World War: Mopping and Draining

The Germans said they were mopping up the Ukraine last week. But one thing all the mops in the world could not dry up was the Dnieper River.

By way of Bucharest and Stockholm, it was reported that the great $110,000,000, 140-foot Dnieper Dam near Zaporozhe had been blown up by the retreating Russians. The step would be logical, since the highway atop the dam was one of the best bridges across the river, and since the flood below would reinforce the river as a scarp against the Nazis.

At week’s end the report had not been confirmed, but in any case, Ukraine rains had been torrential for almost a month, and detailed descriptions poured through Europe’s gossip centers of “an avalanche of unstemmed water, floating wreckage and drowned men, trees, livestock, and houses down to the delta.” Berlin said that German artillery had foiled the blowup, but that “the swirling waters of the milewide, swamp-bordered river might have temporarily slowed the German advance.” For the Russians it was a week of drainage. On boats, barges, tree trunks, rafts of boughs and oil drums, soldiers made their hasty way across the Dnieper. In their mop-up the Germans claimed 300,000 prisoners, actually took about half that many. Marshal Semion Budenny had had about 700,000 men to begin with, had suffered about 150,000 casualties—and so he extricated perhaps as many as 400,000. These were, however, disorganized by their losses and the retreat.

Another drainage was from the Black Sea port of Odessa. There the Germans claimed they had cupped two armies. The Red Fleet, in fairly good control of the Black Sea, evacuated men by sea. “A new Dunkirk,” said the Germans. “Another Tobruk,” suggested the British. But Russia’s jingoistic, paprika-tongued spokesman Solomon A. Lozovsky, begged to differ. “It is plain and simple Odessa,”he asserted.