In December, when Rundstedt broke through in the Ardennes, gloom lay heavy on the western Allies. Last week, as Joseph Stalin's armies thundered into the eastern Reich, the pendulum was swinging back to rosy optimism. Perhaps, once more, it was swinging too far.
There was no optimism in Germany. The Goebbels propagandists had learned that they could wring the last bitter ounce of resistance from the people by telling the truth about the enemy's power and the enemy's inroads—and by painting the enemy's intentions blacker than hell.
The German people heard that industrial Silesia was lost; that the "Bolsheviks" had pierced Brandenburg,...