RUSSIAN FRONT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 167, 17 July 1941, Page 15

RUSSIAN FRONT

THE WAR TERRAIN

FAVOURS TANK SWEEP

BATTLE-SCARRED FOR AGES

LONDON, June 26. Along the whole line of her frontier with Russia, Germany can choose the battlefield best suited to the type of warfare she wants to wage. man" ArSy ncwT r 7nJ S through? Are there important ge<£ fi^ P ICal futures, aiding the defovefin asks a fn & r Examination shows that excem the Po?ich arpatl l ian Mou ntains, and the I olish marshes, the field is ideal , swee Ping movements that make eam of bu t can seldom

Easy For Mechanised Forces MHv h °^ gh is impossible, at this wa\i y tn tage in ■ the Russo-German erVa't P ro & re ss on the f£? P a ttlehne which bisects Kurope from the Baltic to the Black hf?ti s ? me idea of the nature of the studv of "ia I r ay be - gained from a study of earlier actions, both in the present and the last war. tv-i 1 yf as only a few days after the German attack on Poland that Pte ? ber of 1939—the action that started the war—that t°Y le t forces advanced Lai nit Poland from the east. In so doing eye-witnesses declared at the spearhead "of d - n i onster tanks as the mfantry attack. This them to penetrate in some Saw*• yearly 40 miles without effective resistance being offered Poland s resistance to the Russian invasion was very weak—largely b£ cause the bulk of the Polish armv was trying desperately to ward off *v, m amsed m 'ght of Germany Lo , country to the west of Warrelativelv Par ri ly ' als °' because of the country. nature of the in T te a^, swam Py areas in places i' Poland, but in general it affords easy passage for mechanised . Russian tanks had no difficulty in penetrating Poland at numerous points along a 500-mile frontier, and, at the same time Gerwithin tl mt]p ni Sf d fo^ ces Penetrated witnin little more than a week to frontfer. nly 100 miles from the Sovie °

Centuries of Devastation Those facts indicate that the Gerforces advancing f, oug h Poland will not meet TfthJ? 1 " topographical difficulties. tict.nL ca il sweep aside Russian resistance, the panzer divisions will soon be in the western Ukraine • be n °ted, incidentally that in mid-September (1939) German and Russian forces met and fraternised at Brest-Litovsk and Lwow, wherp to-day, fighting between them is raging fiercely. re Sion is one of the most battle-scarred areas of the whole world. Wars have been fought down the centuries over this strip of country , which has a history as complex as its racial problems. The five eastern counties of Poland which mark the centre of the long German-Russian battle line of to-day, are Filno (Vilna), Nowogrodek, Polesie, Wolhynia, and Tarnopol. They cover an area of about 55,000 square miles of country that is largely open and agricultural, but which also contains considerable areas of forests, lakes and swamps. Fought over and devastated again and again through the centuries, these areas had not recovered at the time of the Russian disorders and retreat of 1916. They shared in the reaction from the tremendous defeat of the Russians by the Germans at Tannenburg (East Prussia), when Hindenburg took 90,000 prisoners and hundreds of guns. Russia's Parachute Arm Przemysl and Brest-Litovsk, central points of present fighting, are historic names of the last war. Przemysl was the only land fortress of the war that stood a prolonged siege after complete investment, and many thousands of Russian and German lives were lost in attempts to take and retake the fortress. .

Brest-Litovsk (capital of Polesie) is, or was, a town of some 30,000 inhabitants. Situated at the junction of the Muchowiec and Bug Rivers, its strategic value has brought it many calamities. From 1795 to 1921 it'belonged to Russia. It vfras the central point of von Mackensen's great drives against the Russians in 1915, and in 1918 two treaties, between the Central Powers and the Ukrainian Republic, and between the Central Powers and the Soviet, were signed there. South - east of Brest - Litovsk, Przemysl, and Lwow, the clear nature of the battleline is interrupted by the Carpathian Mountains, 1 but below that again it opens into a more even landscape on the Ruman-ian-Soviet frontier. Nevertheless, when Russian forces attacked Rumania a year ago, they

did so with tanks transported by planes. The action appears to have been dictated by the necessity for speed, rather than by the nature of the countrv.

Baby tanks, landed from big transport planes, and parachute troops, were used by the Russians in occupying the town of Reni, at the Junction of the Danube and the Pruth —which the Germans now claim to have crossed—in Bessarabia. The tanks were carried from Russia suspended between the wheels of the planes. So rapid was the invasion of the town that the Rumanians Were caught hopelessly unawares.

In addition to landing parachute troops at Reni, the Russians landed them at Bolgrad, in southern Bessarabia. They also used parachute troops to mark the new Soviet frontier with white flags.

Similar tactics were used by the Russians in the taking of Bukowina. They were reported at the time to have dropped thousands of parachute troops in the disputed territory occupied by Rumania. Obviously, this skill of the Russians at transporting tanks by plane, together with experience in the use of parachute troops, constitutes a valuable asset to the Soviet in the war with Germany. Stout Resistance Foreseen Possibly the speed with which the Russian forces overwhelmed Rumanian resistance offers a better line on their fighting ability than either of the other two campaigns in which they have been engaged in the present war.

It is true that the Soviet troops showed themselves in Poland to be well equipped with large tanks, but in that case resistance, either real or potential, had already been broken by the Germans.

In the case of Finland' conditions were very different. The nature of the country was such as to put mechanised forces, for the most part, at a heavy disadvantage, and, after thousands of Russians had lost their lives in the snow, or at the hands of Finnish sharpshooters, resistance was subdued only by sheer weight of numbers.

On the whole, it is apparent that the greater part of the vast battleline that marks the eastern frontier of Russia—from the Black Sea to the Baltic—is suitable for the operation of mechanised warfare, and, if events of last year can be accepted as a guide, the Soviet forces should offer, in this respect, the strongest resistance that Germany has yet encountered.