Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1943. THE INVASION OF EUROPE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 May 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, MAY 11, 1943. THE INVASION OF EUROPE.

T)ISCTJSSION in Allied and friendly countries of the lines likely to be followed in the invasion by the forces of the United Nations of southern or western Europe, or both, is covering a very wide range. So, too, to judge by the latest reports on the subject, are the preparations of the enemy to meet the anticipated invasion. Accounts of the organisation of defences, of attempts, as in the proclamation of martial law throughout Holland, to establish a tighter control over subject populations, and of other measures in a similar category relate to territories ranging all the way from Norway to the Balkans.

One of the essential facts brought out is that the Allies have an extended freedom of choice as to time, place and weight of attack on any one of a number of vital objectives. Apart from the armies which have achieved victory in North. Africa the Allies are holding other very considerable forces in readiness to carry out the offensive plans agreed upon at the .Casablanca conference. The details of these plans naturally will be disclosed only in action, and for a time action may be deceptive..

An interesting suggestion made in current news from London, for example, is that: “Most observers believe that the Allies will launch several blows simultaneously, masking the real one until the Axis forces are thinly strung out.” Something of this kind is more or less to be taken for granted.

The task faced by the Allies in Europe is immensely greater and more formidable than that they have handled so well in North Africa, but they will be able to bring to bear upon it very much greater forces. Account of course has to be taken not only of the armies of the Western Allies in the various areas in which they are likely to be engaged, but of the tremendous striking power of the Soviet Union, which has been demonstrated so impressively in both defensive and offensive campaigns. The commanding fact of the war at the stage it has now reached is that any hopes the Axis may have entertained of establishing a stalemate in either east or west have finally collapsed.

AH that has been implied in demands for the establishment of a second front in Europe is now in a fair way to be realised. The term second front of course is something of a misnomer, since this is and long has been a war of multiple fronts. There is now every reasonable prospect, however, that in the immediate future Germany and her satellites will have to meet the total impact of full-powered and simultaneous attack by all the Allied (nations.

Uncertainty as to where the Western Allies will strike —an uncertainty of which the Axis Powers are showing themselves uncomfortably aware—is paralleled on the Eastern front. There is a good deal of talk at present about an assemblage of enormous German reserves, but it is at least doubtful, whether the enemy is any longer in a position to exercise a free and powerful initiative! in the war against Russia. An exactly opposite conclusion is suggested by late events in which the Russians have not only cut deeply into the enemy bridgehead in the Kuban country, but have stormed enemy defences in a far distant sector, north of Smolensk and on the approaches to the Latvian frontier. The hope now raised is that increasingly powerful blows will be struck presently against the enemy in many parts I and developing offensive plan.

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