Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1941. SACRIFICES NOT IN VAIN.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 August 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1941. SACRIFICES NOT IN VAIN.

AS events have iiirned, the forlorn hope campaigns which were fought by British and Imperial forces, including the New Zealand Division, in Greece and Crete may now be seen to have had a most important bearing on the titanic struggle that is in progress on the Eastern front —a struggle in which Nazi Germany, with a narrowing margin of days, is striving desperately to achieve decisive success against Russia before the descent of the northern winter. "Whether the British and Dominion Governments, with their military advisers, had the impending Nazi attack on Russia in mind when they decided to send an expeditionary force to Greece is a question on which at present there is no information. It will be remembered that this fateful decision was defended by Mr Churchill and others primarily on the ground that if would have been unthinkable not to go to the assistance of the heroic Greeks when they had declared their determination to fight even if they fought, alone. That view stood and presumably still stands unchallenged, though there has been and is some controversy as to whether the attempt to defend Crete, without air support, is capable of being justified. To an extent, and perhaps to a very important extent, the whole question of the campaigns in Greece and Crete has been moved on Io a new plane by the outbreak and development of the war between Germany and Russia. 'Whether they were intended to do so or not, it is now plain that the battles in Greece and Crete, fought so valiantly and against, overwhelming odds by the British and Imperial forces, served an immensely valuable purpose in delaying the German attack on Russia, and in the outcome have intensified greatly what it is becoming more and more possible to regard as the deadly dangers faced by Germany in her Eastern campaign. The leading facts are manifest. Before attacking Russia, Hitler obviously had to safeguard his Balkan flank. Nothing else than the necessity of doing that will account for his failure to attack Russia at a much earlier date. It has been said, very reasonably, that since he attacked Greece and Yugoslavia on April 6, he probably expected to be in a position to attack Russia early in May. Tn that event he would have had the whole of the summer in which to carry out his Eastern campaign. His timetable was upset disastrously, however, by the lengthening out of resistance by the British and Imperial forces in Greece and Crete. The Germans were occupied in Greece until the end of April and in Crete until the end of May. It followed that Hitler and his gang were unable to launch until June 22 the blitzkrieg against. Russia, which has fared on the whole so badly. On this subject the military correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald” wrote recently:—■ When the history of this war comes to be written in the light of a full knowledge of events, it may well be decided that those April and May weeks radically altered Hitler’s destiny. The uphill fighting in Greece and Crete may turn out to have been just as fatal to Nazidom as the unexpected calibre of Russian resistance, for the very keynote of Russian strategy is to hold up the invaders until the snows, the forests, and the mud-bound steppes can exert their full retarding influence in an Eastern European winter. The Balkan battlefronts spared Russia for two precious months. In these facts there is much to modify the gloomier conclusions that were reached regarding the ordeal that was endured by our own soldiers and others in Greece and Crete. Magnificently as they demonstrated the indomitable spirit and fighting quality of the sons of the Anzaes and their comrades in the British land forces, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, these campaigns entailed a sickening loss of men killed, wounded or taken prisoner. To many people, in New Zealand and elsewhere, it seemed and may seem still, hard to justify these sacrifices, particularly where the defence of Crete is concerned. Tn the larger view, however, as has been suggested, an altogether different conclusion is possible and indeed seems inescapable. It is far enough from being possible to regard with placid resignation the losses that were suffered in Greece and Crete. But. as the war is now shaping, it is established very clearly that the sacrifices of our own soldiers and others were not made in vain—that a capital service was rendered to the whole world of free mon by the soldiers who fought in grim rearguard battles from Mount Olympus to the sea and those who played their part in the death-grapple in Crete.