World Battlefronts: BATTLE OF RUSSIA: Mot Pulk

Russia was in mortal peril, and with her the whole Allied cause. It was not so much the German advances, although they were great enough; nor the Russian retreats, although they were foreboding enough. It was the total fashion of retreat and defeat in the valley of the Don that chilled the hearts of Russia’s allies and sharpened Moscow’s cry for a second front. The warning from the Don was this: It was the Red Army, not the German Army, which had suffered the most in the winter campaign. The Red Army was by no means at the end of its fighting tether, but it was coming nearer to the end every day.

Perhaps Moscow, in its need, accented the peril beyond its immediate actuality. Perhaps the Red Army did have great reserves of troops beyond the Volga and in the Caucasus. But the visible fact last week was that Moscow censors permitted the most direct indications yet on record that the Red Army was badly drained, that only the foolhardy would count on the exhaustion of Germany’s reserves before Russia’s reserves were expended.

Equally ominous was the indication in dispatches that when the Russian armies in the southwest received reinforcements last week, they came not from the rear but from the endangered central front.

The Blow. Even so, it was easy to exaggerate what the Germans actually accomplished last week. They did not yet have the entire Don valley. They did not yet entirely command the valley’s vital railway communications from Moscow and Stalingrad. They did not yet have control of the Voronezh area, which the Russians defended at all costs for its rail communications and its value as an anchor for the Red army’s sagging southern line. The Nazis had the important manufacturing city of Voroshilovgrad, but they did not yet have Rostov, important for its factories, for access to the Caucasus, and as the Red army’s southwestern anchor. Above all, the Germans had not yet crossed the Don at its eastern bend, where it would be most difficult and most urgent for them to cross. And, until they did cross and conquer the tough alley between the Don and the Volga, Stalingrad was safe from direct land assault— though not from air attack.

The Club. A new and terrible form of offensive pressed the Russians back last week. The Germans had discarded Blitzkrieg, given their new technique a new name: Mot pulk (motorized mass movement).

As with all German modes of war, Mot pulk was not new in its elements, but in its design and use. The Germans, who once scorned weight and mass for the lighter, faster Panzer technique, had now gone whole hog for mass. So had other armies. The achievement of Hitler’s Chief of Staff Franz Haider was in giving his mass a speed and flexibility which in pace rivaled his 1939-41 Blitzkrieg:

≫ Unprecedented concentrations of very heavy, semi-mobile artillery are the newest feature of Mot pulk. Star pieces (shown in Nazi films) are two immense mortars: the Krupp-built “Thor,” a 42-cm. (about 17-in.) monster, bigger than the biggest U.S. battleship gun; and a 61.5-cm. supermonster, mounted on a four-track rail truck. These presumably were the weapons which helped to pulverize Sevastopol. They were far too big for use on quickly shifting fronts such as the Don. But, if Rostov and Stalingrad fell under siege, the Russians would probably feel their weight again.

≫ The Germans now use heavier tanks than they used before, andarmored trains on the Russian model.

≫ The Luftwaffe’s front-line role has been intensified beyond anything seen in previous German campaigns. Colonel General Wolfram von Richthofen (cousin of Germany’s great World War I ace), who had the job of fitting the Luftwaffe to Mot pulk, devised his plan during the spring lull. Chief change: the number of dive-bombers on a given front has been tripled, and even quadrupled, to hurl the maximum weight from the air at Red troops, artillery and tanks.

≫ German planes used to be called the ground army’s “flying artillery.” Now, in a very definite sense, planes have become the army’s flying tanks. Reason: against such deep defenses as the Red army’s, the tank is no longer effective as a breakthrough weapon. The total number of tanks engaged is still enormous. But they are used in smaller units, as parts of a composite whole, including artillery and infantry.

This technique sent German armies forward in unbroken masses, won advances by brute weight. It answered the question which had puzzled Washington and London: Was there really a Red defense-in-depth, and, if so, how had the Nazis advanced 190 miles in 19 days? The Red Army did have deep defenses, but they were designed to halt German forces of the kind which invaded Russia last year. Against this new offense, the Red Army now had to organize a new defense.

One indirect defense may be the enormous cost of Mot pulk. German infantry masses are now exposed to enemy fire as they have never been before. Already Hitler’s Munitions Minister Albert Speer has called upon German manufacturers for more & more steel to fill the Russian maw. If the Allies could find any encouragement in Mot pulk, it was the indication that Hitler’s generals had committed his overstrained stockpiles and factories to a new and endless race for armament.