The Losers

No matter how the Battle of Russia turned out (see above), for some it had already been lost last week. The people of western Russia and the Ukraine, over whose lands the war has been fought, were certain losers. For them the battle has meant slavery, forced migration, torture, death.

The Slaves. There were new recruits for the Nazis' Army of 2,500,000 forced laborers from conquered countries (TIME, Feb. 23). They were Ukrainian miners, ticketed to work in German coalfields, where slowdowns have decreased production. The scant reports from Germany gave no figures, but promised that "tens of thousands" more men & women would soon be brought into slavery.

The Emigrants. From Russia came news of a migration of another kind. During the German advance of last summer and fall, Soviet industry went into orderly retreat. Millions of workers and their machines were moved to the comparative safety of the Urals and western Siberia. Last week the Kremlin announced that they would stay there. Local authorities in the east were ordered to settle the workers permanently around their new factories.

However distasteful this mass resettlement might be to the men & women involved, it made sound sense from the point of view of Soviet planning. One main objective of the third Five-Year Plan, which was scheduled to be completed this year, was to shift Russia's economic center of gravity out of bomb range of the European border. It was no easy project for peacetime, since nearly two-thirds of Russian industry was concentrated in the west. But the necessities of war cut through the difficulties. Last week's decree was doubtless issued to secure Russia's own sources of supply at a time when supply lines from Britain and the U.S. are threatened (see p. 75).

The Dead. The heaviest losers in the Battle of Russia were not those who lost their freedom or their homes, but the thousands who had to endure the German occupation. Last week a U.S. correspondent visited reoccupied towns and talked to survivors. What Walter Kerr saw, heard and radioed to the New York Herald Tribune made more gruesome reading than the terrible figures in the official Russian report on Nazi atrocities (TIME, Dec. 8).

Of 30,000 people in the Latashino district, about 90 miles west of Moscow, Kerr wrote, at least 949 had been shot, hanged, burned or frozen to death. The melting snow would probably uncover more bodies. Of 6,000 homes, 4,700 had been destroyed or badly damaged. Fifty of 67 school buildings were burned.

The Germans wanted the use of an insane asylum in a nearby village and decided to eliminate the 529 inmates. "First they stuffed the chimneys and tried to suffocate the patients. This started a riot, with the patients breaking glass, etc. Half of them escaped, and it is believed that most of them perished in the snow; 276 were taken to a neighboring park and shot."

When the Nazi Army retreated through another village, it forced all 80 inhabitants to go with it. One of the villagers told how he and his nine children, his wife, his blind father and his mother had marched in the wake of the soldiers. "The grandmother was slow moving and the Germans came up and beat her. . . . One by one his own children and four other children died of the cold. . . . The second day his boy of three years perished. . . . That afternoon . . . the Germans began to shoot the stragglers. . . . His wife and one daughter were shot down and the others began to run. Two others were shot.

"Finally the Germans passed on, having killed 21 and injured 38 out of a total of 80 who left the village together. Seven were left of his family of 13."

The deadliest spring offensive could hardly terrify people who have lost so much.

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