COMMENT IN LONDON

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 41, 18 February 1943, Page 5

COMMENT IN LONDON

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Special Correspondent.) (Rec. 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, Feb. 17

"The Red Army has won the greatest strategic victory of the war. The fall of Kharkov makes the whole of the western Ukraine untenable to the Germans." "He who holds Kharkov controls the Ukraine. The rapid envelopment and the subsequent fall of a city which last spring so stoutly withstood the Russian offensive is an unmistakable sign of collapsing German morale." "By this latest victory our mighty allies are demonstrating, that the impetus of their offensive is far from spent and may yet break finally the Nazis' aggressive power."

These are among the comments in London on the fall of Kharkov. It is emphasised that the city controls a network of eight railways and six main roads. Without it, the Germans are virtually deprived of communications strong enough to maintain an army east of the Dnieper. Its fall unhinges the whole pf their supply position in the centre and in the north. Kharkov has commercial and industrial in addition to military value. Its tractor plant previously employed 30,000 operatives and was second only to the Stalingrad plant. It also has a mammoth agricultural machinery factory and electrical equipment works. The Russians now have virtual control of the Orel-Crimea railway, which is the most important strategic line along the whole Russian front. The opinion is expressed that the advance to Dnepropetrovsk and Zaporozhe can now be pressed confidently, that the encirclement on a grand scale in the Donets Basin is in process of completion, and that repetition of the success at Stalingrad seems to be within the Russian grasp.