Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1941. DANGERS IN SOUTH RUSSIA.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 November 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1941. DANGERS IN SOUTH RUSSIA.

AT the stage to which events have been carried on the Eastern front, South Russia probably must be regarded as the area of conflict in which the gravest issues are at stake. Moscow and Leningrad are threatened seriously by the desperate German efforts to gain some decisive advantage, but both these cities are still held by a fairly wide margin. The most ambitious claim yet made by the enemy is the capture (as yet unconfirmed) of a position 40 miles north-west of Moscow. It is reported, too, that at this late stage of their attack the Germans are trying to open up new lines of approach.

Save in the extent to which it is altered by the latest news of a Russian counter-attack in the Donetz basin in which an advance of 22 miles was made and of a victory gained by the Soviet forces in the area west of Rostov, and a pursuit of three routed enemy divisions for 40 miles, the position in the south appears to be much more critical. This follows on German claims that Rostov had been captured and on Russian reports of fierce fighting in the streets of that city. At time*of writing the situation awaits clarification. Obviously the outlook will be improved and brightened greatly should it prove that the German thrust against Rostov has been broken and decisively repelled.

A message from London yesterday observed that though the loss of Rostov (then assumed to have occurred) was serious, another railway for the transport of oil from the Caucasus remained (a railway running north some distance east of the River Don, on the west bank of which Rostov stands) and that there was a further route up the Caspian Sea, from Baku to Astrakhan, and thence by rail to Moscow and other parts of Russia. This in itself appears at best to be making the best of a bad job. If the Germans were able to get a firm foothold in Rostov the possibility would have to be recognised that they might be able to force the passage of the Don and to continue their drive across the comparatively easy territory between that river and the Caspian Sea. Great rivers have not thus proved to be in themselves a very serious obstacle to the enemy’s advance.

The threat visibly raised is not so much to the Caucasus, as to the communications between the Caucasus and the rest of Russia. With these communications cut, Russia would be deprived of a very large part of her present oil supplies. So far as an actual invasion of the Caucasus is concerned, the Germans are faced still by an enormously difficult task. Crossing the Don, they would be within striking distance of some minor oilfields, but would still be separated from the principal fields by the 900 mile mountain chain of the Caucasus, penetrated only by a few narrow passes which should lend themselves admirably to defence.

In their invasion of the Crimea, the Germans do not seem as yet to have gained an effective base for attack on the Caucasus except perhaps by air. They have captured Kerch, but have not deprived the Russian Black Sea Fleet of its main base at Sebastopol, nor broken the Russian naval command of the Black Sea. A crossing of the narrow Strait of Kerch to the Kuban marshes on the mainland side does not seem to offer a very hopeful approach to the Caucasus. Apart from any question of an invasion of the Caucasus, however, an enemy drive across the communications north of that region would be extremely serious on a number of grounds, particularly those of oil supply and of effective contact between the Russians and the Allied forces in the Middle East. The position and outlook will be improved greatly if Marshal Timoshenko’s forces are able to re-establish the southern front and to hold Rostov by a secure margin.