THE LONG ROAD BACK

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 203, 27 August 1943, Page 2

THE LONG ROAD BACK

; T'HE magnitude of the reverse which the Germans have sustained along :|i nearly two hundred miles of their eastern front becomes more apparent daily, and though the speed of the Russian advance has now jj|j been slowed down the course of events since the thrust against Kharkov iff. began is such that not even the musty phrase "according to plan" of

bj their military leaders, and the contemptuous reference to the city as "a heap of ruins," disguise from the German people the fact that they |j are on the run. Hitler's army may yet call a halt to the surge of I the Russians, for they , have heavily wired, and mined deep areas of the rolling plains. eastward of the Dnieper, ninety -.miles .away, in the sfj south, and the Desna, further north. Theylield'i the : Russians here l{ during the snows of February while they'gathered strength to force |j their way back to Kharkov after,; the Red -Army had held it for a W month. But the plains are neither snowbound nor mud-covered to-day. I The terrain is splendidly suited to a war of movement, and the sflatterP ing of the main German defensive system by the capture of its pivotal pf point at Kharkov has imposed mobile warfare on the Germans when y thev least wanted it,. because of their lack of reserves to absorb the Hi shock of the continued, and quite unexpected,.', battering of Stalin's jS| forces against so"great a stretch of.their front. There is no certainty If that they can hold ar-line in open country eastward of the 1 Dnieper, nor Xf would a line established on the river.be strong enough to ..halt for •:<! long a determined' enemy so adept'fat river-crossing ---as -the Russians. It The threat to the whole of the Ukraine grows more menacing daily; vi more than that, an advance towards. Kiev - would endanger the whole |3 German. front in the south, and compel a long withdrawal to prevent pi the closing of a trap which might well cut off all the forces eastward W of Odessa. Their snring offensive badly misfired in March, but though If now driven back the enemy is not yet routed, and he may yet beat up If enough reserves to stage a counter-offensive from one part of a shortened 4 line The fear of this has possibly dominated, to some extent, the HI campaign for an Allied'landing in Europe apart from-that'now brewing ;-j in Italy.. : : •