Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1943. THE RUSSIAN VICTORIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 August 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 10, 1943. THE RUSSIAN VICTORIES.

JT has been observed justly by commentators in London that of all the successes lately won by the Allies the Russian victories probably are. the most alarming to the Germans, “because they confirm the fact that the long-promised German summer offensive has ended in disaster and that the Russian offensive, combined with the Sicilian victories, means the successful opening of two fronts.”

Rather more than this might, indeed, be claimed by the Russians or on their behalf. Much is to be hoped from the extended measure of success gained in the war against the U-boats, from the bombing offensives against Germany and Italy which already dwarf the utmost accomplished by the Luftwaffe when it was at the height of its power, and from the direct’effect and significance for the future of the Allied victories in North Africa and Sicily. All this being taken into account, however, it re-> mains true that it is in Russia, and thanks to the heroic efforts of the fighting forces of the Soviet Union, that the power of the German war machine at its maximum has been met and broken.

• It does not invalidate this view that the magnitude of the task by which the Allies are still faced is nowhere more plainly defined and emphasised than in Russia. Some thousands of square miles of Soviet territory remain in enemy occupation and parts of the German southern front are about 500 miles east of the areas from which the initial Nazi attack was launched in 1941. Late events have demonstrated, however, that it is one thing Io occupy territory and another to hold it securely.

According to a very recent estimate, Germany lias in Russia two-thirds of'her total land forces, together with the bulk of the bombers and up to one-half of its fighters. It is against this mighty aggregation of force that the armies of the Soviet Union —armies which Hitler declared towards the end of 1941 and on later occasions had been annihilated —have in the last month and a half won victories which give good; promise of the ultimate destruction of German military power.

It is instructive at 1 this stage to compare-'the leading f#cts of the three summer offensives in which the Germans have engaged in a little over two years of war against Russia. In 1941 the Wehrmacht attacked on the whole Eastern front 'from the Baltic to the Black Sea, occupied the Ukraine and was stopped with some difficulty short of Moscow. Last year it concentrated its onslaught on the southern front, drove to the Volga at Stalingrad and into the Northern Caucasus. Then came the Nazi disaster at Stalingrad and the winter offensive in which the Russians recovered nearly all the territory they had lost in the preceding summer.

This year the Germans attacked with a maximum concentration of air, mechanised and other forces on comparatively short fronts on the northern and southern sides of the Kursk salient. The effort was unexampled on a given length of front and it ended in complete, costly and ignominious failure. Of the significance and effect of that failure, proof is now afforded in the victorious Russian thrusts towards Bryansk and great encircling sweeps round Kharkov.

At a direct view and in perspective, these events bear witness unmistakably to a fatal decline in German fighting strength while the striking power of Russia, thanks in an appreciable measure to the material and other aid she has received from her Allies, continues to expand. If may well be believed that Hitler and his accomplices have lately been discussing the feasibility of a retreat in Russia to the Dnieper, or still further west. That they will by that or any other method obtain lasting relief or succeed in averting further disasters seems wholly improbable.