Turn About

In their Baltic backyard the Germans last week were getting a taste of their own mine and U-boat medicine. Six German troop transports went down. Cargo ships that spill Swedish iron ore and Finnish wood pulp into the Nazi war machine were being sunk. Trans-Baltic ferry service had been suspended. German Baltic ports were jammed with minesweepers, destroyers, patrol boats and anti-aircraft vessels.

The Germans, concentrating on distant battlefields in Russia, Africa and the Western Atlantic, kept mum about their backyard troubles, but the Swedes, who do a land-office business with Hitler, grew vociferous. Press and radio accused a Soviet submarine of torpedoing one ship in Swedish territorial waters and pointed to Russia as the logical source of Baltic raiders. The U.S.S.R. denied it.

The point was that R.A.F. minelayers* and United Nations submarines had been able to disturb important German shipping routes. In addition to draining raw materials from Sweden and Finland, Germany uses the sprawling, landlocked Baltic as a highway for transporting troops and supplies to the Leningrad area, the Finnish front and northernmost Norway.

When the Russians lost their Hango base in the Finnish Gulf and Leningrad was surrounded, the Red Fleet was assumed to be bottled in Kronstadt. The Baltic was a German lake and Sweden eased up on convoying. But the Red Fleet did not stay bottled. Submarines, perhaps other warships, broke through mines and nets blocking the Gulf and resumed raiding. Sweden last month resumed convoying. As of this week no German coal or coke had reached Sweden for ten days and Swedish papers warned that none could be expected for another ten. The United Nations had scored some success in hitting at Hitler's vital supply lines.

* Mine hazards are great in the Baltic because it is shallow, can be planted more effectively than deeper water.

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