European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE most critical summer in the history of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich opens with the new explosions of battle reverberating from the eastern front.

Consider the stakes involved for the Germans in this third knockdown encounter between the hosts of the Red Army and the reorganized might of the Wehrmacht. Upon success against the Soviet Union this year — success in fact before the end of summer — Hitler and his High Command may gamble their last hope for a peace by compromise. He must make a bold throw if Germany is to escape the consequences of unconditional defeat.

By the onset of frost it will be too late for even so modified a victory. That is evident from any reading of the storm signals flying from Scandinavia to the eastern reaches of the Mediterranean.

Hitler’s immediate objectives

The objectives set by the Nazis for the spring and summer campaign this year in the East are familiar. They consist of the goals designated for last year’s drive. The oil supplies of the Caucasus are desperately needed now to replenish the pool for the defense of Hitler’s European Fortress. The Caucasus still symbolizes, in Nazi calculations, the most vulnerable point in Russia’s defense. To capture Moscow is the other great objective: to reach it hundreds of thousands of the flower of German youth were sent vainly to their deaths during the first autumn of the war in the East. Moscow, according to Joseph Stalin, was again the main objective in the disastrous campaign whose epitaph was written at Stalingrad last year. Moscow continues to dominate the dreams and to shape the strategy of the German generals.

Attainment of these objectives would mean for Germany the establishment of a natural defense line running from the Lower Volga down to Astrakhan, around the shores of the Caspian. It would take care, for good and all, of Germany’s food supply. The careful plans for gigantic, German-dominated plantations, manned by slave labor imported from Western Europe, have already been applied to parts of the Northwestern Ukraine. Russia’s tremendous military successes last winter ripped up the greater part of this project, which was to cover the vast Don basin.

Why Hitler must gamble

Why, in the face of reverses and losses already sustained in two previous efforts to crush Russia, do the Germans insist on attempting this gamble once more? The power of Russia’s war partners is growing by giant strides every month. The threat of invasion across the Mediterranean has become a certainty. Powerful blows against Hitler’s European Fortress from the West are guaranteed by both Britain and America, and were hailed as imminent by Stalin himself in his May Day speech. Why, with such accumulating dangers in their rear — why do the Nazis and the German professional soldiers persist in the view that the sole hope for rescue of the Third Reich lies in the East?

Their reasons: —

1. Germany cannot reach either of her two other major opponents with the full weight of her armed force. She can reach Russia.

2. The strength of the United States and Great Britain is still growing. They must be deprived of opportunity to coördinate their greatest blows with Russia’s.

3. Russia, unlike her partners, has passed the peak of her military power. Stalin himself has admitted about 8,000,000 losses to date. Reports describe middle-aged men and youths in the uniformed ranks of the Soviet Union today.

4. The drain on manpower has been accompanied by a drain on food supplies in Russia. Loss of the enormous cultivated areas of the Ukraine and the Don basin has inflicted serious injury. She is depending partly on Lend-Lease food shipments from America - and these are threatened by the U-boats. German food rations today, thanks to the despoiling of Europe, are far better than even those in Great Britain.

5. Russia continues to suffer from losses of industrial plant and raw materials in territories under German occupation. The feats of Russian industry have been prodigious, and shipments of LendLease material and war equipment to Russia alone approach 40 per cent of the total distributed by the Allies around the world. But it remains true that Germany, enjoying the benefit of her own expanded war industries and of the factories, mines, shops, foundries, and works she has seized throughout Europe (amounting to a very large part of the $36,000,000,000 loot taken from the vanquished these past two and one-half years), is in a far more powerful position, productively, than her Russian opponent at this critical moment in the war.

Now or never

In Germany’s view Russia is the one important antiAxis enemy susceptible of defeat within the limited time left at Germany’s disposal. It is now or never. The question is: Can it be accomplished before Russia’s partners are ready for their countermoves along the Atlantic and Mediterranean shores of Europe?

The Germans believe it can. The Nazi directorate is working in close collaboration with the professional army men to bring off one of the most carefully planned campaigns ever devised in the Reich. While the Wehrmacht, overhauled and expanded, grapples with the task directly on the steppes of the East, three other weapons are being sharpened for the fight: manpower reserves, the full-scale U-boat offensive, and divide-and-conquer diplomacy.

German man hunt

The armed strength of the Axis in Europe this spring may not reach 8,000,000. Yet it is safe to assume that the levies drawn into the Wehrmacht and its satellite armies, as a result of the man hunt conducted in Europe since midwinter, have brought available forces close to their complement of a year ago. Reports from the Balkans — which should be taken with caution — that the Nazis have 5,000,000 men on the Southeastern Russian front, show what a tidal wave the Germans may be building up.

The huge Axis army is well found in equipment, munitions, food, and weapons. Yet it suffers from one lack which may wreck the whole strategy of the campaign: it does not have adequate air power. The demands on the Luftwaffe in the West and in the Mediterranean, occasioned by raids, active fighting, and the need for safeguarding the Continent from surprise invasion, are forcing the Germans to concentrate practically all their heavy bombers, most of their medium bombers, and half their fighters in that area. So says British Intelligence. As a result, the air battles on the Russian front disclose that the Russians have something very close to equality with the Luftwaffe in the air.

