Bi

Russian Advanees
Threaten Nazi Army

yee Soviet offensive in south-eastern Russia has furni
United Nations strategy in th
in the German conduct of war so tar,

for 1943.

This offensive has revealed
the material might of the Red
Army.

The Russian reserves in man-
power and arms were of all the
More consequence, inasmuch 45
they were used against 2 ereatly
exhausted enemy. They were
hurled into the battle at precise-
ly that’ moment at which they
could attain the greatest strate-
gic results.

In the late fall the German
army had been weakened first
by the futile siege of Stalingrad
and the unsuccessful assault on
the CGaucasian mountain range;
second, the over-extension of its
front lipes. During this period the
Red Army high command shifted

the bulk of the Russian forces
from the central front and con-
centrated them on the southern
front, bringing forward carefully
accumulated reserves.

At that moment—chosen by the
Russian high command—the Ger-
man army lost its earlier material
superiority. Since the beginning
of the offensive the Red Army
has had a definite preponderance
in infantry and artillery, and
probably in tanks as well

The real relationship of the
forces on the Russian front has
now become apparent.

e@

P to now it has been diffi-
cult to deduce the actual re-
jation of these forces on the basis
of the effective troops at the
front, simply because the use of
reserves differed greatly.- The
German high command used its
reserves much more ruthlessly,
and from the start of the cam-
paign. As a result it was re-
peatedly conjectured during the
German-Russian seesaw that the
Wazis might be as much as three
times as strong as the Red Army
in offensive weapons, in tanks

and aviation.
But this was a mere optical il-

By Max Werner

dusion, an instantaneous photo-
graph, so to speak, of the respec-
tive balance of forces at the front
alone, where the Germans used up
strong reserves while the Rus-
sians were husbanding theirs.

The Russian war planning, in
contrast to the German, aimed
at being stronger than the en-
emy at the end of the campaign.
Today there can be no question
that the Red Army possessed
and still possesses reserves for
the offensive.

e _
HE Red Army has also proved
its ability to wage major of-
fensive operations. The greatest
accomplishment in modern war-
fare is the large-scale manoeuver.
It is based on co-ordination and
simultaneous operation of large
units, of entire armies. It must
be conducted in vast spaces and
as a war of movement. And it is
directed at the encirclement and
annihilation of strong enemy
forces.

Operations are still in progress,
but all these elements have al-
ready been combined by the Red
army in this offensive as a meth-
od of the conduct of war. The
Russian blows are no isolated in-
dividual thrusts, but rather com-
ponents of one single offensive
operation, aimed at one object
and one goal. The goal is the
complete destruction of the Ger-
man armies in the south.

e

BE far-sightedness and en-
durance of Russian strate-
gic planning has again been
proved. There can be no doubt
that the Russian counter-offens-
ive was decided upon at least
as far back as September, 1942,
at the time when the Red Army
was defending Stalingrad with

rather limited forces.

The battle of Stalingrad was by

“no means a desperate last-minute

stand on the part of the Russians.

shed the outstanding contribution to
e winter of 1942-43. It has brought about the severest crisis
and it is giving new perspectives to Allied strategy

It was a cunning delaying action
designed to give the Red Army
time to shift to the offensive; it
was a strategic screen behind
which the forces were being de-
ployed for the ecounter-offensive.

The Russian reserves were
not frittered away in defensive
actions but conserved for the
great offensive.

During the most critical phase
of the war the Russians defended
themselves by husbanding their
forces in such a way that the sub-
sequent attack was made possible.
The strategic goals of the defen-
sive operations were then attained
by the counter-offensive.

It took the nerves of steel and
the minutest calculations on the
part of the Red Army high com-
mand to resist the temptation to
use its reserves too soon, and to
choose the most expedient mom-
ent for the shift from the defen-
sive to the offensive.

@

‘tie situation as it is now, with

the German front broken and
the cooperation among the vari-
ous sectors of the front made im-
possible, with the German armies
surrounded or in peril of being
surrounded, is humiliating for the
German high command.

A situation like this is utterly
unprecedented for the Germans;
it never arose in World War 1,
nor has the German army had
to face anything remotely simi-
lar since the Papoleonic wars.

The stakes in the great battle
in southeastern Russia are no
more and no less than the very
existence of the German army
as an able-bodied force. If it loses
this battle, then—this is the least
one can say—the German army
is broken as an offensive force.
And then the Russian front will
sooner or later become a wide-
open gateway to the fortress of
Europe.

Negro Musicians Honored
Despite Race Prejudice

We democracy was being dealt a blow through the
cancelling of a scheduled Fair Employment Practice
Committee hearing on racial prejudice in the United States
railway industry, all America—white and colored alike—was
discussing two other events which, considered beside the
cancellation order, seemed strangely contradictory.

The first concerned Marian
Anderson, acclaimed throughout
the world for her voice which,
musical authorities agree, is one
of the greatest of all time. Miss
Anderson recently won her long
dispute with the Daughters of the
American Revolution when they
finally consented to let her sing
in Constitution Hall before an au-
dience from which, for the first
time, the barrier of racial restric-
tions had been removed.

The second concerned Duke El-
lington, American musician and
composer of over 1,000 songs, who
last week gave a concert at Car-
negie Hall. Every seat had been
sold out for over a month in
advance, chairs were even placed
on the stage to accommodate en-
thusiastic listeners. All proceeds

for the performance were turned
over to Russian War Relief.

