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Prešov was now an incident in the taking of Košice, along the spine of the Carpathians in eastern Slovakia. Before Prešov, General Ivan Petrov had opened up in the orthodox manner, bracketing the slopes with shells as if in preparation for attack. But he sent a large column to cut in behind the enemy, over a mountain trail. He knew the trail would be heavily mined, that his men would take losses. They did. They also took Prešov.
Over the Oder? Of such incidents, of such weight and urgency was the massive Red Army offensive last week. The Russians swept forward with an impetus which no losses, no barriers had been able to brake. By this week it seemed that its momentum could not be slowed short of the banks of the Oder (see below).
Zhukov's forces, heading straight for Poznan, had already covered about half the distance from Warsaw to the defense line the Germans have built along their 1939 border. Konev's army was already on German soil in Silesia, was within 28 miles of Breslau and pressed close upon Oppeln, both on the Oder and key points in the Reich's second most important , coal and steel area. Crossings there would set up a flank for future development of a strike to the inner Reich.
In the north Rokossovsky's forces, with a thundering echo of history, pierced a memorable spot: Tannenberg. There the Russians looked upon the huge tomb of Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, There Hindenburg and Adolf Hitler's onetime mentor, Ludendorff, had cut to pieces a Russian army in one of World War I's classic victories. When the Germans struck in 1914, the Russians were at the same points they passed this week—Gumbinnen in the northeast, Tannenberg in the south. But this time there were also vast differences : 1) Ludendorff's daring now appeared to be possessed by Rokossovsky; 2) the reserves Hindenburg rallied to a victory were not bone-weary from five years of war.