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It was between the wars with the Finns and with the Nazis that Semion Timoshenko cemented his reputation, received his highest honors. He came as near as he ever dared, and nearer than most of his brother officers, to outright conflict with the Communist Party. Reorganizing the army to correct the defects of the Finnish campaign, he booted out the Party commissars who had been attached to every important Army unit. With General Georgy Zhukov, a reputedly brilliant newcomer to the High Command, he simplified Army organization, improved communications, cut tape which in any other army would be called red. Zhukov last week commanded the central front just north of Timoshenko's and probably had a lot to do with the local success near Voronezh. For reasons best known to Joseph Stalin, Zhukov has never been upped to the rank of Marshal—possibly because he took no trouble to hide his deep hatred for the Germans, his disapproval of the late Moscow-Berlin pact.
Timoshenko kept his membership in the Party, held one of the high government offices when he was People's Commissar for Defense. Soon after Hitler invaded Russia, Stalin took the Commissar's title; Timoshenko returned to the field; the political commissars returned to the Red Army.
Only events can fairly judge the Red Army and its commanders. And known events may be deceptive. Thus it was generally supposed that when Timoshenko did none too well in the early defense of Moscow last year, he was summarily shifted to his present front in the southwest to replace gay, heady Marshal Semion Budenny, who had done worse. But a German record presents another story: that Timoshenko asked Stalin to put him where he expected the decisive fighting to develop some day. That fighting had developed in south Russia last week.
On the cruelly bare and insufficient evidence visible to the non-Russian world, Timoshenko has not consistently distinguished himself in the war with Hitler. His concrete achievements: the heroic defense of Smolensk, which gave Moscow time to prepare its still unbreached defenses, and the recapture of Rostov last November. But, whether the outcome was good or ill, Timoshenko with his peasant hardiness never shifted blame or credit. Said he to his troops before Rostov last year, when the world tended to believe (with Hitler) that the Russian winter alone was stopping the Germans: "Neither rain nor snow is going to win the battle of Rostov. The outcome depends on our efforts alone."
This week Rostov is again in peril. Timoshenko is outnumbered in material, even in men on most of his fronts. In great peril was the land of the Volga and the Caucasus, which Timoshenko had called the decisive area of Russia. But the decision had not yet been reached, and the world could easily guess what the stolid, big-boned peasant from Bessarabia was saying to his harried, divided, tired and retreating troops in the ruined fields of the Don. He was saying: "Brothers, our country is in your hands. The outcome depends on us alone."
* Along with tanks and planes, the U.S. has sent Russia 10,000 Ford trucks, 500,000 rolls of adhesive tape, 100 medical books, tin, wheat, flour, butter, steel, aviation gasoline, machine tools and machinery to drill oil wells, laundry and toilet soap, sulfa drugs.