PRE-WAR ESTIMATE

Evening Star, Issue 23371, 14 September 1939, Page 6

PRE-WAR ESTIMATE

OER FUHRER'S DISADVANTAGES A dispassionate review of the general military situation, if Germany does decide to start another war over Danzig, can hardly > e reassuring to Hitler’s General Staff (wrote our London correspondent on August 24). Germany’s undoubted strategical advantage of interior lines is offset by many obvious disadvantages. Her army is not comparable to-day as an efficient fighting machine with that of 1914, and above all it does not possess that overwhelming superiority in equipment, notably guns and planes, which gave the Kaiser’s legions such formidable advantage 25 years ago. Not only will the Allies start level, but Prance’s Maginot Line will ensure the practicability of immediate and effective air attack. There will be no repetition of the march on Paris. Much more ponderable is the Allied advantage in naval strength now as compared with 1914. Even with Italy engaged, France and Britain hold a commanding sea supremacy. Added to this is the problem for Germany of those territories recently embodied in the Reich. So far from being assets, these may well prove liabilities. Finally Der Fuhrer has to cogitate the solidarity or otherwise of his homo front.