CRITICAL CONFLICT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 July 1942, Page 3

CRITICAL CONFLICT

OUTLINE OF SUPPOSED ENEMY AIMS ATTEMPT TO DISABLE SOVIET BEFORE WINTER. RISKS TAKEN IN HOPE OF BIG RESULTS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, July 17. The fighting at Voronezh is officially reported from Moscow to be continuing with undiminished intensity. Repeated enemy attempts to break through have failed and the enemy has continued to suffer heavy losses. The Russians are also attacking and their tanks penetrated one place in pursuit of the retiring Germans. The opinion in London is that if the Russians can continue to hold this German offensive, it will be a considerable Russian victory. Moscow Press . messages state that the Red Army is regaining some of the ground lost last week at Vorone. In the south, the Germans are using massed armoured forces, regardless of losses, in an effort to smash the retreating Russians. The Russian army is holding them off, but the threat to Rostov and Stalingrad increases hourly, as the Germans, south and east of Millerovo, have achieved numerical superiority. The pattern of events on the Eastern front, since the German break through from Kursk, is analysed by a well informed London observer as follows:— General von Bock took a big risk when he drove forward on a narrow front towards Voronezh. However, the tremendous weight and therefore the speed of the German advance evidently has forced Marshal Timoshenko to concentrate his main effort against this frontal assault. While the Russians were putting up a furious resistance against attempts to cross the Don, General von Bock was able to widen the front of the offensive southward, thus consolidating his position. The Russians withdrew rapidly, though in good order, behind the Don, form Voronezh to Boguchar. The weight of the German assault then shifted south, and there is little doubt that the attack in this direction is the core of the present offensive. Apparent objectives are the eastern portion of the Donetz industrial area and Stalingrad, on the Caspian-Volga route, by which Oil and British and American supplies come. It is understood that both sides have immense forces arrayed along this southern front _ and a struggle which will be as ferocious and critical as that in front of Moscow last October has evidently begun. The present effort of the Germans seems to be devoted to seizing the great elbow of the Don in order to curve in behind Marshal Timoshenko on the Donetz Basin. Here is the chief danger point. It seems likely that Marshal Timoshenko’s plan is to fall back to strong-ly-prepared positions along the Lower Don, now held by fresh troops and tank formations. Although the Germans have deprived Marshal Timoshenko of the "important lateral Moscow-Voron-ezh-Rostov Railway, they have not yet acquired the use of it for themselves. The Russians also have lost the rich corn-growing area to the west of the Upper Don and are threatened with the loss of an industrial and coal-min-ing area in the eastern Donetz Basin. They have never been under any illusions that the German military machine, which they came so near to bi caking last winter, could not be refurnished by a drastic combing out of German manpower, by coercion of Balkan satellites and by speeding up armament production in Germany and in occupied Europe for a supreme effort tins summer. That supreme effort is now being made. If it is to succeed, an Germany’s fate hangs on that, Marshal Timoshenko’s army must be complete J disintegrated, the Caucasus and he Volga Basin must be conquered and the armies of the north and the centre must be isolated from Archangel and supply routes from the Urals, and all this before the advent of winter. Although the initial impact of their onslaught has carried the Germans forward and placed them in strategic positions which gravely threaten Marshal Timoshenko, yet there have been no encirclements of large Russian forces. The Red Army of the south has not been detached from the centre. The German offensive is conditioned by time and the Russian defence is conditioned by space. The German time and Russian space are both contracting. All de pends on the relative speed of these two contractions and that is primarily governed by the skill of the Soviet command, in avoiding a decisive fracture in their system of mobile defence and by the equipment at thendisposal. That is why British and American supplies are vitally import-

ant in this momentous struggle and why they will be maintained at all hazards even though that involves wastage of shipping urgently needed in other enterprises.