STRATEGICAL FACTORS IN COMING CAMPAIGN

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23941, 7 May 1943, Page 4

STRATEGICAL FACTORS IN COMING CAMPAIGN

RUSSIA

(By the Military Correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald.")

M Stalin’s Order of the Day on May 1, coinciding with the aporoach of the campaigning season in Russia, serves to bring the eastern front into its proper relationship with the changing strategy of the European war. By speaking of correlated action in western and in eastern Europe, Stalin emphasised the most vital factor in the general war situation.

The British have long maintained that the naval war and the mounting aerial offensives have constituted other fronts, and it is now clear to all that the Tunisian struggle serves as a second front, with the enemy fighting under singularly disadvantageous conditions. • Stalin’s statement was noteworthy for its acknowledgement that the eastern front is only one of the many facets of the converging war upon Fortress Europe. Yet the Russian front is still the most important land activity against Hitler. The story is told m its broad outlines in the give-and-take of territory of the last two years. In the first drive of 1941, the Germans advanced up to 800 miles and took 530,000 square miles of Soviet Russia, including many of the mam industrial and agricultural belts. During the first winter of the war. the Russians regained about 100,000 square miles, but failed to secure any of the keypoints. Last summer, the Nazis, by expanding outwards from these keypoints, swarmed over 100,000 square miles, but failed to storm the Volga at Stalingrad, and stopped short of the mam Caucasian oilfields. In the second winter offensive the Russians claimed to have regained about 183.500 square miles, but did not reach the Dnieper and did not hold their gams on the middle Donets. The Southern Zone At winter’s end both sides were exhausted and both retained good starting points from which to , la^ h nh n offensive after the enforced immobilisation of the thaw. Last week both “Pravda” and "Red Star wroth tha the Germans were on the verge of launching their third great summer attack. Germany has four salients which could provide bases for such an attack —the Kuban bridgehead opposite the Crimea; the recently reconquered right bank of the middle Donets; the obstin-ately-held Orel position; and the ring round Leningrad, broken only by a narrow corridor to the eastofthe city The most likely zone of attack is in the south, if 6nly ]because the smrlace hardens earlier there. It is, for this reason that the Russians have been throwing in, such large forces' t “preventive" offensive of the sort that Timoshenko launched before Khar kov last May. In Russian hands the Kuban peninsula would serve to seal the Germans within the Crimea peninsula, while the possession of the naval base ‘of Novorossnsk would allow a much freer use of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, whose mastery of the Black Sea the Germans have never been able to dispute, conversely, if the Germans maintain and extend the Kuban bridgehead, they will be able to strike once more towards the Caucasus, and, by the very fact of doing so, to compel a diversion of Soviet strength from the regions farther north, especially from the Donets zone. Now that the ‘ strategical reserves” on both sides are becoming smaller, it is of paramount importance to grasp the initiative. After four costly campaigns, the main purpose of the initiative is to deny mobility of reserves to the enemy. The shape of fighting here will be largely, if not entirely, determined by the fate of Maslennikov’s efforts in the next few weeks to drive the Germans across the Kerch straits. Donets Bridgeheads

Nobody can predict the course of the fighting along the Donets. If the Russians were unable to prevent the reoccupation of their gains in the eastern Ukraine, the Germans have not been able to cross the Donets at any point, and to this extent their recapture of Kharkov two months ago has proven sterile. The Germans are not as favourably situated as they were last year to make an initial plunge across the intervening flat lands towards Voronezh or Stalingrad; and it is a moot point on which side of the middle Donets the main fighting will take place in the next few' months.

North of Kharkov the Nazis hold an advanced triangle out to Byelgoroff and. 150 miles larthcr north, they have clung on to the, jfoirrow Orel bastion. At the very ctoff of the winter fighting the Russians gained a great strategical victory by holding the quadrilateral in front of Kursk in spite of the rast-minute German oc-’ cupation of the corner points of Sumy and Syevsk; and this is not the kind of advanced post that can bo cut off by a drive in the roar. Rather is it j jumping-off post from which outflank, ing moves can be launched against Kharkov or -even direct attacks on Kiev and Poltava. In this ZOneverything depends upon the Donet'i bridgeheads, and, for the moment, the Russians are there in the better tacti. cal position. Vital Central Sector

On the central front, before Mos« cow, the Russians are in a vastly better position than last year, because they firmly hold Velikye Luki, Rzhey, and Vyazma, and are in a position to threaten the main enemy base 5 Smolensk. Whatever happens oa other fronts, they may thus be ex. pected to make a bid on the central sector, knowing that any consider, able advance here will enforce a r* distribution of strength on all the other German fronts. Notwithstand. ihg the immense solidarity of the de> fences guarding Smolensk, it is in this region that the Soviet can best paralyse the wider strategical schemes of the enemy.

By way of contrast, the German* entertain high hopes of gains In the north, where the Russians have not been able to widen their corridor of safety leading to Leningrad, and have not altered the balance of power round Lake Ilmen. The Baltic is now looming so largely in German plans that the enemy can be expected to make a concerted attack upon Leningrad and Kronstadt, if possible with supplementary Finnish action across the Karelian isthmus from the north. This challenge cannot lightly be written off, because, although it entails no wider outflanking threats to other fronts, it immediately concerns the maintenance of Russia’s northern supply lines from the outside world, Nazi Manpower Shortage Two question-marks loom largely over the eastern front, and the problems they raise can have no absolute answer. The first is the extent to which Soviek, manpower and war material have xreen weakened by the fighting of the last two years, and the second is the extent to which Allied offensives in the West will draw of! German divisions from Russia. There can be no doubt that Nazi resources In manpower will be strained to the utmost in an effort to change the couiie of the war this summer. That is shown not only by the policy of large-scale industrial deportation from the occupied countries, but by the latest “combingsout” inside Germany and by the constitution of “a substitute army” in the last few months, a device which Germany, would not have considered even a year ago. These forces, under General Fromm, are known as the “Ersatz Heeres,"and are to number 2,500,000 men, with all officers from the rank of major upwards Germans, but with the junior officers and the men from the occupied countries. Last week’s mustering of the Dutch army is a step in this direction. Since December last 17-year-old German boys have also been called yp, and reserves up to the late sixties have been registered. It is by these means that Hitler is hoping to swell the nominal total of his divisions,to 500, whereas actually it is doubtful If he will be able to maintain'.rtfie 285 divisions he had in active sep|?e last year. This stress on manpower,?''**!** bined with the strong SovierSD* r '' on the east and the from the west, constitutes tlwjs* measure of Hitler’s dilemma. break through rapidly in VipyJ st, o t be for ever lost.