World Battlefronts: The Moscow Touch

Joseph Stalin last week congratulated Britain’s home fleet on sinking the 26,000-ton German battleship Scharnhorst (see above). Next day, Moscow’s Red Star published a cartoon showing a forlorn Scharnhorst sailor disappearing into the sea. In the foreground frenetic Propaganda Minister Goebbels shouts into a microphone: “Germans, we won a great victory. The German underseas fleet has increased in one stroke by 26,000 tons.”