World Battlefronts: Of Time and the Volga

August was slipping away, and with it Germany’s chance of a decisive victory. There was still time, but the time grew shorter. German gains had been great—Rostov, the last of the Ukraine, the northern Caucasus—but not yet great enough to make 1942 Hitler’s big year. Russian losses had been staggering—the last of the Donets Basin industrial area, control of the River Don, some of the oil and most of the wheat of the Caucasus—but not heavy enough to smash the Red Army. On the thunderous, smoky southern front the chips were still on the table.

Before Stalingrad the Russians had been able to call almost every German hand, though at tremendous cost and with the possibility that the Wehrmacht’s blue chips soon might be stacked too high for the Red Army. It was on this sector that the Germans had massed their greatest strength. They hammered forward last week to occupy most of the great eastward bend of the Don, where it comes within 48 miles of Stalingrad and the Volga, Russia’s next line of defense.

In the Caucasus. Farther south the cards were running worse for Russia. Hitler had taken the minor Maikop oil fields, facing the great range of the Caucasus which divides the Black Sea from the Caspian. On the west one German column was headed for the Black Sea coast to skirt the towering mountains and move in behind them. Another German column thrust eastward through Elista, possibly to drive at Astrakhan, where the Volga flows into the Caspian, or possibly to cut the Volga farther north.

The Germans had moved fast, ten miles a day recently, a pace that in two more weeks would bring them to the river. Thus far Marshal Timoshenko had not tried to make a stand in this area. Evidently he had withdrawn his main forces northward to avoid being trapped in the Caucasus. Somewhere on the east-sloping steppes a stand now seemed inevitable.

Unless the section of the Red Army backing slowly into the Caucasus could use the mountains as anchors to stem the Nazi tide, Russia would lose 60% of her oil and all Lend-Lease aid that now comes from south of the Caucasus.

Retreat to Winter. Without a second front to divert German strength, the Red Army was trying the next best distraction: counterattacking farther north in an effort to relieve southern pressure. The Germans acknowledged that the Russian blows had been severe, but they failed to dent the Nazi lines or to create a significant diversion. The Red Army had not yet demonstrated any capacity for effective offensive action against the full weight of the German Army.

The Russians saw their danger well (see col. 1). They hoped that the Red Army would protract the game, keep the Germans from reaching the Volga until winter froze the stakes. Said Pravda: “Every minute shows that the Germans are gambling their entire fortune on the present campaign.”