Battle Of Russia
Hitler is winning in Russia. If his armies continue to do as well as they did last week, and the Red Army does no better:
> Russia will be defeated.
> Germany will win the present phase of World War II in Europe.
> The best and the only present chance to destroy the main German armies will be gone; the Allies will then have lost their best chance to defeat Germany and win World War II.
This week these were the maximum dangers facing Russia, the U.S. and Great Britain. As yet they were only dangers. But the pace and power of the Germans in the first battles of their summer offensive, and the evident weakness of the Red Army at the places where the Nazis were strongest, made the dangers very real.
East to the Don. For their first main blow of summer at the Red Army, Hitler's generals had chosen a region of villages, sparsely wooded plains, and good tank country well south of Moscow and about 400 miles north of fallen Sevastopol (see p. 21). There, rivers were the only natural allies of the Red Army, and the rivers were not enough. This front, lying between Kursk on the north and Kharkov on the south, was placed so that at one stroke the Germans could drive for three objectives:
> The River Don, one of Russia's chief transportation arteries, essential to the Red Army and to Soviet industry.
> The Moscow-Rostov railway, which runs parallel to, and just west of, the Don along part of its course, connects the capital with southern Russia and the Caucasus, and, like the river, feeds much of Russia's industrial and military machine.
> Moscow itself. For the Germans driving eastward to the Don and the railway, were striking indirectly at Russia's heart, seeking to cut it off from the main body of the U.S.S.R. This tactic alone, if it succeeded, would be a crushing blow to Russia.
Mass v. Depth. Last week the Germans widened and joined the preliminary offensives which they had launched from Kharkov and Kursk (TIME, July 6). The struggles along the whole southern front thus became one battle, but it was fought in many separated sectors. In each Field Marshal Fedor von Bock faithfully followed the battle plan which the Nazis had devised to break up the Red Army's famed defense-in-depth: closely meshed, overpowering combinations of planes, tanks, artillery and infantry. Strong and deep though the Russian defenses were, the Nazi forces at the points of contact were even stronger.