Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1943. GERMANY’S INNER FORTRESS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1943. GERMANY’S INNER FORTRESS.

a good deal besides that has been said by those who speak with some authority on the conduct of* the war and the prospects by which the United Nations are faced, some observations made a few days ago by Lord Croft, British Joint LndeiSecretary for War, no doubt were intended largely to discourage foolish and unwarranted optimism and any slackening of effort it might occasion. It is or should be obvious that the Allied fighting forces and the civil■ populations behind must continue to concentrate resolutely and faithfully on their task if the hopes of victory, now expanding are to be realised. Much as unwise optimism, in itself and as an excuse for easing off in any part of'the war effort, ought to be resisted, however, it is possible to go to an opposite extreme in exaggerating the remaining strength of the enemy. _ . . It may be a question whether Lord Croft did not incline towards that extreme in what he had to say about the strength of resistance to be expected from the German forces as. they ai e driven back towards their final, defences. Emphasising the extent to which the Allies were handicapped in having to land on hostile and defended coasts, on which the Germans in the past had been able to assemble greater forces much moic rapidly, Lord Croft said, in part, that:—

Every hundred miles the enemy was driven back . . . the nearer the circumference of his defences was brought to its bases and reserves and the more easily the Germans would be able to supply the firing line and switch reserves speedily by rail from the centie to any threatened point. If this had to be accepted at its full face value, it might almost appear, for example, that it would pay the Germans to fall back speedily to their own eastern frontiers and there engage the Russians in conditions of comfortable superiority. How far the Germans themselves are from seeing advantage in that policy has been demonstrated in their desperate defence of many strongholds, fortified river, lines and other areas in Russia. It has been demonstrated not least convincingly in an enormous German expenditure of men and material in twelve days or more of desperate counter-attacks on the southern flank of the Kiev bulge. It is in fact self-evident that any advantages of shortened communications the German armies may derive from falling back on inner defences will be offset by serious disadvantages. One of these, not to be measured in advance, but highly important, is the moral effect, on fighting men and on the civil population behind them, of continued and enforced retreat* It has been said justly that the enemy retreat is merely an effort to save something out of the wreckage and to postpone a complete breakdown. . Account has to be taken also of such factors as that of intensified air bombing and their effect, amongst other things, on those shortened and .interior communications on which Lord Croft laid so much emphasis. In much of their air bombing of German war industries and communications hitherto, the Allies have had to operate from distant bases, their bombers at times making round trips of 1,500 miles or more. Even at long range, the R.A.F. Bomber Command has been able, in one of the latest exhibitions of its striking power, to reduce Berlin to the condition of a devastated and tormented inferno. This, however is only a foretaste of what will happen to Germany when, thrown back on her inner fortress, she is open to ’ bombing attack from all sides at comparatively short range. Incidentally, this will be hardly less important as it bears on , the wrecking of her railway and other communications than on the destruction of her war industries. So long as the German Army continues to fight, and the German people can be held to their war tasks by the Gestapo, the Allies will have a grim, continuing task in hand. But, given a right use of opportunity and of power by the Allies, the outlook will be very much more grim for the Germans.