Will to Win

The German withdrawal to new winter positions on the Russian Front has ended. So said Berlin's official Dienst aus Deutschland last week. A Soviet Russian spokesman exulted that Russian armies have "begun to win and will continue to win." The week's action tabbed the German statement as premature, the Russian boast as overly enthusiastic.

German resistance to Russian persistence showed signs of stiffening as Adolf Hitler's armies struggled to establish a winter line sufficiently strong to hold until the next thrust at Moscow, planned for the coming of warm weather. But Soviet military leaders claimed that German morale faltered as Red strategists dusted off guerrilla techniques unused since the first Finnish campaign: ski troops to scourge the ski-less, fleeing enemy; night raiders to swoop down on exhausted, sleeping soldiers; propeller-driven sleds mounting cannon and machine guns.

Joyous Thermometers. Reported the London Daily Telegraph's A. T. Cholerton: "The Moscow Command orders are: 'Drop your pack and go lightfoot after them. Then you will probably encircle and destroy them piecemeal and, in any case, you will force them to leave their stores behind for you. . . .'

"Soldiers back in Moscow are greatly heartened by their own ability to stand the winter campaign and by the miserable conditions of the poorly clad German prisoners, who are often whimpering with cold and have nothing of the conquering race about them. These Germans are dressed in thin great coats and tunics. They have no sweaters or only light ones and standard, unlined German service boots. Often they have no gloves. Sometimes they wear women's skirts or little pink and white striped jumpers or wool panties drawn over their trousers. All that is bad for the prim Prussian morale. The first thing that many Muscovites do in the morning is to rush to the thermometer and joyously call to their families: 'Twenty below; good for the Germans!'':

Zigzag Line. In all their efforts the Russians scored heavily in behalf of a major need: several important rail centers were again in or nearly in Russian hands. The threat against the highly strategic rail link between Murmansk on the Arctic coast and Leningrad was allayed. Control of the Volkhov River would mean possession of four-fifths of the Moscow-Leningrad railroad. Already recaptured was the southbound Moscow-Tula-Orel railroad. If the Germans could be driven out of the Donets Basin and Crimea, Russia could again link up communications important to her war effort--the zigzag lines of rails connecting Murmansk with Leningrad, Leningrad with Moscow, Moscow with the Donets Basin and the Black Sea.

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