(2 of 3)
Cannon fire from Russian Stormoviks wrecked Nazi tanks. The Russians' massed artillery, their infantry's deadly, two-man anti-tank guns, grenades and Molotov cocktails ripped up German armored columns as they did in last year's battles. But last week there were differences, and the differences favored the Germans. When the Red soldiers found a group of German tanks, they also found German artillery and mortars, bunched to answer the Russian fire. And, in vital sectors, Moscow had to admit that, for all the Red Army's brilliant artillery and anti-tank tactics, for all its carefully devised defense-in-depth, the Germans with their composite columns outnumbered the Russians in men and weapons. Ominous, too, was Moscow's statement that in at least one sector where the Russians retreated the Luftwaffe's control of the air and intensive front-line bombing turned the battle for the Nazis.
Sum & substance of last week's battle reports, from both Berlin and Moscow, was that the Red Army, not only in local sectors but on the entire front where the decisive battles were fought, lacked the planes, tanks, guns to match the German onslaught.
Timoshenko's Choice. Moscow this week confirmed Berlin's major claims: at some points the Germans had advanced 85 and 100 miles and more to the Don itself; German columns were converging toward the key city of Voronezh, just east of the Don, and midway between Moscow and Rostov on the all-important railway to the Caucasus.
Caught between these columns were great and now partially isolated segments of Marshal Semion Timoshenko's armies. A grave effect of the German strategy was to confront Timoshenko with several simultaneous Nazi fronts, further draining his limited totals of men and weapons, giving him the difficult choice of retreat or encirclement. He chose to retreat.
Pressure in the North. Although the Germans' main blow fell south of Moscow, their summer strategy, as it unfolded, embraced the whole Russian front. Near Borodino, where Napoleon won a Pyrrhic victory, Nazi artillery and infantry made just enough of a gesture to pin down the Red forces defending the capital to keep them from relieving Timoshenko. Then, on the Kalinin front northwest of Moscow, the Germans began still another drive. It was geared for speed: fleets of Luftwaffe transports swarmed into rear-line fields to supply the mobile Nazi forces. This served immediately to divert the Red Army from the crucial south; it was also a necessary preliminary to any attempt to encircle and conquer Moscow itself.
Near Leningrad the news was equally bad for Russia. Berlin and Moscow communiqués, conflicting in detail, made one fact all too clear: Field Marshal Georg von Keuchler had smashed a Russian effort to drive a deep salient into the Nazi forces around the city, to compel them eventually to lift their siege. Berlin said that the Germans had destroyed the Russians' Second Shock Army; Moscow declared that the army was saved, admitted in effect that its effort to relieve Leningrad and forestall a summer offensive in the north had failed.