The Press FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1944. Eastern Front

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24369, 22 September 1944, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1944. Eastern Front

Two months ago it seemed probable that the Russians’ successes bn the northern front would carry them in an unbroken sweep to Memel or Koenigsberg, completing the encirclement of General Lindemann’s 28 divisions in the Baltic States. The Germans, however, threw their utmost weight and determination into a resistance that kept open the land connexion with East Prussia. The first of a series of obscure questions is why the Germans chose to hold on to their Baltic positions after the collapse of the Fatherland Line in White Russia, an irretrievable disaster which left their Baltic armies under a grave threat and with little to gain by staying to meet it. A contributor to the “ Manchester Guardian,” in an article reprinted on this page recently, pointed .out that the Germans virtually immobilised in the Baltic region divisions which might have saved von Kluge in Normandy, for example. - A second question concerns the precise course of operations after the Russians captured Siauliai, a communications centre the loss of which should have had a paralysing effect on Lindemann’s group. The Russians were, in fact, reported to have divided it by driving through to the sea, though the Germans reopened a narrow lane and linked their front again. But a success which broke all the main land communications between East Prussia and the further, Baltic States, restricted the value iof Libau as a coastal base, and promised to nullify the German stand at Kaunas and on the Nyeman, might have been expected to be developed more rapidly and to. greater effect than the last few weeks have shown. The theory that the Russians have been pursuing other and larger purposes elsewhere is hardly adequate. Finally, it is now suggested that Lindemann still has 29 of his 28 divisions in the Baltic States; and it is a third puzzling question why, if that is true, he has not used the interval to withdraw all but covering remnants by land and sea to East Prussia.- For the appearances are that the resumed Russian, offensive, from west of Narva through Riga to the corridor from Lithuania to East Prussia, will rapidly bring the Baltic campaign to a close. If the German strategy has been to use the Baltic army group to keep Bagramyan and Maslennikov from throwing their weight against East Prussia or the Narew line, it has been a strategy of sacrifice which German resources are now unable to stand. One sign of this is the fact that the Narew line has been weakened by the capture of Lomza and Novogorod, without help from the north and in spite of the extraordinary efforts the Germans have made through August and this month to hold up the Russian advance. Warsaw and the Vistula bend may be regarded as locking the right flank of this defensive system, which it will not be possible to consider as finally broken until Ostrolenka, Pulturk, and Warsaw itsblf fall to the Russians. But the overthrow of German resistance here will have farreaching effects. The Russian armies will then directly menace the Pomeranian frontier. A barrier will be down which the Germans have used to much the same purpose as the Caen-Falaise line in Normandy. Further south, again, the menace that took shape when Lwow was first neutralised and then*taken is now increasing as the Russians reach out to Krakow, and so to Silesia or, through eastern Czechoslovakia and the Moravian Gate, t!o central Europe. Against the multiple threats levelled at the Inner Reich, the Germans must either concentrate, taking one heavy risk, or spread, taking another; and the choice of disastrous risks is not strategy but desperation.