After many a negative, Russia had its first positive victory last week. Russia's best general, Marshal Semion Timoshenko, retook Rostov-on-Don and for the first time made the Germans get their tails up and churn their shanks in the general direction of Berlin.
The victory was not great: the Russians only pursued Germans, instead of catching large numbers of them. They went only 60 miles, with 600 to go. There was no guarantee that the Germans would not bounce right back. But it was a victory; it was tangible in geographic terms; it was admitted by the German High Command; and it set a precedent worthy of emulation.
What made this victory particularly enjoyable to the Russians and their allies was the pomposity with which the Germans had announced the capture of Rostov a fortnight ago. "Door to the Caucasus," they had gravely said, as if already lubricating their tanks with the oil of Baku. Their admission of withdrawal was equally grandiloquent: "Occupation troops of Rostov, in compliance with orders, are evacuating the central part of the city in order to make the most thorough preparations for necessary measures against the population which, contrary to international law, participated in fighting at the rear of German troops."
The Germans had advanced on Rostov in a narrow column, the left flank of which was insufficiently secured. Marshal Timoshenko drove down on the flank, then hit it head-on and sent it running. Before long the Russians claimed that the Germans' 14th and 16th Tank Divisions, 60th Motorized Division and two SS "Viking" Divisions had been pursued to Taganrog, 40 miles west of Rostov; that they were running for Mariupol, 65 miles farther west.
In this maneuver Marshal Timoshenko had used a familiar Nazi technique. He had allowed the enemy to advance until it overreached itself, had then struck. He had not, however, followed through with the complementary Nazi technique—encircling and annihilating the imprudent force. The Germans, though humiliated, were at liberty to turn around, as promised, and see that international law is more carefully observed by the population of Rostov.