FINAL PHASE OF WAR

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 279, 22 August 1944, Page 5

FINAL PHASE OF WAR

Dependence On Weather Factor LONDON, August 20. Events in France have had an exhilarating effect on the public here. Just as the fall of France in the black days of 1940 was the prelude to a long and bitter struggle, so now its impending liberation presages brighter days of history. One of the chief questions is how soon victory will come. The “Observer,” in a leader, comments: “The glorious news of last week must not make us forget logic in the joy of a triumph achieved. We still have about eight weeks of campaigning weather before us. If we can keep up the present rate of progress we may hope in that short time to complete the liberation of France. Whether we can also .clear a sufficient part of the Low Countries to relieve London of the threat of bombardment cannot yet be guaranteed, and whether we can also mount a full-scale invasion of Germany, while there is real organized German resistance, remains improbable. The tenacity of this resistance is a question mark. “Nor do prospects look very different on the Eastern Front. The Russians, held at present, may well hope in a resumed offensive to drive the Germans out of the rest of Poland, and perhaps out of East Prussia, before the autumn mud clogs operations, but the possibility of another winter offensive so much further from their bases is another crucial, question. Merely on the ground of military logic, then, organized military war might well drag on. and no terms could be set to the following guerrilla war as long as the Nazi leadership kept its grip. . . But military logic at this stage is not by any means everything, and the Allies ■must look to their political weapons as well to help shorten the war.” Enemy Playing for Time. “Liberator,” in the “Observer,” says: “Germany is doing all she can to gain time, for that is all she can gain. German scientists undoubtedly are working hard and fast to complete something which the Germans hope will re-estab-lish an equilibrium that will make possible a negotiated peace and escape from complete disaster. “It is now obviously in Hitler’s interest, if he can, to make the Allied advance expensive in time, just, as it is in the Allied interest to give him no opportunity to do so. It would upset all the Nazi plans for the final phase of the war, for their own fighting retreat into the Reich, if'they were unable to preserve a large part of the German army intact. . . As a result of the fighting in France the German army can move and can fight in small parties and can resist stubbornly in places, but it is still no longer a ‘grande armee.’ That is the big news of the day, bigger even than the imminent liberation of Paris.” The writer adds that in this crisis Hitler will try again to concentrate and mass an army for a desperate stand along the route of the Allied advance, hoping to put off that march on the Reich while the autumn, and possibly the winter, draws near. “The German High Command, we may be certain, will shirk no expense in blood to buy this ability to concentrate and delay,” he says. “That is the issue at Paris this weekend —that above all. Can the combined Allied armies, and can the air forces assisting them,, prevent such a German concentration? Today this, is more important even than the annihilation of part of the German forces. If von Kluge gets no opportunity to disengage and reassemble his forces,, other roads beyond Paris —even more decisive —• will lie open to the Allies.” Mr. J. L. Garin, in the “Sunday Express,” says that the position of the Germans is already hopeless in all France south of the middle Loire and the upper Seine. Through nil that space they are preparing to quit in haste. It means the abandonment of three-quarters of the country. He adds: “It. is not believed by expert opinion that Hitlerism can constitute another army in France capable of resisting the march of the Allies. . . . Though the Nazi death fight is still sinister, its last resources are being ground to exhaustion. Russia’s accumulating weight is impending. If we could visualize Europe a.s a whole we should see two things—the majestic progress of the Allies toward an annihilating triumph and the spectacle of convulsive Hitlerism bleeding to death.”