The Push?

Moscow's radio grimly predicted a great winter offensive--greater than any which preceded it in other war winters. Last week, its words were echoed on both extremities of the snowbound Eastern Front:

> At Nevel (see map), the Red Army widened its wedge jutting eagerly towards the Baltic States, less than 60 miles away.

> At Kherson, 640 miles to the south, the Germans withdrew from their bridgehead on the south bank of the frozen Dnieper.

Other echoes rumbled all along the front. In the Dnieper bulge, great tank battles flared up and died down of sheer exhaustion. In the windswept plain west of Kiev, in the woods north of the frozen Pripet Marshes, the front stirred, thundered, quieted. Fearfully, Germans spoke of Russian troops massed thickly along the 300-mile front south of Leningrad.

Objective? Berlin glumly guessed that the Nevel force aimed at a breakthrough to the Baltic Sea, thus cutting off the German troops in the north. Moscow confirmed these fears by designating the force as the First Baltic Army. But it seemed obvious that before striking west, this powerful army would have to crush the enemy's stronghold at Vitebsk.

Headed by a summer hero, General Ivan Bagramyan, the First Baltic Army seemed strong enough for the twin job. German reports put it at: 14 infantry, one artillery, two cavalry divisions, with two complete tank corps. Still larger forces were apparently massed south of Vitebsk, under Russia's famed General Konstantin Rokossovsky. Stalled for weeks by adverse weather and fierce German resistance, this Army was a tight spring that could uncoil at any moment.

A breakdown at Khersoi would throw the Germans back to the Bug River, further imperil the troops still entrenched within the Dnieper bend. It looked like the beginning of a hard winter for Germans.

It's Tough. Yet the enemy is better equipped than in the preceding two winters of disaster. Berlin has even claimed bravely: "German soldiers have conquered fear of cold and snow." But in Germany, the press pleaded with the butchers and farmers to save every single rabbit fur, to be sent to the Eastern Front for coats.

The German press was filled with tales of suffering that could not be hidden. Reported one war correspondent: "Along the [northern] front cold has become intense, snow sweeps over plains and swamps. It prows dark at 2:30 p.m.. and during the following hours the Russians usually attack. Attacks often continue until late at night; then, after a short pause, the attacks start again just before dawn."

Until the Sun Rises. Wrote Nazi Correspondent Hermann Niekamp from the Crimea: "Tracer bullets light the night. Machine guns suddenly stop. . . . Then ghostlike figures come darting. A hand grenade falls close by, then another and another. The German soldiers in the trenches know death is only a few yards away and grit their teeth.

"Then they come . . . jumping with cries into our trenches. . . . Every night a fight rages before Kerch. Attempts are always thrown back by the greater ability of German soldiers. But every night there is mortal fear in the trenches until the sun rises. . . ."

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