The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1944. Atlantic Wall

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24280, 10 June 1944, Page 4

The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 1944. Atlantic Wall

The greatest care -is being taken at General Eisenhower’s headquarters and by Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt to guard against headlong optimism about the course and piospects of the invasion. It is shown in repeated references to the magnitude of the task, as the German tactical x’eserves and strategic reserves are encountered. It has been shown, notably, in the swift and emphatic correction of the misleading impression likely to be given by the early statement, official though u was, that the operation had been carried out against surprisingly little opposition and with surprisingly small loss. This, it was explained, referred purely to the naval part of the operation; the troops as they landed were at once sharply opposed. It is a pity that the effect of this care should be weakened by so extravagant a report as that of the British United Press correspondent, this morning. A tour of the 30-mile front line, he says, has surprised him by disclosing the weakness of the German defence line, the “ so-called Atlantic “ Wall along this coast.” He examined it minutely; it is “ the big- “ gest bluff of the war”; it “simply “ does not exist.” It is unwise to suggest that the Germans have no prepared defences of any strength. But it is not so much unwise as out-of-date to suggest that, because the Atlantic Wail does not appear as a piece of coastal fortification, there is no Atlantic Wall. Curiously enough, it was another British United Press correspondent, released from Germany at the end of February, who cabled from Lisbon an account of the “Atlantic Wall” which, whether accurate in detail or not, certainly comes nearer the truth than his colleague’s. According to him, the coastal defences are strong enough; but the real defensive line runs as a chain of disconnected strongpoints across the Somme, Oise, and Aisne valleys, east of Peronne, and is anchored m the Argonne (between the Meuse and the Marne) and on the Siegfried Line. He deduced the German expectation as being that the invasion army would pursue von Reichenau’s route in reverse: i.e., up the Somme and through the Ardennes. This report tallies to some extent with Lowell Thomas’s description, cabled to-day, of a line running from Nantes to Angers along the Loire and then approximately straight through Le Mans, across the Seine west of Paris, lo St. Quentin. But whether these two accounts rightly position the backbone of German anti-invasion strength or not, they .are so far certainly right, that they do not position it on the sea and do not encourage illusions about it.