The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1945. FALL OF COLOGNE

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 138, 8 March 1945, Page 6

The Dominion. THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1945. FALL OF COLOGNE

11l December, 1918, the cable messages reported daily the progress of the Allied forces of occupation toward the Rhine. Cologne was in the British sector, and in that month units of the army entered the city. The New Zealand Division was stationed in and about Cologne for some time, and found the great industrial centre practically unscathed by war. Today the ruins of Cologne are in the hands of the Americans. The third city of the German Reich has fallen. Except for a pocket to the north, which the Allied forces are rapidly emptying, the western bank of the Rhine right to the Dutch frontier is now in Allied possession, while to the south more rapid progress is being made in the Saar. The battle west of the river is nearing its end. , . The next important task will be to force a passage of the Rhine, and the Second British Army is said to be poised in the north to smash a way across. There probably could be no development more likely to spread dismay throughout Germany than an Allied break-through on that historic front. The Rhine must mean much more to the Germans than the Maginot line meant to the French. . There, if anywhere on the western front, they must stop the Allied .advance for there is no position, comparable in strength, behind it.. The sector mentioned in the cable messages, Wesel to Duisburg, is right opposite that vast industrial area of which Essen is the centre, but probably it will make little difference to the German people where the Rhine front is broken. The fact that it has been broken will present to them, as nothing else could, the certainty of inevitable and complete defeat From the beaches of Normandy to the banks of the Rhine is a long distance, but from the day of the landing the Rhine, rather than the German frontier, was the Allied objective. In war, however, the objectives of one stage become the jumping-off places for the next, and that is why any report of a bridgehead being established on the eastern bank would be of momentous importance. It might not be too much to say that success in that respect would mark the opening of the final stages of this great conflict. Caught between the mighty pincers formed by the Russians on the east and the Allied armies on the west, the core of all Nazi resistance could be more heavily and more effectively smashed by concentrated Allied air strength. The transport system could be wrecked and the remaining production centres pounded. Whereas once the Germans ranged in strength from the Bay of Biscay to the Volga and the Caucasus, today they are confined to the comparatively narrow strip between the Rhine and the Oder.. Only to the south and the south-east do they hold any territory outside the Reich. The wall of steel is practically complete, and the initiative has passed definitely into Allied hands, dhe fall of Cologne will be a sad blow to the German nation, incapable of. being explained away by any reference to elastic defence or other tactics. It is a defeat and a costly one. From the purely military point of view the capture of the city may not constitute a decisive victory, but its repercussions, its effect on German morale, may make it a disastrous happening for the Nazi over-lords.