World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Hold

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Red Star, the journal of the Red Army, surveyed the uneasy Russian front last week and predicted a German offensive. Joseph Stalin, in his May Day order, spoke of blows to break the Nazi beast forever, but these were to be joint—and future—blows by the Russians and their allies in the west. For the moment, he couched his more specific instructions to the Red Army in aggressively defensive terms:

"The whole Red Army should consolidate and develop the successes of the winter battles, so it shall not surrender to the enemy a single inch of our soil, be prepared for decisive battles with the German Fascist invaders and display a stubbornness and stanchness in defense that is characteristic of the men of our army. Display offensive resolution . . . crowned by the encirclement and annihilation of the enemy."

Together—or Alone. Near both ends of the front, the Russians struck last week, and they were massed to strike elsewhere along its length. But the tone of Stalin's order, Moscow dispatches and the nature of last week's battles indicated that these were precautionary blows with a double intent: to jar and weaken the Germans before they could attack in force and to preserve Russian positions for the great assault to be launched later. If the second front did not develop as soon and as mightily as Stalin led his people to expect —well, they had no second front when they thrust the Germans back from Stalingrad, and Joseph Stalin had just reminded his allies that he could still act by himself (see p. 35).

Heaviest of the preparatory blows last week fell in the Kuban valley, where the Germans still fiercely defended a Caucasian bridgehead. This region could be the base for a summer offensive to regain all the ground that they had lost in the Caucasus.