Time in Flight

To the Germans now, each week of war was a week of reprieve. Every inch of ground held now was a mile of hope for a miracle, every day was a victory on the bloody march to April. By April there might be a number of strong new divisons--built around a new class of 17-year-olds nurtured on Nazi fanaticism. In April (by Allied guess) new Nazi secret weapons might be ready.

Last week the Germans were as good as ever at fighting for time. In the west they burrowed like moles, worked like beavers to dam the stream of Allied power swelling up to spill out over them. In the east they had limited for at least one more precious week the scythe-like swing of the Red Army.

But time still worked two ways. The Germans could not slow its speedy passage on Allied wings, in the fleets of thousands of bombers that could now take up even direct tactical support jobs for the Russians. In the multi-miled echelons of aircraft the Germans read an unmistakable sign: the fifth front had been joined in the sky.

The German command did not need a Yalta communique to know that the Allies had chosen the place--and probably the time--for the fourth and final ground front: the north German plain. There, perhaps in conjunction with landings from the North Sea, the eastern and western Allies had the same objective: to grind the Wehrmacht between them.

It was time for vitriolic German threats. Exhorted the Nazi Foreign Office spokesman: "Kill, murder and poison . . . cast overboard our last scruples." Perhaps the Nazi leadership, in the last ditch of desperation, would order gas or bacteriological warfare. But if the threat was another bluff, it was quickly called. SHAEF let the thing be said that had long been evident but unlabeled: that terror bombing of German cities was deliberate military policy. The German command could easily read between the lines an Allied warning: if you do, we do.

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