NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 5, 6 July 1943, Page 5

NOTES ON THE WAR

AXIS OFFENSIVE?

KHARKOV TO OREL

The news today shows that things are moving. Moscow reports what is apparently the start of the long-threat-ened Axis summer offensive in Russia; British commandos have raided -Axis airfields in Crete, and the Allied offensive against Japan in the Solomons is gaining momentum. The . great Polish leader, General Sikorski, has been killed in an air crash at Gibraltar.

After an unusually long calm the storm seems at last to have broken in Russia with an Axis offensive along a 180-mile front between Bielgorod and Orel round the Soviet salient at Kursk. The scale of the fighting and the reported loss of German tanks in one day—sß6—place the operation in the category of a definite offensive rather than that of limited attacks to gain limited objectives. The front in Russia after the end of the winter fighting was described officially in the Soviet Press, with an accompanying map. at the beginning of April. Since then there have been few changes, and those only minor and local. The Soviet winter offensive made great gains north and east of Smolensk and even greater south of Orel. Several "hedgehogs" were taken, " Schlusselburg. near Leningrad, Velikie Luki. Rzhev, Gzhatsk, Vyazma, Kursk, and Kharkov. Orel was not taken and Kharkov was lost. From a point southeast of Smolensk, through Bryansk to a point north-east of Orel the line was left unchanged from what it was at the end of the German first offensive of 1941. This and the Volkhov-Staraya Russa line also unchanged are regarded as the two strongest sectors of the German front in Russia. South of Orel. South of Orel the country, more open and less wooded and with fewer important river barriers, has always been easier for offensive operations, and over it the line has swayed forward and backward in attack and counterattack. In their furthest advance east the Germans reached a line running roughly south-east from Mtsensk, north-east of Orel, through Voronezh on the Don and along xhe Don to Stalingrad on the Volga and thence down to the foothills of the Caucasus. The Russian counter-offensive oi 1942-43 drove them back to beyond the line from which they had started, and brought Kursk and Kharkov, as well as Rostov, back under the Soviet Kharkov was lost in a limited Axis counter-offensive in March of this year which failed, however, to recroSs the Donets River. Blow at Moscow? What is the object of the new Gerj man offensive? It can hardly be a purely local move, designed, say, to wipe out the Russian Kursk salient between Orel and Byelgorod. The gains in such a case would hardly warrant .the risks of devastating losses in event of failure. It is more likely to be a last desperate attempt to force something like a decision on the Russian front, by striking such a blow as would threaten Moscow and cripple the Red Army for any winter offensive. Both sides have suffered so severely in the past as to be virtually incapable of sustaining similar sacrifices and carrying on the light on the same scale next year as in 1941, 1942, and this year. This is not to suggest that the Germans will succeed. But, as Hanson Baldwin of the "New York Times" remarks in today's news, numerically the German army is probably stronger than it has ever been. By the autumn, he says, the army is expected to total 350 divisions. Of these as many as 200 may well be on the Russian front. Mr. Churchill, in recent broadcasts, put the Axis divisions in Russia at 229, German, Allied, and satellite units. These might be maintained in Russia and at the same time out of the remaining 150 divisions a sufficient number might be detached for defence on other possible fronts. It is rather curious that the Germans should have chosen -for the opening of their, offensive in Russia the very date, July 3-4, they picked for Allied "second front" landings. The camouflage was possibly intentional. At any rate, now that Russia is in the throes, for the third time, of a massed offensive, the operations of the Western Allies are likely Ito be adjusted to synchronise. Stalin's i cry for a "second front" this time will find the Allies ready. The preliminary signs are already evident. Meanwhile, tactical retirements by the Red Army in the Kursk salient are quite possible. The Germans have much better rail communications behind their line and should be able to mass troops effectively.