NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 18, 22 January 1943, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR NEWS

MAX WERNER

"THE GREAT OFFENSIVE"

Those who have studied with an open mind writings on war from Dingle articles to books both be* fore and during: the present struggle will have a lot of time for Max Werner. His now famous "Military Strength of the Powers," published in the era of appeasement, has been proved by events to have been an extraordinarily accurate appraisement and fore? i east. His ''Battle for the World," issued in IHh was an equally luminous survey of the first period of the war, ending in the collapse of France. His latest book, "The Great Offensive," which has appeared In Britain and America, has, no far as one knows, not yet reached this country in quantity, if at all. A review by John Chamberlain in the "New York Times" of November 3 is therefore worth quoting. The. Germans, or at least a sizeable number of them, says Mr. Chamber-: lain, think about little except war. They are supposed to be roasters pf the military, a,rt, But, actually, what's good about their war thinking? Havr ing read Ma* Werner's "The great Offensive," which is an excellent and heartening bqok, one can ask this seemingly preposterous question in all seriousness. For Mr, "Werner's story is one of blundering and miscalculation on the part of the Germans all along the line. They have thrown away opportunity after opportunity, and now they are throwing away the last of their good first-line troops. The Russiansi have been pushed hack over the ma.p for two summers, byt a^ the end of every German advance the. surprising Bolshevik generals have managed tp catch the Nazis, off balance! anfl save vital objective^ by throwing in the decisive reserves. The Germans Jiaye, "fought a sterile y<arr fare, talcing §CQrcfted earth, comßound.--ing their eomjfn,unieation.s problems, losing elppdanc] metal in an wnendmg stream, and falling either \q pbr literate the Russian armies of to reach the oil of Ba^y, Russian War Analysed. This is the gist of Mr. Werner's analytical chapters. To Mr. Werner the battle for the Stalin Line, which the Germans won in the early summer of 1941, ended with a "victory in a vacuum." The battle for Smolensk was won by the Soviets, for it ate up time, ended more or less in a tactipal draw, and prevented the Germans from assaulting Moscow in time to beat General Winter. The 1941 battle for the Ukraine went to the Germans for the simple reason that the Russians regarded the central Moscow front as the decisive front, and refused to be lured intp splitting the bulk of their forces., When Hitler failed to reach Mpspow the Soviet wisdom became apparent to the world. In the summer Pf 1943 the Germans continued to confuse tactical gam with strategic advantage. They went deeper- into the Ukraine and reached the North Caucasus. In doing this they disturbed all the organic interrelationships between their northern, central, and southern Russian frpnts. Committed to holding immense territory in the south, the Germans cannot concentrate sufficient power to take Moscow or Leningrad. The Russians, who have tw]ce the man-power at Hitler's command, can always throw in reserves to take advantage pf any pronc-unced Na^i weakness when winter grounds Nazi planes and slows the tanks. Mr. Werner wrote his book before the defence of Stalingrad came along j tp underscore his points. T.he def encfs cannot have surprised him in the least, for in ''The Gfreat Offensive" he gays the Germans cannot win a decisive victory in the North Caucasus- and presumably lack the power arid the ability to scale the mountains and reach the oil of Baku. Faith Justified. ! If Mr. Werner had written "The \ Great Offensive" as a prophecy in the \yinter of 1941 he would have \>een laughed put of court by the strategists of five continents. Nevertheless, he has always held to the opinion that Hitler wpu|d be beaten in Russia; such a conclusion is implicit in his "Military Strength Pf, the Powers," writ? ten ip 1P37. I remember doubting the accuracy pf tha.t bopk, and hereby duly apologise} my excuse is that United States army officers and ''experts" tola! me tha,t Werner had fallen for Russian propaganda. Since his recprd, has bpeh such a good one, readers should be able to take his comparison of present German and Russian strength with some confidence. If ( he is right again this time, the Russians don't need a second front diversion to save themselves. But England and the United States need the second front in order to transform the war from a stalemate irj the East into a victory which will result in a creative peace for the West. Mr. Werner thinks the Russians will continue to throw in reserves ajter Hitler has scraped the bottom of *thp barrel on any given fropt.- The Russian " arms industry is practically intact, for most of the machinery in the1 Ukraine was salvaged in time- The Russian mcjchine-rtppl j n( justry has only been diminished by to per cent, since the beginning of the war. Steel is a different matter; the Soviets lost 5Q per cent- of their steel capacity in the Ukraine-Donets Basin campaigns. This W.UI not prevent the Sovjets from maintaining their superiority in artillery . and armed infantry, which h§§ §3ved them every time. #or the future, Mr, Werner hPP.es to see the United Nations, developing a strategy of coalition warfare, using their naval power to support troop movements all the way from Narvik tp Dakar much as Japan" used its fleet in the conpjuest of south-eastern Asia. He does npt think the war is wpn yet by any means; all he says is that German blunders haye given us time andopportunity to win it. @e?jß&ii Stupi&ty. No dpubt "The Great Offensive" will mystify and confuse many people. Cer* tainly Mr. Werner has a sublime effrontery. But if the United Nations do hot propeed to outdo the Germans' in stupidity, what he says now will §eeni liJi© sober assessment and pre-: diction when it is re-read in 1945. His ' pattern makes sense, particularly when i one projects his estimate pf. German intelligence back into the past. Fpr the Germans haye not produced a sound political leader since Bismarck, who believed in the concept of Jimjtation. In World War I the Germans ! cpuld have had a limited victory, as General Falkenhayn and General Max Hoffman kijew. put the political determination of strategy was left in the h^nds of the egregious Ludendorff. who was logical to the point of complete insanity. Ludendorff believed in the miracle of winning' total victory with limited means, \yhich is insane arithmetic. And Hitler is the child pf Ludendorff.

"Strategy?" a German general once asked rhetorically. 'Strategy is garbage. Let's talk tactics." Well, strategy is garbage as Ludendprlt and Hitler have talked it. You cann'pt" win a "total" victory oyer 19O,O()6,OOO Rus'r sians, 45,000,000 Englishmen, Americans, and 4OO,oop,pi}O CHmese with 80,000,000 Germans and 60,000,000 Japanese. Anybody whR sayg you can should be teaching arithmetic to Count Screwloose, of Tpulpuse. JVIr. Werner does not put it that way, but that is the conclusion to be drawn from his sound and enlightening book.