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The people of the Moscow area number more than 8,000,000. They constitute an unprecedented labor army, which can be, and has been, rushed to every threatened sector, there to construct cement fortlets, dig bunkers, repair breaches and sow mines as prodigally as wheat.
Muscovites are human; they are acquainted with fear. But they and the regular Army around them are just as determined as the defenders of Leningrad, and all are apt to pay heed to the command which their Government gave them last week:
"To retreat one more step is a crime none shall forgive. Stop the enemy. Beat him out of his positions. This is an order which is not to be broken."
The equipment against which Marshal von Bock stakes his men's lives is, for the outside world, incapable of measurement. But this much is certain: the Russians, relying on promises made by U.S. and British missions to Moscow, are not stinting. They are throwing everything into the fight. This is a great gamble, can pay off only if the democracies really deliver.
Russia's most immediate need is for tanks. The Beaverbrook-Harriman mission was pressed for quick delivery of tanks above all, even if it meant sacrificing planes. Of airplanes, Russia needs heavy bombers most. Machine tools, unfortunately the rarest and most complicated gadgets, are badly needed. Russia asked the U.S. for more than 30,000 tons of steel a month, especially for 5,000 tons a month of rare superhard tool steel;* for between 5,000 and 10,000 tons a month of aluminum; considerable quantities of nickel. The U.S. had to turn down a request for magnesium. Britain was asked for large supplies of rubber and jute.
That the democracies may deliver was twice hinted last week. From Bandar Shahpur on the Persian Gulf came pictures of a ship landing goods bearing U.S. labels. The Russians announced that the first shipment of British tanks had gone into action on the Moscow front. The tanks were painted white, as camouflage against the snow.
The weather which required this camouflage was steadily worsening. According to almanac reckoning, winter officially began in the Moscow area last week. Until mid-April the ground will now be under a blanket of snow, the earth helpfully hard. To Marshal von Bock's men winter will be grim, but not deadly. The average temperature for January, the coldest month, is 14° F.
In the winter of 1812 Napoleon retreated from Moscow, but in the winter of 1941 Fedor von Bock expects to take the city. This is partly because Fedor von Bock is driven by a furious determination shared by every German officer all the way up to Adolf Hitler; it is partly because der Sterber is disdainful of hard ships.
Holy Fire of Küstrin. Fedor von Bock looks like a man dying of some mysterious internal combustion. He is gaunt, and his eyes have the baleful stare of windows in a bombed-out house. He is a competent general—in Russia he has been Germany's best—and besides, he believes, with aggressive religiousness, in dying if necessary for the soil and honor of Prussia.