World Battlefronts, THE WAR: The Campaign of 1944

There was only one battle left in Europe last week, the Battle of Germany—at whose borders the Allies already stood. This battle had four fronts: North, South, East and West. And now they were not only all active at once but all related. To bolster one, the Germans had to take risks on every other.

By contrast with World War I, where the typical campaign achieved no military result except to exhaust the side which undertook it, the typical campaign of World War II has yielded substantial tactical returns—at a cost far lower to the attacker than to the defender.* And the campaign of 1944, to date, outshines its predecessors. It is a campaign each of whose parts has been a successful subcampaign, fitting into a bigger pattern.

The motif of that pattern was on the point of being repeated again last week, the same motif repeated often before. It is a simple motif: strike a staggering blow, exploit it while the German army reels; then, as the enemy begins to recover, repeat the same thing at another point.

The repetition of this pattern is extraordinarily precise:

Jan. 19, as the Russians’ drive to the old borders of Poland peters out, their drive on Leningrad begins.

Feb. 7, as the Leningrad drive pushes through to Estonia, the Russians break across the Dnieper.

March 4, as the Russians finish mopping up 15 Nazi divisions in the Dnieper Bend, they start their drive across the Ukraine.

March 15, as the Russians reach the Rumanian border, the Allies strike at Cassino (this was the only blow that failed in the entire series).

April 9, having pushed into Bessarabia, the Russians assault Odessa and push into the Crimea.

May 12, Sevastopol having fallen, the Allies begin their successful push north near Cassino.

June 6, Rome taken, the Allies land in Normandy—and five days later the Russians drive on Finland.

June 23, as the Russians smash the last Finnish front along the Svir River, they begin their drive directly westward, from Vitebsk toward Warsaw.

July 25, as the Russians drive at the Vistula slows, the Americans break through at Saint-Lô.

Aug. 15, the Normandy drive having reached the Loire, Patch lands in Provence.

Aug. 20, as Paris is about to fall, the Russians plunge into Rumania (here the breaks begin to come the Allies’ way: Rumania changes sides and most of the German forces in the Balkans are lost by a political stroke).

Two things are omitted from this sketch.

One is the battle to drive Germany from the air. It began some time in mid-January with heavy assaults on the German aircraft factories; it reached its peak toward the end of February (during one week when in terrific air battles 642 German fighters were shot down); and some time in March, when the German air force was outclassed, it reached a stage of exploitation, which still continues—the systematic crippling of Germany by air, which has done much to increase the success of Allied ground blows.

The other omission is the stage of the campaign reached last week. As summer wore on, the nature of the pattern began to alter slightly. Instead of repetitions following one after another, they began to overlap—one blow or even two fell before the previous exploitation was complete. The theme remained the same but the rhythm was syncopated.

Last week the Allies were still exploiting the great victory that they won below the Seine a month ago. According to pattern, the next blow would fall upon another front. The Germans reported last week that it was already falling, north and south of Warsaw. According to pattern, the next blow in the west should begin after the Russian drive is well under way. But the beat is growing faster.

In August the frightened Germans drew reserves from the west and the south to bolster their shaken eastern front. Last week they drew from north and south to build a new western front. Whence will come the next reserves when the weight of the Russian blow is felt? And whence will they come when there are new blows, west and south?

The Allies have not yet finished their symphony. They can still flub it badly. But at the point already reached, it ranks among the great military symphonies in history. If it is triumphantly completed, Hitler & Co. will be carried out to a syncopated death march.

*Examples from World War I: the German campaigns of Verdun (1916), the Somme, Marne and Chemin-des-Dames (1918); the Russian campaigns of the Masurian Lakes (1914) and the Carpathians (1914); the Italian campaign of the Isonzo (1917); the British and French campaigns of Gallipoli (1915), the Somme (1916), Vimy, Passchendaele (1917). Examples from World War II: the German conquests of Poland (1939), the Lowlands and France (1940), the Balkans and western Russia (1941), of Libya (twice, 1942 and 1943); the Russian annihilation of the German Army at Stalingrad and recapture of the Donetz Basin (1943); the British conquest of Libya (thrice, 1941, 1942, 1943); the Allied conquest of Tunisia, Sicily and Naples (1943).