The Press FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1945. Battle for Berlin

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24546, 20 April 1945, Page 4

The Press FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1945. Battle for Berlin

Although Moscow has officially announced none of those successes which the Germans are admitting, there is no reason to doubt the enemy’s word. The battle for Berlin, on the eastern front, has entered its final phase. The only doubt is whether this name for the battle accurately indicates the Russian purpose, which, as again and again in the past, may still be supposed to be directed against the German military power, as such, and not towards territorial objects, as such. Berlin will fall; but, if or when it falls to the Russians, it will have been their real achievement to have outwitted and outfought Guderian on the whole front, and to have outwitted him, perhaps most notably, in refusing to think too much or too soon of Berlin. Berlin will be the spectacular yet incidental prize of this triumph. It is Worth while, as the event unfolds, to recall that it is little more than three months since it was set in motion. The Russian winter offensive was launched by Marshal Koniev on the upper Vistula on January 12. Two or three day; later, Marshal Zhukov stnick on the Warsaw front. Within a week their drive had carried them through the whole Vistula defensive system, out on the Polish plains, Krakow, Lodz, Czestochowa, Radom, Kielce—such hedgehogs were overcome within the week, which brought, also, the beginning of the concentric assaults on East Prussia, north-east, east, and south. Within two weeks the Germans’ hopes jpf retaining this impregnable flank bastion and base for a counter-offensive were dashed as the Russians broke through the lake and river lines to Tannenberg, Allenstein, and Insterburg; and within three Koniev had advanced 200 miles and Zhukov 300 miles to the Oder. At this stage, when Koniev was massing on the Breslau sector and Zhukov, near Kustrin, was throwing his first bridgeheads over the river, the German leaders raised the cry that the battle for Berlin had begun. More than that, they clearly assumed that Zhukov would make every effort to hurl his armour immediately across the 50 mile level to Berlin; and Guderian built his Brandenburg battle plan on the assumption. Before and below the line of this expected advance, which would have extended an already pronounced salient, Guderian assembled—at the expense of other fronts, east and west—two powerful groups, one to engage and hold Zhukov’s spearhead, the other to cut it oil and shatter the Russian flank and rear. But Zhukov’s thought was not dominated by Berlin, as Guderian supposed. He set himself—and this marks the beginning of the second stage of the Russian offensive and its strategy—tp extend* and consolidate his flanks on the Oder. Koniev’s right moved up to lock the left centre. And he brought the second stage to a dramatic close, taking advantage of Guderian’s concentration on Berlin and striking deep across tjie swollen Oder into Silesia, towards Dresden. The third stage, during which Zhukov’s armies have completed their northern sweep through Pomerania and have solved (it is safe, to say) the problems of drawing supply, and reinforcements from bases far in rear, has produced two more changes in, .the eastern. strategic situation, in the invasion of Austria and the linking (actual or near) of Koniev’s armies and those of Tolbukhin and Malinovsky across the Moravian corridor. If there remained any point of danger in the Russian dispositions, it was here; but the point is abstract, * rather than real; perhaps, stated in that way. It is more accurately to be said that the correction of the Russian southern front gives it overwhelming offensive advantage. The bow is fully bent.