World: Retreat to Where?

Adolf Hitler's armies in southern Russia were in full retreat last week.

In all of World War II, no single fact had held such enormous possibilities. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in 1812, Rommel's retreat from Egypt in 1942 involved the fate of continents; the Wehrmacht's retreat involves the fate of the world. When the full extent and meaning of the retreat are clear, the world will be better able to judge the winner of World War II, better able to gauge its length.

Battles in the Dusk. Beyond doubt the Wehrmacht had suffered far more than a grave defeat. It had met a disaster that grew hourly. Point after point along the 700-mile front from Orel to Novorossiisk fell like tenpins before the Russian avalanche. In ten weeks (less on some fronts) the Red Armies had advanced from 100 to 350 miles, often through deep snows, often in areas well suited for defense. At no point were they slowed down by the necessity of regrouping. The Russians said that they had already killed, wounded or captured nearly a million German and satellite troops since the winter offensives began, and that another 500,000 were in immediate peril.

But as of this week not enough was known of the nature of the fighting or of the strategies employed to tell where the Wehrmacht's disaster might lead. The outer world did not see the battles; it saw only the permitted accounts of the battles. Moscow correspondents could not visit the fronts. Where the Red Army had to fight for its gains, and where it had only to march in after the retreating Germans, the dispatches did not clearly say. If the battles were bitter, neither Moscow nor Berlin said much about them. What might well be the most significant retreat in history could be viewed only in half light.

Retreat to the Reich? Moscow said that the Germans were rushing up reserves and new equipment to stop the Russians. Berlin talked of "elastic German defenses leading to further withdrawals." Perhaps the Germans were withdrawing under duress. Perhaps the Russians were pursuing more than attacking but wanted to make their gains loom as large as possible. Perhaps the Germans' "further withdrawals" may eventually take them out of Russia. If so, these circumstances explained in part the speed of the Red Army's offensive.

Adolf Hitler's retreat to elastic defenses may have been too late for anything less than the complete failure of his Russian campaign. If so, his only hope is to withdraw to the Reich and convert it (and Western Europe) into an impregnable fortress (TIME, Feb. 8). But that remained to be proved. What had been proved was that the Red Army was giving his Wehrmacht no rest or resting place.

Over the Donets. Save only at Stalingrad, the Germans have not made a determined stand in south Russia or fought lengthy delaying actions since they failed to relieve the forces on the Volga.