Chock and Pot

The German Army's favorite tactic is called Keil und Kessel. Keil means wedge: the Army drives tanks and armored vehicles into the enemy mass. Kessel means kettle: infantry units encircle the cut mass, drive it into a kettle-shaped trap. Last week on the Ukraine front the Germans put the heat under the biggest pot o' Russians ever, and had the chock nearly set for a new drive into the apparently endless Red mass beyond.

Kettle. In the deepest encirclement it ever attempted, the German Army had taken in not only Kiev but some 11,000 square miles to the east. Inside that kettle it claimed it had isolated no less than 50 divisions (more than the U.S. Army, two-thirds of the British Army, one-fifth of the German Army).

Grimly the encirclers set about annihilating the encircled. The Russians fought grimly, too. Supplies and commands were dropped to a surrounded Red force from the air; first two, then three isolated groups fought their way to a juncture. But by week's end the Germans claimed they had broken the Russians' resistance and had taken 665,000 prisoners. This, they said, brought entire Russian casualties to an unbelieveable 6,000,000. The Russians laughed at these figures, maintained that not more than 100,000 troops had been encircled in the first place.

Wedge. The crucial question in the Ukraine was whether the force kettled near Kiev was most of the southern defensive force or whether there were still enough Russians to put up more fight. The question was answered by the Germans.

They reported that the Russians' southern Commander, Marshal Semion Budenny, had set up a strong defensive zone near Poltava, where in 1709 Peter the Great finally stopped the aggrandizement of Sweden's Charles XII. The new Budenny resistance was even admitted to be taking the form of counterattacks.

The Reds were apparently not tuckered out yet, because a force with enough power to counterattack must be moderately strong. After the Germans claimed 633,000 prisoners in the Minsk and Smolensk areas Marshal Semion Timoshenko was still able to counterattack and stabilize that front (see p. 27). But upon what happens when the Germans have emptied the kettle of Kiev and are ready again to pound the wedge depends the future of British-Russian cooperation on a common front (see p. 25) against that artist of Keil und Kessel, Adolf Hitler.

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