BOCK'S BIG RISK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 168, 18 July 1942, Page 5

BOCK'S BIG RISK

drive to the don

Timoshenko Falling Back On

Strong Positions

British Official Wireless. Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, July 17. The pattern of events on the eastern front since the German break tnrough from Kursk is analysed by a well-informed London observer as follows: Von Bock took a big risk when he drove forward on a narrow front towards Voronezh, but the tremendous weight and therefore ■peed of the German advance eviflenly forced Marsha! Timoshenko to concentrate his main effort against this frontal assault. While the Russians were putting up a furious resistance against German attempts to cross the Don, von Bock was able to widen the front of the offensive southward, thus consolidating his position.

The Russians withdrew rapidly though in good order behind the Don, from Voronezh to Boguchar. The weight of the German assault then shifted south, and there is little doubt that in this direction is the core of the present offensive. The apparent objectives are the eastern Portion of the Donetz industrial area and Stalingrad, on the Caspian-Volga route by which oil and British and American supplies come in.

It is understood that both sides nave immense forces arrayed along this southern front, and a struggle as ferocious and critical as that in front of Moscow last October has evidently begun. The present effort of the Germans seems to be devoted to seizing the great elbow of the Don in order to curve in behind Marshal Timoshenko on the Donetz. Here is the chief danger point. It seems likely that Marshal Timoshenko's plan is to fall back to strongly prepared positions along the lower Don, held by fresh troops and tank formations.

Loss of Valuable Areas Although the Germans have deprived Marshal Timoshenko of the important lateral Moscow-Voronezh-Rostov railway, they have not yet acquired the use of it for themselves. The Russians have also lost the rich corn growing area to the west of the tapper Don, and are threatened with the loss of the industrial and coalmining area in the eastern Donetz basin. They have never been under any illusions that the German military machine, which they came so near breaking last winter, could not be refurnished by the combing out of German manpower, by the coercion of the Balkan satellites, and by the speeding up of armament production in German and occupied Europe for a supreme effort this summer. That supreme effort is now being made. If it is to succeed —and Germany's fate hangs on that—Marshal Timoshenko's army must be completely disintegrated, the Caucasus and Volga basin must be conquered, and the armies of the north and centre

must be isolated from Archangel and the supply routes from the Urals All this must happen before the advent of winter.

Although the initial impact of their onslaught carried the Germans forward and placed them in strategic positions which gravely threaten Marshal Timoshenko, yet there have been no encirclements of large Russian forces. The Red Army of the south has not been detached from the centre.

The German offensive is conditioned by time; the Russian defence is conditioned by space. German time and Russian space are both contracting. All depends on the relative speed of these two contractions, and that is primarily governed by the skill of the Soviet command in avoiding a decisive fracture in their system of mobile defence, and by the equipment at their disposal. That is why British and American supplies are vitally important in this momentous struggle, and why they will be maintained at all hazards, even though that involves wastage of shipping urgently needed for other enterprises.