Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1941. GERMANY’S SOUTHERN DRIVE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1941. GERMANY’S SOUTHERN DRIVE.

ALL the information reaching Ankara, a British United Press ' correspondent was quoted in one of yesterday’s cablegrams as stating, indicates that if. the Germans extend their offensive to the Caucasus they will meet joint British and Russian defences under a joint command, and will meet also lor the first time an army mainly equipped with American material. It is perhaps not yet to be taken for granted that the Germans will get as far, in their southern drive on the Eastern front, as is here suggested. Deeply as the enemy has penetrated into Russia and much as the Soviet Union has been weakened and handicapped by the loss of industrial and other territory, there is evidence not only of the terrible cost at which the invasion has been carried to its present stage, but of the increasing strain under which it is being extended. With the long northern winter opened, the Russians, in their truly magnificent resistance, are holding their ground firmly in the Leningrad zone and in the Arctic North. On the extensive Moscow front, tremendous battles are being fought, with comparatively little change of ground, the Russians at times retaking points of strategic importance in face of the enemy’s maximum effort to-retain them. All this being said, however, it is clear that the position in South Russia is extremely critical and that it has been made more critical by the German thrust into the Crimean Peninsukl. Whether the enemy is or is not intent on action against the Caucasus, he is far advanced in a drive which obviously is intended, amongst other things, to gain command of that area. It has been suggested that if the Germans are able to capture Rostov and pass the line of the Don, they may next turn, not south against the Caucasus, but east towards Astrakhan, the principal and only important North Caspian port. Should the enemy achieve that advance, the Russian main armies would be cut off from the army of the Caucasus and from the Allied forces in the Middle East. The Soviet Union at the same time would lose the major part of its total oil supplies it now draws from the Caucasus and the flow of Allied aid by way of the Persian Gulf and Iran would be stopped. With so much at stake, it may be taken for granted that the Russians will most valiantly defend Rostov and the whole line of the Don and the Volga, covering the area between the Black Sea and the Caspian. So much depends, indeed, upon the maintenance of contact between the Russian and British forces and upon keeping open a vital corridor of supply, that the Allies very reasonably might be expected to take whatever joint action is practicable without waiting for a direct attack upon the Caucasus. To Nazi Germany, the Caucasus represent a gateway to the whole Middle East, with its oil supplies, and even to India and areas beyond. The forcing of the gateway and the total undertaking involved are, however, enormous, even by the standards of modern war. General Sir Archibald Wavell is reported, to have said some time ago, in speaking of a possible Nazi drive through the Caucasus, that the difficulties for the enemy would be terrible. An already complex position in South Russia is made more complex by the possibility of a Gorman attack on Turkey, with a view to opening up a further approach to the Caucasus and regions beyond. This, however, would mean another call, and no light one, on. German military strength and resources. It appears to be the universal opinion of those with a first-hand knowledge of the policy and aims of Turkey that she would fight resolutely in defence of her independence.