South Yorkshire Times, September 19, 1942
The Breathless Moment
Never was time more heartily wished away than the sedate march of Autumn towards Winter.
In Russia the winter must bring some relief to the indomitable Red Army, though the Russians are sensitive about a British inclination to dwell on this, thinking perhaps that we endow it with greater weight than it in fact possesses. Here we wish the days away because heart and spirit outstrip our practical readiness to bring direct relief in the only fashion that will really count; that is by the opening of a second front. If last season’s campaign in Russia attained a scope unprecedented in the history of warfare the strife of the present Summer and Autumn has established new standards of violence and ferocity. The struggle for Stalingrad is a battle of Titans indeed. The very soul of the Soviet peoples has entered the lists as it did when Leningrad and Moscow were imperilled last year. Whether such supreme and sacrificial resistance can prevail is not yet clear.
Hitler is deeply committed to the attainment of this special objective, and Von Bock is being given everything that the enormous military machine of the Reich can furnish in order to smash this pillar of Russian resistance. Immense in scale as the previous mechanised clashes between these two great nations have been, nothing so far has matched the terrific concentration which for weeks now has been hurled against this great riverside city.
To Russia her agony must seem keen and close beyond any conception of ours. The dagger pricks her throat; her sinews creak with the mighty effort of preventing its deeper plunge. And yet the ordeal is not Russia’s alone. To those who have eyes to see it must be crystal clear that the destiny of the United Nations is as much at stake as the immediate fate of Russia.
Mr. Oliver Lyttelton’s eighty days are running out. The hour is grave, the breathless moment approaches, and the next fortnight or so may incalculably affect the future course of the war for good or ill from the Allied point of view.
Speaking at Sheffield this week, the Minister of Production retracted no word of his July forecast of a most critical eighty days, but recalled that there yet remained twenty days fraught with the direst significance for us and our allies. Battering their way inch by inch towards the heart of Stalingrad, the Nazis seek not only to conquer the Red armies, but to master time itself. No doubt they are hounded on by other things besides the menace of the Second Front. Darkness now brings winged terror from the East as well as the West. There are signs which may portend anxiety about internal morale.
A recent increase in some ration allowances could signify a sop to a harassed people on the eve of another winter; a winter not rendered more tolerable by the elusiveness of that remote mirage, complete victory. Stubborn opposition in the occupied countries, unquenchable rebellion in Jugoslavia, are now reinforced by open revolt in Bulgaria.
Baulked of success in what was to have been a short war, Hitler finds the safety margins steadily shrinking as he seeks to discharge the secondary task of adapting his juggernaut to the exigencies of a prolonged struggle. As two years ago we defeated the first plan, so now we must make no mistake about mashing the second.