Show WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS by edward C wayne extending of material aid to russia poses difficult problem for british U S also studies soviet aid question early reports on fighting are vague EDITORS NOTE when opinions are expressed in these they tire those of the news analyst and not of this released by western newspaper union COAL a OIL wig W E m IRON orr PIG IRON STEM WA am SUGAR axx 1 l aan a AN EACH COMPLETE SYMBOL EQUALS 10 PER CENT total toll national Nio niona nl production in n millions million of tons coal 1940 1646 oil and gas ga 1940 pig iron 1940 steel 1940 sugar 5 drawn from an authoritative source the above chart indicates the total amounts of strategic resources produced in the entire soviet union these items come from the ukraine and caucasus in the following percentages cen coal 62 oil 83 iron ore 64 pig iron 63 steel 47 and sugar 74 thus loss of the area represents a tremendous blow to russia and an important gain for the nazis this chart was released by the university of chicago round table AID to reds As nazi germany and red russia hurled their armies into the most far flung battle line of all human history the question of just what aid would be sent to the soviet forces was a moot point on both sides of the atlantic the governments of both britain and the united states declared themselves on successive days as having solved the question as to the aid principle by boiling it down to a very simple equation anybody that is fighting nazis is on our side in this fight britain announced it would send s economic and military aid and the united states said the same but it was not immediately clear just how much of the latter there would be En glands first move was to increase the effectiveness of her bombing raids on occupied france and german cities raiding both by day and by night and reportedly downing many nazi airplanes in fact the RAF reported the dropping of as many bombs by weight in two weeks of the russian warfare fare as they had in a whole month previously heavy american bombers were constantly arriving on the scene in england and these presumably permitted the british to regard planes as slightly more expendable than they had viewed them previously sly there did not seem to be any question of ferrying airplanes to russia rather the only serious question of a changed policy on the part of england was the suggestion in some quarters that it might be a good thing for britain to cross the channel with soldiers and tanks now that hillers Hit lers back was turned that britain was watching the russo german war with her fingers crossed was evident in the military answer to this suggestion the first objection was that the channel ports had been so blasted that they would not be suitable for landings of large numbers of troops and that if the germans should win a sudden and swift t victory over the russians then limited forces of british on the continent might find themselves in a very precarious position therefore the question of british aid to russia seemed to be largely one of sending an advisory military mission which was done at once and the extension of more liberal trading credits in the united states aside from the fact that the question of any aid at all became a matter of vitriolic debate the actual aid to the reds boiled itself down to the same thing president roosevelt said even if russia were to send us a list of her needs it is not possible to fill the order as one would go to a store our munitions factories including the airplane plants are completely busy filling our own needs and those of britain the question of time was important for the united states did not want to send planes and other equipment to vladivostok thence to start the long trek across siberia and then to arrive just in time to fall into nazi hands FIGHTING clouded the russo german war was odd in that it was being carried on without the benefit of war correspondents of little value as they are in modern warfare where they are scarcely able to keep up with the swiftness of events and where the they y are just as apt as civilians of other types to become casualties themselves they were badly missed in this the gre greatest at battle from point of numbers and power of all history it would have taken an army of them to iosef a 2000 mile front to begin with and in the second place we th e nazis barred all correspondents from the front and the russians did likewise the nazis were using soldier correspondents but the feeling among readers of was that they were more than usually uncommunicative it was impossible to do more 9 on n a war map than to draw hazy lines imes wit harrows pointed at the districts where one side or the other claimed that the action was taking place estimates of the number of men and machines in action were of the haziest conjecture running all the way from divisions on a side to and the plane guesses from 2000 on a side to there were even skeptics on the street who asked who knows whether theres any fighting at all the answer to that was to be found on the western front where bombing of england had been abandoned and virtually german defense of the air hitler said wiser iser observers would not have permitted that unless the real mccoy in the way of a war blitz were going on at the eastern front both sides made the most optimistic claims the germans claimed uncounted planes shot down and destroyed on the ground the russians said the count in the first week was for them for germany i the germans claimed that wiped out a whole division and that their blitz was moving forward on schedule and that a great victory would be announced momentarily the russians countered with the statement that at no place had the nazis moved into actual prewar pre war russian territory and that at some points their own troops were on the off offensive one instance of the difficulty ity of getting facts from the came in the battle of the river which the germans first claimed to have crossed without difficulty later said they had established by hard fighting a bridgehead across the two days after they had previously announced an easy and swift crossing As to the the russians said 10 barges of the enemy crossed a wide river under cover of a fog but were hurled back later with terrible losses and this river was supposed to be the same the russians claimed warsaw and constanta important cities in nazi occupied territory in flames and heavy damage on helsinki and danzig the germans said they were burning up leningrad dussias Rus sias second most populous city |