World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Rain and Blood

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The parching heat of the Ukrainian summer neared its end, and the air was laden with the promise of rain. Soon downpours would convert the fat, black soil into paste.

To the Red Army, the dropping barometer screamed for haste. By a prodigious and bloody effort, the Russians took Kharkov. But this skeleton of a once great city was no longer as important as it had been a month earlier. The Red Army sought space, not cities. Space was armor to protect the recaptured strongholds from counterattacks. Space gained was also momentum maintained—a crucial factor in a great offensive.

To the Germans rain meant hope. If they could hold out another week or two, until the mud slowed down the Red on slaught, the weary Nazi trooper would get some rest, new defenses would be built, old ones repaired.

The Tally. In both Berlin and Moscow grim men tallied up the blood-&-iron cost of the first month and a half of the great summer battle, begun by intuitive Hitler on July 5. Germany's losses, Moscow said, totalled 1,000,000 dead and wounded men, 4,600 planes, 7,200 tanks, 5,000 guns, 24,200 trucks. The Red losses, Berlin announced, were 1,250,000 men, 12,500 tanks, 500 guns. Even salted down, these sets of figures indicated that the battle dwarfed Sicily in blood and import.*

In the bloody, thunderous weeks since July 5, the Red Army had:

>Pushed to within nine miles of Sumy, 20 of Bryansk, 25 of Poltava.

>Regained control of the crucial Moscow-Kharkov rail line.

>Imperiled the entire German bulge hugging the Sea of Azov (where the next Soviet blow might well fall).

>Driven to a 100-mile depth in the Kharkov push alone; retaken 4,500 square miles of territory, or half the area of Sicily.

>Cut off the malignant swelling below Russia's heart at Moscow.

>Recaptured the strongholds of Kharkov, Orel, Belgorod, Karachev.

>Broken the backbone of the feared German summer offensive.

>Counterattacked.

The Red offensive might be nearing an end. But to Russia's unsentimental rulers, who know that no victory can be gained without blood and tears, the gains made must have seemed worth the price.