GRIM OUTLOOK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 October 1942, Page 3

GRIM OUTLOOK

OPENED FOR INVADERS NO SECURE WINTER LINE REACHED. ENORMOUS MISCALCULATION MADE BY HITLER. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 19. For the Russian campaign in 1942, writes "The Times,” the days of major operations are numbered. “To find a line that can be ■held without ruinous cost through the winter has become the urgent problem of the German High Command. It does not appear that such a line has yet been reached on the'southern part of the front. “It seems necessary from the German viewpoint not merely to secure Stalingrad but also a wide front on the Volga instead of a wedge thrust out toward the right bank. The battle that is now raging for the factory area in the northern part of the city is, indeed, a battle for the lower Volga rather than Stalingrad. “Even, however, if Stalingrad .were yet to fall before winter, it is now too late for the Germans to hope for an exploitation of such a success as would justify the price that has been paid. An enormous miscalculation has been made. What Hitler miscalculated is not the march of the seasons or the power of the Wehrmacht, but the courage, tenacity, and skill in war of the armies and people of Soviet Russia. “Outside the city, to the north and south, the Russian forces still hack desperately at the Germans’ flanks, making small progress but keeping the enemy under constant strain. In his present position the enemy would never be free from these menaces, and therefore it seems 'clear that he must go on trying to improve it before he establishes a line which he can hold.” , In the meantime, “The Times points out, the Soviet military policy must inevitably be cramped for a long time by the deprivation of material resources which the German advance has entailed, and it is probably too much to hope that when the Germans go over to the defensive the Russians will be capable of any immediate counter-attack under the difficult conditions of their winter climate. “They will go forward in due time, but to make their ultimate attack irresistible it must be concerted with a larger plan for a simultaneous closing in of all the avengers upon Germany. In what should be the last phase of the general Allied defensive Russia has borne the brunt and discharged her task nobly. The first move in a general counter-offensive is the responsibility of her allies.”