Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1943, Page 4

Evening Post

MONDAY, JANUARY 25, 1943

ROMMEL CROSSES THE

BORDER

These are the days when the great military objective of yesterday becomes the capture of today, and thereupon loses the spotlight,. which is already switched on to the next new objective ahead. Rommel, now a retreat general with a Marathon record unequalled in military history, has crossed the border into Tunisia, leaving Tripoli in Allied hands, and' already the question is being asked whether he will yield up the next important port in Tunisia, Gabes. Under "The Times" spotlight, the Mareth Line shrinks somewhat; this Line, according to "The Times," cannot "withstand the weight of metal which Montgomery can bring against it." That statement, if entirely correct, astonishes the reader as much by the light it throws on the heavy armament that a pursuing army can carry rapidly over bad country, as by its discounting estimate of the Mareth obstacle. Are the iconoclasts that laughed at the fall of the Maginot Line in France about to enjoy another laugh in Tunisia, or wilb Rommel's Marathon run be interrupted at the Mareth Line by something more than the brief pause at Buerat? "The Times" view is that "a strong defence exists in the neighbourhood of Gabes. and whether or not Rommel hopes to keep that port open, it seems to be highly desirable, from the point of view of the Axis, that he should try to keep Sfax and Sousse in use." Already he has allowed the Eighth Army's aircraft to cpme far too close to the vital Axis defences of the Mediterranean waist. x The shifting spotlight, a feature!of the Eighth Army's drive, is even more a feature of the Russian drives, which achieve great gains, quickly forgotten by the ' public as the Red Army focuses on still greater objectives. j Names like Kotelnikovo (Hitler's New Year present to Stalin) recede as the greater Rostov beckons. Following their usual practice, the Nazis try to make light of their losses. They pretend that the advancing Russians are being trapped—that the scene will change miraculously in favour of the Axis when its counter-offensive against the Red Army develops. But it will be remembered that, just before Montgomery attacked Rommel at Buerat, the Nazis publicly held out to Montgomery similar warnings of a come-back by a reinforced Rommel. Here, as everywhere, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The Eighth Army did not get trapped, but landed a kick that sent Rommel post-haste into Tunisia, leaving only a substantial armoured rearguard to delay for one day the fall of Tripoli. Facts like Kotelnikovo and (today) Armavir are more substantial than the intimidatory advice offered by the Nazis to their pursuers;, and the African Marathon retreat that did not stop at Tripoli is more eloquent than Berlin threats or Rome excuses. The latest Rome radio message implies that the non-defence of Tripoli is a strategic defeat for Montgomery, but it is a peculiar fact that an earlier statement from the same quarter admitted that'-the enemy can justly claim victory" in "the great battle which Italy has fought in the last 32 months on the African coasts and in the Mediterranean Sea." This battle, the radio says, "has now ended"; and, so far as the Italian African empire is concerned, that statement is true. The Italians have been cleared out of an empire over twelve times the size of the British Isles by a British Empire force, with the help of United States supplies and. (in the later stages) U.S. air forces. Italian Africa is now no more. In this race after the fleeing enemy, the New Zealand Division has covered a distance, measured from El Alamein, of "more than the length of New Zealand." A winter war of rapid movement, with Germany receding everywhere except in Tunisia, is a factor that was hardly expected by the public, and the shifting spotlight may have the effect of concealing from the people the substantial character of ' this winter's gains. Tactically, it has been proved that a German army cannot take its own medicine; as soon as the great Rommel met at El Alamein a powerful army with modern equipment (the first the British Empire ever had in Africa) he started his thousand miles Marathon. Strategically, a greater fact has been .proved, for it has been shown that daring thrusts by the Axis enemy into remote territory do not pay—that they are a source not of strength but of weakness. Japanese strategy is known for the long mili-tary-naval tentacles it has thrown out everywhere; and German strategy is known in part for its African tentacle, reaching out to the Nile. That being so, in three months modern warfare and modern pursuit have rolled up the Axis African tentacle and have pushed it out of Italian Africa and west into Tunisia; that it was not crushed altogether is due mainly to the genius which Rommel has shown in controlling a very hurried retreat and in scattering death-dealing tintacks in his tracks. Under a man of less size than Rommel, the Afrika Korps would have been lost. But, with all his genius, he &as merely pointed the way in which Japan's octopus strategy will recoil upon Japan herself, when Tojo's "real war" starts in the Pacific. The Japanese advances, like that of Rommel to Egypt, have gone too far and too fast. The strategic downfall of both Japan and Germany—not to mention Italy—is forecast by the excellent progress of the African campaign to date, and when the European Axis is finally forced out of Africa the writing will be. plain on the wall for all to see.