of all, it has con­siderably increased the prestige of theSoviet t:nion and of Stalin in the eyesof the British and Americans, becausethese have let tbemselves be pCI' uadedby tho ~ovict and their own propfLgandathat thil:l withdrawal represented ex­clusively an overwhelming Hed victoryand not a planned move on the part ofthe German High Command. This wasclearly rovealed in the Three PowerConference held at the end of Octoberin Moscow, after which the Anglo­Americans ceased to lay claim to anyinfluence in Eastern and Contral Euro­pean affairs.

Furthermore, the approach of the RedArmy hilS made a profound impressionon the peoples of Europe. As long as theEastern Front was deep in the heart ofRussia, many people did not feel the

374 THE XXtJa CENTURY

Bolshevist danger to be a rea.lity, and·the anti-German reactionary forces ofEurope deluded them elves with the hopethat t,hey could choose between a. Europeled by ermany and one led by theAnglo-Americans. The advance of theBol heviks, together with the diplomaticretreat of the Anglo-Americans in Mos­cow and t,hcir poor military ho\\-ing inItal) , has helped to demonstrate to allEurope that the choice lie only betweena Eur pe led b. Germany or one plungedin to chaos b Bol hevism, and that theonly thinl1 standing between them a.ndBol h \'izntiun i the vict ry of Germanarm.

In leod. we believe that even theBriti h, who e traditional enmity towardRus in. and u pici n of h l' expan.sionistambitions haTe only becn tcmporarilyilenced b.\ the common war againsterl'nany would have mu h prefcrred the

German and Soviet armie to bleed todeat.h n the line Oryol/Ta anrog thanfor th battl fr n t have moyed. vcntl hundr d kiJ meters ncarer to• ntl'al Eur pe and til Mediterranean.

Japan, it country allied to Germanyand maintaining good rclations with itslIei 7h bor the Soviet nion has beenwat hill' dey I plUent - on the Eastern1"1' nt with pe ial interest. Her at­titude ha been formulated in a leadingnrti 'le ppenring thi' ummel' in theNainichi • thimbu1/, :

From our own persollt\1 t1tl.U1dpoint we regretdeeply tlmt ur n ighbor, Russia, 18 fight,ing at theside of t he United States and Britain againstGermany and Italy. On th other hand, welJelio\'o it wllortunllle thut our IlLiiOtl. a rrolloya.nd Italy. are unablo to direct tll'ir full lJtreogthagaillilt t 110 unti·Axis Power... Uritllin lind thel1n.itcd 'tat . and ar new directing not a little\'uhmblo l>tr ngth against Hus ia.

THE BALANCE

Durin l1 the COUl' e of the ummel' warup to ·o\·ember 1943, the Soviet havegained a large territory important for itrich mineral re ources and fertile soil.

nder the conditions of war and in viewof a possible military reversal, it is doubt­ful whether the Soviets are willing andin a position to restore the industrialproduction of this territory, all the more

80 since during the last few years theyhave strongly developed their industrialareas further east. And as for thebountiful oil of the Ukraine, which isalways ready to produce grain, thehortage of man power ma£hinery, seed

and cattle wiU considerably delay theresumption of agricultural product.ion.

Only the fut.ure will show whether thisterritorial gain-and the gain in prestigassociated with it-has been worth theterrible price in Russian blood the Soviet

nion has had to pay for it. In thedilemma of having to choose bet.weenthe saorificing of territory or men, theGerman Command unhesitatingly decidedto spare the most precious thing Ger­many has the lives of German men,even if it had to sacrifice an importantterritory in doing so. It did not makethe error of holding the front under allcircum tances in a mistaken conceptionof pI' tige: relying on the excellentfighting morale and maneuverability ofthe Gcrman Army, it conducted a dif­ficult defensive ~war which made thegreate t demand on its I adership andmen. Hundred of thot ands of Ger­man soldiers owe their lives and soundlimbs to thi deci -jon.

In addition to tltis the t king backof the front has greatly all viated thGerman supply problem and enormouslyaggravated that of the Red Army. But,above all. it has forced. the Red Armyto pay so high a prio for its territorialgains that, 011 final analy i , the balan cof th.i summer i not nearly 0 favorablefor the Soviets a it appears if one onlylooks at a map.

WHAT ~ow1

The battles of the summer of 1943 arealready part of history, and the questionnow being Rsked by the wh Ie world i :What will happen now1 Does the Ger­man High Command intend to stabilize·the front somewhere in the vast tractbetween the present battle line and theGerman frontier1 Has an "East Wall"been constructed?

We do not know the answers to thisquestion. But it seems to us that it

THE SIDlllER WAR 376

would be contrary to German militaryconception to build a "Maginot Line": onthe one hand, because the German HighCommand proved by its own 8ucCess in1940 how l.ittle a Maginot Line is worthand, on the other, because, relying 88 itdoes on the superiority of the Germansoldier, it prefers a war of movement.Hence we cannot agree with those peoplewho have declared that the GermanCommand h88 fixed the Dniepr, or theDniestr, or the Carpatbi8oIl8, or whateverelse has boon mentioned, 88 the finalLimit of its movement of withdrawal.Rather do we believe that the GermanCommand intends to retain full Libertyof action aud to make its decisions onthe b~is of the prevailing situation.

For some time now the Allies havetaken a malicious ple88ure in trying totell Germany t}1at the German Blitzkrieg

strn.tegy hn.s had its day. They n.rewasting their time: the German HighCommand realized this, like so manyother things, long before the Allies. Itspresent strategy has shown, to the Allies'surprise, that it h88 quickly adapteditself to changed conditions, and that inaddition to the Blitzkrieg it also h88other military methods of warfare at itsdisposal. It adopts whatever methodseems most suitable to the pursuance ofits one aim: that of winning the war.Since the autumn of 1942, if not earlier,the German Command h88 been reckoningwith a long duration of the war. Henceits decision temporarily to conduct thewar defensively in 1943 was made withthe object of meanwhile laying the foun­dation for futuro war actions by amobilization of man power and resourceson the largest possible scale.

CARTOON OF THE MONTHBy SAPAJOU

Allied Dreams

The Summer War of 1943 on the EasternFront up to November 1

The approximate COUI'lMl of the front on the 1st of each monthia shown by a thick red line. on the 15th of each month by athin red line. The line for July 15 h&ll boon omitted &II it illpractically identical with that of July 1.

A glance at thiII map i8 sufficient to reve&J one of the mainfeaturee of the llUDUDer war: the withdrawal of the German front.was carried out. primarily during September, viz., only after thest.ubborn defelLse of July and AUgU8t had given the German HighCommand enough time to evaouate troops, war material, popula­tion. and indwltrial equipment. During October, the withdrawalonce again slowoo up.