Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1941. HITLER’S EASTERN ADVENTURE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 July 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 1941. HITLER’S EASTERN ADVENTURE.

PRESUMABLY any military failure by the Nazis in Russia must be regarded as inconclusive until they have made the supreme effort of which they are capable. Hitler and his gang are bound to strike on the Eastern front with all their power because the adventure on which they entered so hopefully, and so treacherously, a little over five weeks ago is one in which they must succeed or incur disaster. Failure to drive home the attack on Russia to a point of decisive success almost certainly would not only place in terrible jeopardy th.e German armies which have invaded that country, but would undermine the whole structure and system of Nazi power.

The Nazi dictatorship attacked Russia in the hope of gaining an easy victory which would give it greatly enhanced prestige and a vast new magazine of military and other supplies. Even an organised retreat at this stage would be so terribly damaging, if it were practicable, in both moral and material effect that it is unlikely to be contemplated. No doubt the Nazis will choose instead to press the attack on Russia with all the power they can bring to bear —even, perhaps, at the cost of taking risks in Western Europe and elsewhere which they would have preferred greatly not to take.

With matters thus ordered, the position in Russia probably must still be regarded as highly critical, but there is great encouragement to be drawn from the extent to which the Germans have failed in achieving their objects on the Eastern front and-from the convincing evidence now offered that they have under-estimated greatly the magnitude of the task there confronting them.

There does not seem' to be any doubt that the posit ion at the moment, with the campaign in its sixth week and something like half the northern summer gone, is accurately summed up in the statement that the second German offensive on the Eastern front is petering out. A measure of uncertainty may remain in regard to the Ukraine, and other detail objectives, notably Leningrad, but the Germans themselves are now emphasising that the occupation of additional territory may be an embarrassment rather than a gain while the Red Army and its Air Force remain unbroken.

At the outset, the Germans announced confidently that the Bed Air Force would be destroyed in a few days and the Russian armies reduced speedily to confusion and helplessness. Nearly three weeks ago it was claimed by the invaders that they had opened the gate to Beningrad, ioreed the route to Moscow and were on the outskirts of Kiev. Summing up their’ alleged prospects at that time, the Nazis claimed that they had made victory “a beautiful certainty.” All the world knows now that a large proportion of the communiques issued by the German High Command in reference to the war on the Eastern front, not to speak of masses of incidental propaganda, have been simply a mass of lies.

According to credible reports, it is now being admitted by German military authorities and newspapers that the tactics of mechanised attack have failed in Russia. In many instances these admissions are accompanied by resentful complaints of the failure of the Russians to collapse and panic in accordance with the rules of the game as these are conceived by the Nazis.

The commanding’ fact of the whole vast campaign on the Eastern front of course is that the Russians have fought and are fighting indomitably. After a series of easy victories in Europe over countries that were too small and weak to offer any real, resistance, or had been undermined by internal treason, as'in the case of France, the Germans find themselves opposed by a nation that has both the power and will to resist them.

It is now being said in the Reich that the failure of attempts to subdue the Russians by the thrusts of armoured columns makes it necessary to throw in the whole German Army. This is not, from the German standpoint, a very promising proposition. Russia is even better provided than Germany with masses of men and all the infantry divisions Germany can muster might well be thrown in vain into the gigantic, continuous Verdun, as a Soviet spokesman has called it, which has now developed on the Eastern front.

There are no means of judging at present just what further penetrations into Russian territory the Germans may be able to make before the northern summer comes to an end. It seems reasonably certain, however, that so long as the Russian people and armies maintain the spirit by which they are now animated, Nazi Germany will achieve no decisive success on the Eastern front. All the indications at present are that instead she will find herself faced on that front by increasing and possibly exhausting demands.