The main composition presented
by Ellington, son of a Negro-Am-
erican shipyard worker, was 4
new, 45-minute work titled
“Black, Brown and Beige, A Tone
Parelle] to the History of the Ne-
gro in America” which revealed,
according to New York critics,
an “extraordinary melodie fertil-
ity. genuinely subtle rhythms,
and some harmonic experimenta-
tion” (PM), and was brilliant,
complex, highly original’ (News-
week).

At the same time that Duke
Ellington in Carnegie Hall was re-
ceiving a plaque honoring him
for his contribution to American
music, signed by such notables of
the musical world as Conductor

Leopold Stokowski, plans were
being laid for two other meetings
to press for national recognition
of the fact that American negroes
possess the intelligence and abil-
ity to work.side by side with oth-
er Americans in the defense of
their country, and to bring strong
pressure to bear on War Man-
power Commissioner Paul V. Mc-
Nutt, by whose order the FEPC
hearings were “indefinitely post-
poned.”’ These meetings ‘were
called by Negro labor leaders who
feel that, to quote Martin Weaver,
Negro FEPC member, “if people
who practice diserimniation are
running this country we had bet-
ter find out now and then we'll
know where we stand.”

Much racial discrimination has

been aroused by various Southern
American newspapers who,
charged A. Philip Randolph, pres-
ident of the Brotherhood of Sleep-
ing Car Porters (AFL), had the
backing of the Ku Klux Blan for
recent editorials attacking Negro
leaders.

ie is now possible to make two
major positive entries in the
strategic balance sheet of the
United Nations, namely the Rus-
sian reserves and the offensive
capacity of the Red Army.

One might therefore conclude
that the coalition strategy of the
allies for 1943 will assume the
character of a combined Soviet-
Anglo-American offensive.

The Red Army is actually wag-
ing this winter offensive single-
handed, relieved only at the peri-
phery, in North Africa, and only
to a small degree. In 1942 the Red
army has fulfilled, and more than
fulfilled, its obligations as an ally.

One can elready perceive the
tremendous consequences the
“Russian offensive might have had
if there had been simultaneously,
and co-ordinated with it, an Allied
offensive on the European contin-
ent. And one can foresee the re-

sults such a combined offe
must have in 1943.
The task of Allied :
in Europe is not relief for 1
sia but the crushing of the!
man army’s defensive stren
The prime requisite for t
that the German army shoul}
have the chance to rally ©
the blows it has now suffer |
south-eastern Russia. It mus |
be given the time and th)
portunity to regroup its tonal
in the spring and early sui
of 1942:

@ 2

HE most pressing oblig >
of Allied strategy is th”
utilizing to the hilt the m4
between now and the begi |
of June, in order to concei |
all available means in time %
tensify the war in all its
and to wear down the ener:
the transition period befor }
great offensive. ae

he wrote the letter.

their comfort.

dark.

never be loved too well.
your friends.

heart tells you is bad.

a Yugoslav Patriot |
W rites To His Chile

EACHING London and the outside world a few weeks &
the following letter was written by Peter, 4 Yugoslav.
partisan, to his unborn child. When the Germans occupied
village, took ovér his home and business, his wife, Maria, 2
heavy with child. Peter left to fight im the forests with i
partisans and was shot several weeks later, but before he di

. {

Avenging partisans found his body, with the letter, ra
biding their chance to deliver it, passed it from hand to hé
so that in time it became part of guerrilla folklore. Eventua’
reaching its destination too late—for Maria had been murde
three days before her child would have been born—it has a
become a letter to every unborn child in the world.

VI CHILD, sleeping now in the dark and gatheri
strength for the struggle of birth, I wish you wi
At present you have no proper shape, and you doi
breathe, and you are blind. Yet, when your time com
your time and the time of your mother, whom I dee:
love, there will be something in you that will give y
power to fight for air and light. Such is your herita
such is your destiny as a child born of woman—to fi;
for light and hold on without knowing why. 3
May the flame that tempers the bright steel of yc
youth never die, but burn always; so that when ye
work is done and your long day ended, you may still
like a watchman’s fire at the end of a lonely road—tlor
and cherished for your gracious glow by all good w
farers who need light in their darkness and warmth

The spirit of wonder and adventure, the token of -
mortality, will be given to you as a child. May you ky
it forever, with that in your heart which always se
the gold beyond the rainbow, the pastures beyond —
desert, the dawn beyond the sea, the light beyond

May you seek always and strive always in good fe
and high courage, in this world where men grow so ti

Keep your capacity for faith and belief, but let y
judgment watch what you believe.

Keep your power to receive everything; only le
to select what your-instinct tells you is right.

Keep your love of life, but throw away your fea
death. Life must be loved or it is lost; but it she

Keep your delight in friendship; only learn to k

Keep your intolerance—only save it for what 3

=

Keep your wonder at great and noble things like ;
light and thunder, the rain and the stars, the wind
the sea, the growth of trees and the return of harv
and the greatness of heroes.

Keep your heart hungry for new knowledge; !
your hatred of a lie; and keep your power of indigna’

Now I know I must die, and you must be bor:
stand upon the rubbish heap of my errors. Forgive
for this. I am ashamed to leave you an untidy, unc
fortable world. But so it must be.

In thought, as a last benediction, I kiss your foreh
Good night to you—and good morning and a clear di