Black Sea Conquest

In Czech and Slovak the word sped across the Carpathians to clandestine radio sets: The fraternal and allied Red Army stands on [your] borders. . . . Welcome your Russian brethren! . . . Arise and fight! . . . Unleash a national guerrilla war!

That night in Moscow 548 guns thundered an unprecedented salute to a great twin victory by two ex-peasants now be come marshals: 1) tank-expert Gregory Zhukov's drive to the old Czech border and 2) infantry-expert Ivan Konev's 40-mile thrust into Rumania. In spite of mud and flood-swollen rivers the Red Army was still on the march it began in December some 300 miles to the east.

Disaster at the Rock. The 250-mile-long southern front now ran across a fertile, oil-soaked chunk of Rumania and then wandered to the northwest along the Carpathians. On the wrong side of this front, isolated clusters of German troops continued to fight. Moscow reported that five Nazi divisions had been destroyed above Odessa. At Tarnopol the embattled garrison was being whittled down. In the forests near Skala ("Rock") on the middle Dniester, Red units battled the detachments of 15 Nazi divisions.

When Zhukov broke through the Bug line a month ago, the whole German line began to fall back. Zhukov knew he could not encircle a force retreating twelve to 18 miles a day, decided to outrace it. He seized its roads, rail centers, Dniester bridgeheads by quick penetrations, straddled the few good retreat routes across a muddy, wooded flatland.

The German units changed their route again & again, wasted men and precious time. Zhukov began to push them off the roads, compel them to accept battle in swamps. The orderly retreat had been turned into flight. Heavy equipment was left behind. Supply trains clogged up the roads.

Said Moscow: in four weeks of March, Zhukov's army alone killed 183,000 men, captured 25,000, seized or destroyed 2,100 tanks, 4,600 guns, 54,000 trucks. Last week, at two railway junctions, Red units captured 1,600 railroad cars loaded with food, ammunition, loot, wounded Germans.

Disaster by the Sea. But the week's most clear-cut victory was scored at the great Black Sea port of Odessa (prewar pop. 600,000). Berlin admitted the city had been evacuated, claimed all military equipment had been moved out, too. It was a neat trick if it was done: Red war ships and aircraft were on the prowl outside the harbor, and the only land escape corridor was becoming narrower by the hour.

The victors: Odessa-born ex-sergeant Rodion Malinovsky and his army of Odessa veterans. In 1941 these men battled for more than two months in the city's ruins before moving out, aboard the ships of the Black Sea Fleet. Now it was good to be back, even if the great city lay dead and charred.

Now the Germans had no sea bases on the Ukrainian coast. They still held the Crimea, but Soviet men-of-war and aircraft hacked its supply arteries to Rumania. Last week a new Russian offensive drove 12 miles into the Crimean defenses behind which 100,000 Axis troops may be trapped.

Disaster's Messengers. The Red Fleet, which now has a chance to regain domination of the Black Sea, is headed by an ancient 12,000-ton craft called a battleship 33 years ago. But it also includes five cruisers, 27 modern destroyers, 50 submarines, a flock of 60-ft. PTs, a small aircraft carrier (named Stalin).

The Fleet's chief: tough, ingenious Vice Admiral Filip S. Oktyabrsky, who left Odessa with enemy bullets whizzing about his ears and who in the dark days of 1942 must have considered blowing up his ships if his last base at Batum fell. Now things were different.

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