Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1942. “IF THE CAUCASUS FALLS,.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 August 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1942. “IF THE CAUCASUS FALLS,.”

VERY dark and gloomy view of the outlook in Southern Russia, in itself and as it bears on the total prospects of the United Nations in the war, was taken by an American correspondent, Mr Leland Stowe, in a radio dispatch from Moscow cpioted at length in one of yesterday ’s cablegrams.

The United States and Britain are in danger of losing this war (Mr Stowe declared) and they can lose it in the next forty days unless the Anglo-American armed forces do something about it. Germany’s offensive needs only to smash onwards at the pace that was maintained in July for another forty days and the Nazis will have conquered all the Northern Caucasus arid seized the priceless Russian oilfields and refineries at Grozny and Baku. . . If the Caucasus falls every Anglo-American front or stronghold in the Middle East, Africa, India and the Far East falls with it.

The dangers here pictured are so far from being merely fanciful that every positive effort of which the United Nations are capable, in Western Europe or elsewhere, undoubtedly should be made to repel them.

Apart from -what action Russia’s Allies may take in her support, however, it is at least a little too soon to assume that the Germans are bound to conquer the Caucasus. What has happened thus far is that the Germans, in a titanic effort, but on a comparatively narrow front, have succeeded, at a great cost in men and material, in breaking into the northern approaches to Caucasia and in cutting across important and valuable railway and other communications between that region and the rest, of Russia. In order completely to sever communications between .the Caucasus and the territories to the north, the enemy, however, would have to press his drive, not only to Stalingrad, but further east and south to Astrakhan, on the Caspian Sea. Thus far he has been held firmly west of Stalingrad and further north.

Even where they have retreated, east and south-east of Rostov, the Soviet armies have done so in good order and unbroken. On open plains, and by a prodigal use of human and armoured masses, the enemy has been able to beat the Russians back, though by no means rapidly. It has yet to be seen what the Axis forces are capable of accomplishing against the mountain barrier of the Caucasus—one of the great natural fortresses of the world—stretching across country between the Black Sea and the Caspian, and broken only by a few narrow defiles.

The position at an immediate view admittedly has its seriously menacing features and is made more so by the continued Russian retreat on the extreme southern front reported today. There is an obvious threat, for example, to the remaining Russian Black Sea naval base of Novorossisk and to outlying Caucasian oilfields north of the mountain range. In view of the penetration of Russian communications already effected, and the further penetration that may be effected, the outlook is exceedingly critical. The oil of the Caucasus constitutes an important part of the lifeblood of the Soviet Union. Other deposits have been opened up between the Volga and the Ural Mountains, but it is unlikely that the output from these sources can supply any large part of Russia’s needs. Of the 34,200,000 metric tons of petroleum produced by Russia in 1934 (11.5 per cent of the world output), by far the greater part came from the Caucasus. In its war effort and in agricultural and other production the Soviet Union is vitally dependent on Caucasian oil.

Admittedly the fate of Russia and of much besides in the Middle East and further east is at stake in the great battles that are being fought on the approaches to the Caucasus, but these battles are still at an inconclusive stage. The outlook of course’ will be made much more hopeful if the Allies are able to take powerful supporting action in the West and to impose on the enemy, at the height of his desperate gamble for victory, the full rigours of a war on two great fronts.