Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1943. TRIPOLI AND BEYOND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 January 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1943. TRIPOLI AND BEYOND

yyiTH Tipoli in. its hands, and its advanced troops already pressing hard on the heels of the retreating enemy well to the westward of that last Axis port and base of any importance in Libya, the Eighth Army—in which the New Zealand Division is a spearhead element—is to be credited with an achievement outstanding in military history. Good grounds appear at the same time for believing that the way is being opened to still greater developments in the near future.

What has already been accomplished in overcoming difficulties of transport and supply through some 1,400 miles of largely desert country, and of maintaining in these conditions a non-stop air offensive, is encouraging as it bears on the remaining problem of dislodging the enemy from his last African foothold, in Tunisia. Some contrasts have been, drawn of late between tlie relative deadlock in Tunisia and the remarkable progress of the Eighth Army in what a war correspondent has described as one of the swiftest and most successful advances ever made through difficult country. No good reason appears, however, for believing that Allied plans for co-ordinated action in North Africa from east and west have been to any serious extent upset.

Wet weather admittedly has set limits to Allied action in Tunisia during recent weeks, but this factor presumably must have been taken into account. It seems altogether probable that the Allies may from the outset have planned to make simultaneous and concerted attacks on the enemy in Tunisia from east and west.

As it bears on the war outlook in North Africa, and elsewhere, the brilliant advance of the Eighth Army is of the better promise since it coincides with events in Russia which indicate that the Germans and their satellites are rather at a beginning than an end of their difficulties in that all-important theatre.’ The Soviet forces Eave made further great hauls of prisoners, particularly south of Voronezh, and in the Caucasus the capture of Armavir has followed that of Salsk.

The position broadly is that the Russians are cutting ever more deeply into vital enemy railway communications and progressively improving their own. Apart from the hopeless plight of what is left of the German Sixth Army, in the Stalingrad area, further great enemy forces are threatened with envelopment, particularly in the rapid Russian advance towards Rostov, the main gateway to the Caucasus.

It is pointed out from time to time, ]iot only that the Nazi dictatorship still has immensely formidable forces at disposal, but that the Russians have recovered as yet only a comparatively small part of what they have lost —that hundreds of miles of invaded Soviet territory still lie between the present areas of conflict and the German frontier. These are far. from being purely credit items from the enemy’s standpoint, however. The length of his communications, for instance, subject to persistent attack by Russian guerillas, is by no means an advantage. He could strengthen his position in some respects by falling back on a shorter front, but the effect of such a policy on his subordinate allies and on his own home front might be disastrous.

Meantime the advance of the Eighth Army brings definitely into nearer prospect a full development of Allied offensive power, not only in Africa, but in Southern Europe and probably in other parts of Europe as well.