Russia’s new air strength

Does this mean that the heavy shipments of American and British planes to Russia have at last equalized the fighting strength of the Nazis and the Reds? The statement from Moscow (reaffirmed at Washington) that more planes have been shipped this year to Russia than to any other front in the world suggests a new factor on our side.

The possibility of air-borne assault in force on the extraordinarily long communications lines of the Wehrmacht, already heralded by resumption of Russian bombing raids on Eastern Germany, introduces a factor hitherto lacking in that battle area. The appearance of American Flying Fortresses and Liberators in Russia is certainly ominous for the Germans. The growing disparity between German air power and that of the Allies in every theater of the war is equally significant. Once the first flurries are finished, the trend of the great offensive in Russia may reverse Germany’s expectations.

The offensive undersea

The bulk of their military power is being thrown to the East, in the hope that Russia may be knocked out before late summer. Simultaneously the Nazis have opened their long-expected U-boat offensive in the Atlantic. Will it keep the other members of the United Nations from thundering into the Continent? Nothing so vicious as this sea war has been recorded before in history.

In early April, reports of sinkings in the Caribbean and Gulf areas — the first since the previous August — showed that the U-boats were moving to their posts or were sowing mines in areas where intensified offshore patrol makes it difficult for a submarine to operate with efficiency. The placements are now completed throughout the Atlantic area. They run all the way from the approaches to the Murmansk route above Norway to “the swing around” Capetown in the South. Main concentrations of the largest U-boat fleet ever to sail the Atlantic seem, however, to lie along the routes from the United States to Britain in the North, from Britain to Africa, and from our Eastern ports to Africa.

In spite of public assurances from Washington and London two months ago that the public would be kept better informed about the progress of the struggle against the submarines, singularly little actual news has been released. The practice of reporting only those losses known to the public because of the rescue of survivors continues. There is little doubt that unreported losses are far heavier than censored dispatches suggest.

The worst area is the 500-mile mid-Atlantic “gap" which cannot be covered by land-based planes from either side of the ocean. Since midwinter, a great number of Allied shipping losses have occurred in this “no man’s water strip" down the mid-ocean.

The German plan for postponing any major offensive from Britain (or slowing down one if it is tried) by use of the submarine is by no means a fantastic scheme. Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief of the United States Fleet, is concentrating most of his time these days on anti-submarine strategy.

In spite of every countermeasure thus far taken, the German underseas fleet is expanding. Allied shipping needs already call for convoy of between 700 and 800 cargo ships a month across the Atlantic. With the unleashing of a major assault on Europe, that number must, of course, be increased sharply.

The Truman Committee report and spokesmen for the Navy showed where our thoughts were flying when each discussed the suggestion that helicopters be used to fight U-boats.

Even with the constant stream of new submarine chasers of various types pouring from the ways, naval authorities doubt that the U-boat will be checked before late July or August. It would be rash in the extreme to discount this danger or its possible consequences on the war in Europe this summer.

Pacifying the boys at home

Diplomacy and propaganda have been favorite weapons in the German arsenal of total war since Hitler first rose to power. They still are. He is not neglecting any opportunities to employ both as supplements to the campaign in Russia.

The diplomatic problem which the Germans face as the struggle in Europe moves toward its climax is twofold. They must exert all the skill they possess to prevent alienation of their allies. They must also prepare the best possible bargaining position in case their overall war strategy, looking towards a compromised peace, succeeds.

The bustle of diplomacy has recently occupied Hitler, his generals, and his party bosses. Dr. Hjalmar Schacht and a bevy of “respectable” “conservative” pre-Hitler diplomatists have reappeared.

Finland, Rumania, Hungary, Italy, and Bulgaria have all revealed of late increasing distaste for their association with the Third Reich and weariness with the war. To placate them (without letting go the reins), Hitler and von Ribbentrop have worked out the ingenious scheme of assigning home defense tasks to the armies of Rumania and Hungary. With Bulgaria these are now given the job of organizing the Balkans, under German guidance, against invasion.

Italy’s complaints about her imminent peril from Africa have been heeded. Finland, venturing to discuss withdrawal from the war, has been disciplined to the detriment of her diplomatic ties with the United States.

The quisling governments in the vanquished states have been shown special consideration. A diplomatic drive is under way to suggest to the victims of the Third Reich that their lot, bad though it be, is better than under “Russian bolshevism.”To drive home the point, “the Bolshevik peril” is made an hourly theme of Herr Goebbels’s propaganda apparatus, all over the Continent. To rid the slaves of any false notions about possible rescue by an Allied invasion, the German Propaganda Minister is deluging Europe with pictures, stories, and radio talks about the impregnability of the coastal fortifications which are now rapidly nearing the point of completion.

But the smaller states in Europe do not expect a German victory. Portugal’s affirmation of her centuries-old alliance with Britain is clear indication of which way the wind is blowing. So are Sweden’s vigorous threats of reprisal if any more “accidental” attacks are made on her naval units by the Germans in the Baltic. So is the unmistakable growth of bitterness in Italo-German relations. Only the power of Germany in their immediate vicinity holds most of the satellites in line. The neutrals have written off the German adventure.

WHAT TO WATCH

1. Bulgaria and Turkey for possible enlargement of Nazi pressure on the Black Sea area.

2. The use of gas. Germany, heavily supplied with gas on the Russian front, may disregard British warnings.

3. Progress of the Allied sweep along the island stepping stones of the Mediterranean.

4. Sweden — the most sensitive barometer of invasion pressure in the north.