European Front

ON THE WORLD TODAY

THE isolation of the reckless Finns is complete. Russian General Govorov’s First Baltic Army, battering its way into Estonia, has cut the supply line of the ten German divisions assigned to keep Finland in the war. Russia’s Baltic fleet, long immobilized because of the investment of Leningrad and German occupation of the shores of the Gulf of Finland, now is intensifying the seaways war against Germany’s vitally important shipping in the Baltic.

Sweden finds herself in a difficult position. War in the Baltic may cut off the reduced flow of Swedish iron ore to the Reich. Nearly half the iron needed by the Nazis for their war industries is thus endangered.

Where will Russia’s offensive stop?

Estonia, Latvia, and Poland all provide a countryside admirably suited to the vast sweeping operations at which the Russians are expert. The Germans expect to stop the Russian hordes in the north at the defense line they have thrown up between Riga on the Latvian coast and Lwow in Southeastern Poland. Troops of the Soviet Union now command the two historic gates of invasion in this part of Europe — the coastal road and the approaches to the Carpathians.

But the main objectives of the Russian winter campaign are not in the north or on the plains of Poland. They are in Bessarabia, beyond the Dniester, gateway to the Balkans. Towards these goals the powerful armies of the Dnieper plunge irresistibly westward through the Ukraine. The loss of the ten German divisions encircled southeast of Kiev deals Hitler a blow painfully reminiscent of the disaster at Stalingrad last year. In 1944, however, the Wehrmacht is far less able to withstand such a calamity. The divisions being wiped out below Kiev leave a gaping hole in Germany’s military machine. The Nazis cannot fill the gap with reserves; these they no longer have.

The dilemmas of the German High Command are not limited to the Central Ukraine, where the full weight of the Russian juggernaut is now being exerted against them. While nearly 700,000 troops of the Wehrmacht are being hammered to pieces over these war-scarred plains and swamps, yet another large segment of German troops — locked in the Crimea since General Polbuhkin’s army slashed their communications last autumn — is undergoing systematic annihilation.

Bessarabia commands the doors to the Balkan Peninsula. This is the shortest route to the vitals of Hitler’s position in Eastern Europe — a fact of which the Nazis are well aware. Witness the drastic order of the German High Command, suspending all industrial rail traffic for thirty days over all lines running from the Rumanian oil fields to the Reich, to speed the accumulation of oil reserves within Germany proper.

Here is the admission that the Nazis expect to lose the southeastern fringe of their continental position — as they are now losing the northeastern fringe in Finland. This German analysis is amply justified. The deterioration of the Balkan position continues. Though crack divisions of the Wehrmacht are fighting one of the bloodiest and most vicious campaigns of this war against the Greek and Yugoslav Partisan armies, they are as far from success as ever. Balkan guerrilla bands are multiplying at an astonishing rate.

The importance of Rome

Every nation in the Mediterranean basin has Its eye on Rome. Although (as General Eisenhower pointed out before he quit Italy to assume his new command in Britain) the primary military objectives sought by the Allies in Italy have been attained, Rome is a prize equally valued — not for its military worth so much as for its political significance. The capture of the Foggia airfields, the demolition of Mussolini’s regime, the surrender of the Royal Government, the transfer of the Italian fleet, the capture of Sardinia and Corsica, and the clearing of the Mediterranean Sea completed the agenda of the Italian campaign in a military sense. Allied difficulties on the beachheads below Rome do not alter these facts.

The capture of Rome, as Hitler admits, would prove significant rather because of the “political repercussions” that would follow. For Rome is the greatest spiritual symbol in the Western World. Its fall, even prospectively, has been sending tremors of political earthquake throughout Fortress Europe, especially in Austria, Bavaria, and Spain.

Tricky Franco

The threat to Rome in part explains the rapidly developing crisis in which Francisco Franco finds himself. Spanish monarchists, industrialists, and moderates of all colors on the home scene are gathering into a common front with the masses who detest the Spanish dictator. This trend quickens as realization grows of the meaning of sharpened British and American policy. Franco’s noisome conspiracies, ranging all the way to Bolivia, are too much for the Allies to stomach.

The part Franco’s regime has been playing in furtherance of Hitler’s eleventh-hour scheme for exploding revolution and civil war in Latin America, the capture and execution of his spies at Gibraltar, the discovery of radio information services set up on the Spanish coast to aid German U-boats, the sabotage of shipping bound for England, the refusal to release Italian merchantmen held in Spanish harbors, the assaults on American and British consulates, and the move to provide Germany with huge credits to finance her industrial war needs and her espionage system — these compel action.

Franco’s belated effort to threaten the Allies with a German invasion of Spain need cause no alarm. That stratagem worked while the Germans were still in a position to execute the threat. The preoccupations of the Nazis today make it extremely unlikely that they can spare several hundred thousand troops, and the provisions these would need, to occupy Spain. Franco may not survive the spring.

Adjustments in post-war Europe

Policy and politics run parallel with the operations of war in the European theater. This is natural. As the armed struggle proceeds toward a climax and as Germany’s defeat becomes certain, every people within the United Nations family dares at last to explore the adjustments which will be needed to adapt structure and policy to the demands of altered circumstance.

Adjustment raises different issues for different nations; yet, eventually, all these issues revolve around the question of organizing tomorrow’s world. Shall this be attempted through a return to the thesis of “ balance of power ” — that old arrangement whereby one bloc of states is set off against a second, by a third which exploits the differences of both for its own benefit between the resulting wars? Or shall full and close cooperation be attempted among all states, small and large?

