The decision is made. A few men in London, Washington and Moscow share the greatest war secret of 1942: the time, the place, the nature of second front action in western Europe. The people of the U.S., Great Britain and Russia—and Germany—must now await the act.
They must assume that Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt and the military men have decided to do the utmost that can be done, as soon as it can be done, at the places where it will do the most to hurt Hitler and help Russia. The people will then measure the decision and its consequences against a known record of promises and possibilities—the record by which Churchill, Roosevelt and the generals must stand or fall with their world in their time, and in the judgment of history.
The Record speaks for itself:
¶ After the U.S.S.R.'s Foreign Minister Viacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov visited London and Washington in May and June, Downing Street and the White House said: Full understanding was reached with regard to the urgent task of creating a second front in Europe in 1942.
¶ On June 18 Foreign Minister Molotov quoted the foregoing joint communique to the Supreme Soviet in Moscow, and added: This statement is of great importance to the peoples of the Soviet Union, since the creation of a second front in Europe "will create insuperable difficulties for Hitler's armies on our front.
¶ On June 27 Churchill and Roosevelt said in Washington: The coming operations, which were discussed in detail at our Washington conferences between ourselves and our respective military advisers, will divert German strength from the attack in Russia.
¶ In July an official Russian account of a Red Army meeting included this statement: The commissar read the decision of the Allies to open a second front in Europe in 1942.
According to this record, Russia was promised a second front for 1942. On this same record, Churchill and Roosevelt did not make the promise in a burst of unmilitary optimism. They made it with the advice and consent of their military advisers, men who must then have been aware of the facts which were still being cited last week to prove that a second front in 1942 will certainly be difficult, that it may fail, and that it may even be impossible.
The Facts are plain, although some of them have recently been obscured.
¶ For both Russia and her allies, the time is now. One of the best U.S. correspondents in Moscow, Leland Stowe of the Chicago Daily News, cabled last week: "A second front any time after August will be very late, if not too late. . . . In the opinion of the best qualified foreign military observers in Russia,* if a second front does not come in time to save the Caucasus, the war will be prolonged from one to three years. . . ."
¶ The Allies are not ready. It is still true that the actual U.S. capacity for war on any front in 1942 is less than its apparent capacity. The heralded figures on the production of U.S. tanks, planes and other