NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 63, 11 September 1943, Page 8

NOTES ON THE WAR

TREND OF EVENTS

PROBLEM FOR HITLER

The capitulation of Italy as a nation has not given the Allies possession of Italy as a country nor of the occupied regions in the Balkans and Aegean where Italians were posted to share the defence with the Germans. The trend of events must, however, pose new problems for Hitler.

The Germans, with the unwilling help of Rumanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Slovakian, and Finnish forces, have now to face all the Allies in Europe over a line that becomes longer instead of shorter, unless Germany is prepared to give up a great deal of territory in Russia and south-eastern Europe. In Southern Russia they are already in full retreat towards the Dnieper River. Incidentally today there is an item of news recording, the capture by the Red Army of Barvenkova, on the Donets, actually to the south-east of Kharkov. It is in this region of Izyum, Barvenkova, Lozovaya, Poltava, and Lubri that a core of unexpectedly hard resistance by the Germans developed soon after the Russian recovery of Kharkov. For nearly a month the Germans have been holding out here, while, Russian advances north and south of it have swept far to the westward. In the north the Russians are pushing through Bakhmach towards Kiev; southward they are approaching the Dnieper bend at Zaporozhe and have captured Mariupol, the last big port on-the Sea of Azov. Hence the German retreat in the centre.

Enemy Dispositions

It seems now as if Hitler has decided to write off the Ukraine and the Donbas as wasted assets, and has, indeed, turned his main attention to the west and south to deal with the situation left by the collapse of Italian resistance to the Allies. His immediate dispositions are fairly clear from the news. There is no alteration in France. Marshal yon Rundstedt remains in command there of a force which used to be reckoned at about 30 divisions. In Italy the Germans have taken steps apparently to hold the Italian Riviera, where the Alps and the Apennines come down to the sea, at least as far as Spezia, and possibly Leghorn, to the south of Genoa. It is also no doubt intended to hold Italy east of the Apennines, as the Adriatic coast of Italy is vital to the Nazis in order to keep the Adriatic a closed sea and bar Allied access to the Balkans north of the Strait of Otranto between Brindisi: and yalona, the port of Albania. From Valona the German back line is supposed to extend across the Pindus range to Salonika—the shortest line across the Balkans. The whole is about the shortest line in Southern Europe Germany can hold and still protect vital areas, such as Rumanian oilfields and cornfields, and guard any easy access to Germany itself. . The most dangerous zone for Germany is pot Italy.so much as the northern Balkans, which from Salonika furnish a fairly easy highway to the Valley of the Danube and Germany itself.

Vulnerable Balkans.

At a pinch, therefore, Germany might lose Italy as far as the Alps and still bar access to the Reich and to France from the south, especially in winter. But Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Rumania the Germans cannot afford to losei It was the 1918 September campaign from Salonika that decided the last war and compelled the German High Command to recommend to the Kaiser a request for an armistice. This is really the "soft under-belly of Europe." To defend such a vast front —a seafront from the North Cape of Norway to the Pyrenees in the Bay of Biscay, with the addiiton of a long Mediterranean coastal front, plus a land front in Italy, the Balkans, and Russia, would seem to be beyond the power of the 300 divisions of all sorts, which is the most the Germans could rake up now after all their losses. Their internal lines of communication, though shorter than those of the Allies, are not good, and have further been disrupted by Allied air activity. This is what the loss of Italy's armies has meant to Germany. It remains for the Allies to exploit the favourable situation. They have now the requisite force to apply, and their High Command has hitherto proved more than equal to Hitler, Rundstedt, Rommel, Kesselring, and Co.