In Great Britain there is anxious concern about the relationships within the Empire, and equally deep anxiety about her future strength compared to her Russian and American allies. The suggestion Marshal Smuts advanced in November still reverberates: that the small nations of Western Europe be invited to adhere to the Empire as a Continental makeweight against the Soviet Union. Return to balance of power is scented — and questioned.

Lord Halifax, flying a trial balloon at Toronto to test sentiment about larger Dominion responsibility in defense and foreign policy in a more powerfully coordinated Empire, is sharply rebuked by Premier Mackenzie King. Nostalgia for balance of power is expressed specifically, and denounced. Canada prefers the Empire as it is. She would have it try full cooperation with its war partners, great and small, during the peace, as a more hopeful course. So London disavows Lord Halifax.

What does all this mean? Simply that Great Britain and her Dominions are embarked upon their historic process of confronting the imperatives of change. They are feeling their way toward decisions suitable to their joint and several interests in tomorrow’s world. Confirmed imperialists hold tight to their idée fixe. Anti-imperialists prefer a concert of collaborating peoples. No decision will emerge before the convening of the Imperial Conference at London this spring.

Where do we come in?

The policy of the United States reflects similar pressures for change. In this case, also, long-term objectives await specific definition. Immediate issues are concerned with the progress of the war itself. The appointment of Mr. Anthony J. Drexel Biddle as liaison officer between the invasion staff of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and the various underground formations on the Continent concedes the validity of demands long urged by liberal opinion. Assurances to the French at Algiers that no deals will be made with Vichy collaborationists re-emphasize this change.

The log jam is breaking in Franco-American relations. A distinct cooling of interest in the futile and incompetent Badoglio-Victor Emmanuel setup in Italy, a wise refusal to be dragged into the bootless squabble between the Polish government in exile and Soviet Russia, insistence that each nation, when liberated, must enjoy the right to devise its own government — these are straws in the wind.

Russia anticipates

Russia, like Great Britain, scans the future, immediate and distant, and spells out the riddles to her own satisfaction. The bold decision of the Supreme Soviet to reorganize the bases of Russian national defense and foreign policy by decentralizing the Soviet Union and enlarging the sovereignty of the sixteen constituent republics has left the world gasping. Well may Foreign Commissar Molotov say that few great nations would undertake such a task at such a moment. Sober scrutiny of Molotov’s program reveals, however, that the change is expected to take time, and that it has been long in the making.

Yet Russia’s decision has immediate pertinence to political facts. The granting of full control of its army and its foreign policy to each of the sixteen constituent republics is a thumping reward for wartime sacrifices. Also, it looks to the future voting strength of the Soviet Union’s national family — not, as many imagine, at the peace conference, where decisions among the victors will have to be made by agreement, but in the post-war world organization which will be instituted to carry out the pacts of Teheran.

Is this a counter to the expectations of Britain and her Dominions, whose six votes Marshal Smuts would augment by adding those of the smaller nations of Western Europe? Or is it merely a copy of Britain’s plan? Close study of the British system preceded the action of the Supreme Soviet.

The pacts of Teheran were made among three individual powers. Russia views them as agreements among equals. Foreign Commissar Molotov makes it plain that the changes adopted do not jeopardize those agreements in the least.

Thus, while anxious British imperialists seek closer integration of policy controls in a larger bloc, Russia plumps for greater loosening of bonds. The unity of her one-party system provides the cement that holds her proposed arrangement together. For the British this function is performed by the Crown. In keeping with its own political characteristics, each power seeks greater internal strength and external security.

A key to these differences in approach is found among the small states on the Continent. Wide-awake now to the approach of liberation, and preoccupied by an enigmatical tomorrow, each lifts its voice, whether through the underground press or through its spokesmen in exile, demanding freedom and retention of its sovereignty. Each is warning the great Allies that post-war collaboration in a partnership which recognizes the cultural, historical, political, and economic rights of all members will be more fruitful than duress in any form.

Russia’s constituent republics are of assorted sizes. To them she is redispensing sovereignty. Is the decentralization she has undertaken made with an eye to the smaller powers? As an invitation? The blasts in the Moscow press against the Polish government in exile, against Franco Spain, against the Vatican’s past relationships with Fascism, against “Fascist remnants” in Britain and America, lend point to these questions.

Germany takes punishment

From more than 500 airfields, covering 390 square miles of Britain, the Western Allies are hurling almost 3000 sorties of battle planes and bombers daily against Germany on the Continent. No fantasy of aerial war conceived by Mr. H. G. Wells at his most imaginative can match the reality of this tornado.

The German High Command assumed that the advent of the invasion hour would find the Allies concentrating air power against the invasion coast. The Nazis were so sure of this that they preferred to withhold fighter defense planes to protect war industries in the Reich until the zero hour arrived. That is why many Allied “softening up” raids on the invasion coasts are almost unchallenged.

But it becomes clear that the RAF and its partner, the United States Eighth Air Force, possess sufficient strength to continue the city-by-city devastation of the industrial Reich while blasting ever more formidably at the defenses of the invasion coasts and the supply lines upon which the Atlantic Wall depends.

Protection of industrial bases in the Reich is imperative for the Nazis. Especially is this true of their great plane assembly plants. Yet concentration of large forces for this purpose at many scattered points in Central Europe means that adequate air power cannot be sent against invasion forces simultaneously. The dual task is beyond the abilities of the Luftwaffe. In no phase of the war has the Allied victory in the battle of production been illustrated more dramatically.

Though air power alone will not bring Germany down, the vast and widening margins of superiority enjoyed by the United Nations are reducing the task enormously, both in time and in human costs. A measure of this situation is provided by the fact that the Allies are now dropping 1000 tons of bombs into the vitals of Hitler’s Fortress for every ton the Luftwaffe unloads over Britain.