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Success in Fire. As a climax to a week of climaxes, Rostov, the southern anchor of the whole German line and a bitterly defended place, burst into flames and fell to the attackers. Thus the Germans lost the one sure foothold for an attack in the Caucasus in the spring. Rostov's loss was the clearest indication yet that there might not be another German offensive in Russia, since any offensive would have to start all over again on a program which had once failed.
Success in Fluidity? All this suggested that the Germans on the southern front had been forced to go over (as Rommel did when he left El Alamein) from rigid to elastic defense. They had been forced to do so because of the Russian mastery of winter tactics and because of their own fear of encirclement.
Elastic defense can be masterful, as Rommel's retreat to Tunisia was, or merely chaotic. The Russians had two chances of making it chaotic—they could drive south through Stalin to the Sea of Azov, pocketing the routed defenders of Rostov, and west from Lozovaya to the Dnieper bend at Dniepropetrovsk, cutting the Caucasian remnant and Crimean garrisons off from convenient retreat by rail or good roads.
If the Germans succeeded in some masterful withdrawals, it was possible that they might marshal reserves at some line of their choosing—perhaps along the Dnieper—and counterstrike at the then extended Russians. Since the Russians had again done their best work in their worst winter weather, and since the thaws of southern Russia produce a mud which is beyond description, the Germans probably look forward to a slackening of Russian momentum in a month or six weeks.
Fears. This uncertainty as to how far the Russians might be able to go gave rise to a curious reaction in Britain and the U.S. Many voices, some nervously, some skeptically, asked the question: Just what kind of victory does Russia want? The question arose from two mutually contradictory fears. One group seemed to fear that the Red advance would sweep to Russia's old borders and stop, leaving the German fox still dangerously alive, the Allies holding a still-empty bag. The other group feared that the Red advance would sweep to and perhaps beyond the Rhine, that all Europe would be Bolshevized.
The first school thinks Joseph Stalin may be playing a sly, lone, isolationist hand. It points out parallels, such as Kutuzov's reply to the British observer Wilson when the latter urged the Russian to destroy Napoleon instead of merely pursuing him. "Kutuzov told him plainly," says Eugene Tarle (Napoleon's Invasion of Russia), "that his aim was to eject Napoleon from Russia and that he did not see why Russia should waste her forces on the complete destruction of Napoleon, since the harvest of such a victory would be reaped by England, not Russia."
The other (Red-menace) school is exemplified by a recent editorial in the New York Daily News: "It is a cinch bet that the much discussed postwar policing of Germany will be done by the Russians. . . . Stalin will accomplish what Hitler tried to do—dominate all Europe. The effect of all this on us will be to leave us in as much danger from Europe as we were before this war."