NOTES ON THE WAR

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3264, 17 May 1943, Page 6

NOTES ON THE WAR

NEXT JOB FOR ALLIES BREAK FESTERING EUROPE DEFENCE AGAINST INVASION Now that the Allies a re in full control of North Africa they will be considering the best ways and means of tackling the next job, the attack on what the Germans call “Festung Europa”—Hitler’s “fortress of Europe.” The Germans will have -been in control of Western Europe for three years next month. After their decisive failure to overwhelm Britain from the air preparatory to invasion and occupation, following the fall of France, the Germans- proceeded with their characteristic methodical thoroughness- to fortify the west coast of Europe from the North Cape down to the Pyrenees against any British and Allied attempt to expel them. Just as they built their “Siegfried Line” in 1939 to protect their rear against the Anglo-French “second front,” while they cleaned up Poland, so in 1941 they began to build what they called their “sea-wall” against British sea power in the west while they concentrated on knocking out Russia in the east.

In each case comparatively few troops were left to defend the west. Not much is known in detail, except, perhaps, to the Allied High Command, of the fortifications on the coast of western Europe, but they were designed in general by the late Fritz Todt, the German Vauban, an engineering genius in the art of constructing defence works of all kinds, great and -small, including airfields and road and rail communications. To Todt the Germans owe their formidable “hedgehog” system in Russia, which has- proved so hard a

nut for the Red Army to crack. The western fortifications are at least equally formidable. British commandos have come up against them at'~various points in Norway and France, and at Dieppe last year the Nazi defences were tested on a larger scale and not found wanting in any important respect. Todt’s “Hedgehogs” The “hedgehog” principle seems to have been followed in the west a sin the east. There are big “hdgehogs” as well as small ones, and defence in depth extends many miles inland, with a chain of airfields to ensure air cover. The “front line” need not be heavily manned if reinforcements can be rushed up quickly from the rear and flanks. All that the “front” is required to do is to hold up the attackers long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

It can be assumed that these fortifications and defence works have been improved and extended, wherever experience dictated, in the past two years. Ample labour has been provided by the local populations working under compulsion. 'So much for the “Western seawall.” When the Allies—British and Americans—landed in North Africa in November last, the Germans reacted quickly. Vichy France was occupied in a few days, and the work of fortification continued at high speed along the short south coast of

France from Perpignan in the Pryenees to the Italian border. The six months’ respite, from November 11, 1942, to May 11, 1543, while the Allies were completing the conquest of North Africa, should have been ample to put Southern France in a position of defence comparable with that of the long western European coastline. Italy and Sicily and Sardinia, apart from the “protection” of the Italian navy, have probably also ' been prepared in some lesser measure against Allied landings. In Greece and the Balkans the measures taken by the Axis cannot have been anything like so complete, and this area is probably the “softest” part of the “underbelly of Europe” and the easiest to attack. It is, however, furthest away from Britain and America. There is one further point which might be amplified later. Germany this year has taken special steps not onl yto remove- the civil population o-f the various countries occupied far a'way from threatened coastlines, but also to conscript the able-bodied mak population for service in> German wai industry, at one stroke helping the Axis war machine and depriving tin Allies of local support for a “secom front.”