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Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1943. “HEDGEHOGS” IN RUSSIA.

JN critical surveys of the course of war events on the Eastern

front, a great deal has been said at one time and another on the subject of “hedgehogs”—powerfully fortified bases intended to be capable of withstanding assault even when closely invested or completely encircled. The defence of key strongpoints of this kind admittedly enabled the Germans, in the fighting of about a year ago on the Eastern front, partly to nullify the Russian winter offensive, and to resume their own offensive, with success for a time and at a price, when better weather returned.

A number of “hedgehogs” are still being defended by the Germans in the present winter campaign in Russia, although others—notably Velikiye' Luki, Kotelnikovo and Millerovo—have been overwhelmed and their garrisons wiped out. The people of the Reich are now being invited by a leading German war commentator, General Diet-mar, to believe that the policy of defending key strongholds is still being pursued with success and that the German High Command has the situation well, in hand. Apart, however, from the fact that the winter campaign in Russia is far from having ended, and that it has yet to be seen how many more of their selected strongholds the Germans are doomed to lose, it is already clear that the “hedgehog” policy has been carried out on a far greater scale, and with much more deadly effect by the Russians than by their enemies.

The latest evidence on this point—particularly convincing evidence—appears in the breaking of the blockade of Leningrad in the successful offensive thrusts now being developed by the Russians south of Lake Ladoga. It is in the defence of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad that the “hedgehog” policy has been developed with commanding effect on the Eastern front. The relative and individual importance of the great defensive campaigns which have centred on these cities may be a matter for war historians to determine in future, but that the total and combined effect has been a tremendous contribution to the defeat of Axis gangsterdom is already well established.

From their grim stand in defence of all three cities, the Russians have now turned to the offensive. How great the effect, of this change over may be is indicated most clearly atthe moment, in the case of Stalingrad. In, the closing three months of their summer and autumn campaign last year, the Germans expended hundreds of thousands of lives and enormous masses of material in an attempt to occupy Stalingrad and gain control of the Volga, communications. The result appears today in the fact that, as one outcome of the great Russian southern offensive, a trapped Axis army in and west of Stalingrad—an arjny numbering originally well over 200,000 men—has been reduced already to a pitiable remnant of about one-third of that number and is doomed to complete annihilation. In the war to date, this is the most- spectacular example of their own methods being turned against the Germans with devastating and crushing effect.

A broadly similar misfortune, however, has overtaken the enemy in his efforts to subdue Moscow and Leningrad and seems more than likely to be the outcome of his invasion of the Caucasus. Some of the deadliest fighting of the war took place in 1941 on the approaches to Moscow, in areas from which the Russians have now developed and are extending a powerful offensive and with the events reported yesterday Leningrad is brought into the same general category.

In itself the Russian offensive south of.Lake Ladoga is capable of producing far-reaching results and it obviously has its noteworthy pl ( ace in those successive extensions and alternations of Russian pressure, mulfiplifying the strain on the Germans, of which Captain Liddell Hart spoke in an article quoted in one of yesterday’s cablegrams. The course of events on the Eastern front goes far to substantiate the claim made by M. Stalin and other responsible Soviet spokesmen on the eve of the present winter offensive, that the Russian armies were much'stronger and the German armies, though still formidable, were weaker, Ilian they wore respectively a year ago. While much must depend, from the standpoint of the Russians, on the weight of concerted attack on Germany developed by the Western Allies, it is self-evident that a supremely important eontrilipjjon to ultimate victory was made in the heroic and grimly enduring defence of the key strongholds of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad—by far the greatest “hedgehogs” of the war.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19430120.2.4

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1943, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
748

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1943. “HEDGEHOGS” IN RUSSIA. Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1943. “HEDGEHOGS” IN RUSSIA. Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1943, Page 2

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