World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Second Front Casts Its Shadow

BATTLE OF EUROPE

“If the Anglo-Saxon invasion does not come in April it will be a terrible blow to Hitler’s prestige, because he has with drawn reserves from the Eastern Front and permitted the Russians to come right into Central Europe, in order to prepare for the invasion. If the invasion does not come it will be terrible.”

So said Ernst Hepp, Nazi press attache in Stockholm. In the ancient Polish city of Cracow, Governor General Hans Frank took a similar line in trying to explain away successive Nazi defeats along the Russian border: “

It is not the German Army’s weakness which causes the German retreat in the East. Already today the German troops would be able to fight the Russians successfully. Other common European tasks have necessitated German retreat. But one day a counterattack will come.”

Gamble. Propaganda aside, other information from neutral sources indicated that the Germans had moved substantial forces westward in recent weeks, and that Nazi lack of reserves had contributed to the extraordinary speed of the Russian advance in the Ukraine. If so, the Second Front is already yielding military profits and the German High Command has now a tough decision to make: whether to dip into its central strategic reserve (believed to be from 40 to 50 divisions) to try to salvage the situation in Rumania. Swedish military sources estimated that the German southern wing must have at least 20 fresh divisions if it is to defend the vital Ploesti oilfields, source of one-third of the Reich’s oil. The estimate may or may not be accurate, but that defense the Germans must undertake.

To Nazi generals, in the present situation, speedy Allied invasion may be welcome for a very practical reason : inflicting a disastrous defeat on such an invasion force is the sole remaining chance for Germany to avoid losing the war. If the Allies attacked prematurely, at a time when Nazi defensive strength was at its peak, that chance would be so much the brighter. To war-weary German civilians, invasion must also bulk large as the one development likely to bring a quick decision, win or lose.

Meanwhile the Second Front cast other shadows which may or may not have immediate significance:

¶ On the English side of the Channel thousands of civilians flocked to resorts like Brighton for “a last look at the sea” before April 1 closed the southern coastal areas to visitors.

¶0n the French coast, German troops forcibly evacuated civilians from Calais and Dunkirk. Families were hurried away with no possessions except hand luggage. Their heavy furniture was hauled out and loaded aboard trucks which carried signs: “Gifts of the French people to bombed-out Germans.”

¶In Holland the Nazis had started flooding the country, blustered of plans to flood 5,000 square miles as an invasion barrier. Actually, while flooding large parts of Holland is possible, flooding the western coastal areas would be a vast engineering job, involving destruction of the great, three-deep system of dikes and dunes known to Dutchmen as the Watchman, Sleeper and Dreamer. (In London Dutchmen were already talking of a compensating slice of northwestern Germany if war’s end finds any large portion of Holland’s precious topsoil ruined by German-inflicted floods.)

¶ In Paris, workmen were fencing off some of the parks, including the Luxembourg Gardens, apparently as part of a plan to corral the city’s entire male population when trouble starts.

¶ In Washington last week State Department correspondents chose their dates for invasion and paid $1 each into a pool, winner to take all. The Tass (Soviet) correspondent guessed April 20, the more cautious Reuters (British) correspondent Sept. 1.

¶In Germany Marshal Erwin Rommel told the press that tides and weather throughout April are the most favorable for invasion.