Page Six THE PEOPLE November 4, "j ‘ Hitler Has No Answer By MAX WERNER HERE will be no military decision in Russia this year. Should Stalingrad finally fall, the Red Army will not be destroyed. It will carry out an organized retreat. The Germans lack the “military strength for the destruction of the Red Army. There is no longer any unrestrained German offensive. There is a titanic battle, but the German war of movement is now being held in check. The German offensive continues, | but no longer with manoeuyring in free spaces. On the contrary the fighting is on relatively stabilized) fronts, on fixed battlefields, with strong resistance from the defend- ers and only limited local adyances by the attackers. Stalingrad is not a fortress like Leningrad, and lacks natural flanks Caucasus will be stubbornly and effectively defended, and while that remains true, the economic prize remains outside Hitler’s grasp. Stalingrad is the key upon which the safety of any German army in the Caucasus must depend, and it | will remain the focal point of the Russian front Under these circumstances the i e the Gulf of | Russians’ action on the Central ie ee ee eat ers |Front assumes great importance. : Roy /It demonstrates once again -one densely populated area like Moscow, with suburbs and Satellite cities, and strongly defended Tula in the south. The battle for Stalingrad | can be waged in a much smaller | a Be ee eee ‘sian fronts simultaneously. other Moscow, from which counter- To carry out the great attack attacks can be launched inter? {to the south for econonvo and We can be certain every human lstrategic gains, Hitler surrendered e 3 ; : - effort will be exerted to make it so. |his hope of gaining a decisive vic- The battle for Stalingrad is essen- j tory by a smashing defeat of the tially a battle between German main Red Army. He had to aban- 5 |don all thought of offensive action ; ssiz Ss c de- tanks and Russian anti-tank de anywhere north of Voronezh. Ger- fact which is of vital, perhaps de- lcisive importance for the Allied Powers — namely, that Germany does not possess forces adequate to make offensives on both Rus- fenses. Here again the Red Army | is using its well-tried system: (of joo. offensive power, though great, total defense, wherein all arms, | = limited. This cannot be over infantry, artillery, tanks and avia- tion, as well as specialized anti- tank troops, take part The Germans now possess far stronger artillery than they did in | emphasized. e \T HAVE said that no military de- cision will be achieved by the Germans on the Russian front be- 4941. and German cooperation be- | fore winter. Both armies, not the I ; |Russians alone, face tremendous stillery and tank forces , Sugai ae ee ee lrisks. For the Red Army there is is better than last year, but, at the same time the Russian defense is even better than it was then. Rus- Sian artillery is concentrated at \the threat to vital areas and sup- ply systems. For the Germans there is the menace of the strategic fail- ure of the entire offensive. But Sas ee ae eae there will be no military decision Sislingrad. not only for obvious in the sense that one army or the military reasons, but also. for | ctBer will be shattered. prestige. What will determine the further The Wehrmacht has been hard course of the war is the state of fizhting capacity, morale and oper- - British Opinions On Hess Episode } Claude Cockburn in New Masses . . It is the mark of British morale at this moment that, despite very considerable discouragement from certain quarters, and despite the discouragement afforded by the visible facts, the British people still believe in the offensive. They refuse to consider the possibility of ‘stalemate,’ which the Ger- man government is so obviously offering as a basis for a peace offensive. The British public is by no means unaware of the efforts that are being made in enemy quarters, and quarters friendly to the enemy, to lay this basis. The Hess episode, and the public response here to the Russian request for the immedi- ate trial of the man whom Hitler sent to negotiate with the British government, testify to the strength of feeling and the high level of morale. People are disgusted at the mere reminder that this criminal still exists un- tried and unpunished in our midst although he is the only topgrade criminal of the Nazi clique in Allied hands. For months past the gentle treatment accorded Hess has been a subject of comment by the press funny men. The British public, however, has néver thought it very funny, and the Russian de- mand that the matter no longer be treated as a gentlemanly joke has evoked an immed- iate response. Rightly or wrongly there is a fairly wide- spread belief that it was not by accident that the Nazi-controlled press of Sweden recently tried to revive the ‘atmosphere’ of the orig- inal Hess mission and that Hess is—in some sense which it is difficult to understand fully —a symbol of importance. Because he is a symbol and because of the sort of policy he symbolizes, as well as for many graver reasons, the public is passionately anxious Mollie Panter-Downes © in New Yorker 3 _.. There was plenty of impassioned d ] cussion last week over the British retal }* tions for the German chaining of men tak — prisoner at Dieppe. This produced a live letter from Bernard Shaw asking whetl” the tit-for-tat system might be expected [i stop short of the total extermination of 1 human race. Qn the whole, the general opinion see | to be that the official handling of the aff F. wasn’t quite as clean-cut as it might hei§ been and that, anyway, the game of frig jee fulness is not one that Englishmen play wr in spite of the German high command's iif) cusations. The shackling of the English bc \§, captured at Dieppe naturally roused kei§ anger here, but most people think that 11% government was batting on a far beti & moral wicket before it gave the order whi 5. clapped manacles on a corresponding nui” ber of German wrists. Those who hoped that Rudolf Hess mig. be picked out for a little retaliation we brusquely disillusioned by a press annount ment that he was protected from anythi of the kind by virtue of being a specia & privileged prisoner of state. The parl § mentary rumor, which cropped up at abc & the same time, that one of the special pr & ileges might turn out to be Frau Hess und standably didn’t make a great appeal toi & worried relatives of missing Dieppe men — for effective offensive action. They wi § such action now—before the possibility of joint effective offensive by all the Allies 1] been dissipated by continued Anglo-Ame can subservience to the Axis policy of «§ at a time.’ : Continued from Page Five hit by the fact that the Russia@ns succeeded in’ stabilizing the front between Voronezh and the Middle Don. Militarily and economically, Stalingrad is essential if the eco- nomic objectives of this entire cam- paipn are to be achieved. e TALINGRAD is, so to speak, the gateway to the economic prizes the Germans seek in the Caucasus but while in itself it is an extreme- ly important strategic position, its capture would not mean the Ger- mans would automatically gain their economic objectives. They must have the Caucasus and Stalin- | strains ational preparedness in which both armies emerge from these terrific at the beginning of winter. This outcome can be directly affected by the start of a true war of coalition. The Russian front not only necessitates a second front in Europe—it provides it with very favorable chance. Steadily and increasingly, Ger- i man reserves are being tied up on the Russian front. German losses are mounting. Anglo-American forces today are effectively engaging only a few German divisions. It is this factor |which gave Hitler unlimited free- @rad—not one without the other. It is fairly eviqent that the Germans lack the power to launch all-out offensives against both Stalingrad and the Caucasus. I am still of the opinion that the |dom of action in the East. But now he is tied up in the East, immediate second front action is necessary on broad strategic erounds. For Hitler has no answer ito the second front now. Stalingrad Drains German Strength 5 eee gigantic battle for Stalingrad is in its third month. Heaps of debris, charred and mutilated bulks of buildings, tongues of flame, smoldering ruins and clouds of black smoke— this is the city landscape today. In the past three weeks, the center of the battle has shifted to the northern section of the city where the fate of Stalingrad is now being decided. The Germans are trying at all costs to capture the plants and adjoining streets, but cannot break the Red Army’s resistance. In the battles at the Stalingrad outskirts, the Germans have already lost 65 to 70 percent of their manpower and around 60 percent of their equipment. Nevertheless, hastily replenish- ing their forces, the Germans persist in their onslaughts. At the present time, some 22 divisions are concentrated against the defenders of Stalingrad (15 German infantry divisions, three motorized and four tank divisions) with more than 500 tanks, some 1200 guns, 1,000 mortars and no fewer than seven to eight hundred planes. reaching out for world domination, the Hitler party is a party of im- perialists, the most rapacious and predatory imperialists in the world. Further, Stalin proved the inevit- ability of the defeat of the German imperialists and their armies, the inevitability of the failure of the fascist adventure against the USSR. Three fundamental reasons were given by Stalin as bound to lead to the inevitable defeat of pre- datory Hitler imperialism. They were: 1. Instability of the WHuropean hinterland, of the ‘New Order’ in- stituted by the Germans in the occupied countries. 2. Instability of the German rear in Germany proper. 3. Existénce of a coalition of the USSR, Britain and the United States, which has set itself the aim of defeating the German aggres- sors. In this lies one of the de- cisive conditions for victory over Hitler Germany. Stalin further raised the ques- tion of war aims. The Soviet aim, he declared, is liberation from the fascist yoke of the occupied Soviet territories and of the Soviet people. The USSR is not out to conquer foreign peoples and force its will upon them. Its aim is to render them aid in their struggle for lib- eration against fascist tyranny. E REGARD Stalin’s speeches not merely as the viewpoint of the government and the Communist ‘Stalin's Policies Will Bring Victory Says Kalinin On Soviet Anniversa expression of the accumulated pop- struggle against the fascist invad- History hardly knows example of such close mutual co- operation and mutual such confidence of the masses in their leadership and the leadership's the put also as the|strong. He will strain hi strength to achieve success. greater the defeats he suffe ereater will be his fury~’ and energy for another 8 ESPITE its reverses, th Army nevertheless accor ed a feat, which amazed the world—it checked the vict triumphal march of Hitler’s: | influence, people’s full support for all its undertakings in the USSR today. Stalin’s words, while grim and disclosing as they did the full ex- tent of the danger threatening the Soviet Union and its people, were at the same time filled with confi- dence in victory. In his May Day order on the 24th anniversary of the Red Army, in which he gave an estimate of the previous period of the war, Stalin pointed to the important features and peculiarities of this war. As a result of the losses and defeats it had suffered, he said, the German army was deprived of the very important advantage accruing from the element of surprise. Turning to the successes gained by the Red Army during its winter offensive, Stalin resolutely warned the Red Army men and command- ers against any inclination to “rest on your laurels.” “We must not forget,” he said, “that many difficulties are still ahead of us. The enemy is suffer- ing setbacks, but he has not yet been defeated and still less com- pletely routed. The enemy is still — through Burope. Althougt Germans managed to per: deeply into Soviet territory, © mile of Soviet soil was paid a high price. Comparing iast year's G_ offensive with the present paign, we see that this offensive is waged on a na front. This is the result of th less struggle conducted by th of the Red Army, who durii first year of war, succeeded i | siderably sapping the stren: the German army. But, with its restricted aim year’s German offensive re such an enormous expendit; men and equipment, that v fully justified in holding t belief that the German con will not succeed in achieving aims, i Stalin's Leninist policy hé abled us to withstand the t dous onslaught of the Germe machine, has enabled us to hi and inflict a number of : defeats on the fascist Stalin’s leadership will bri victory.