NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 127, 31 May 1944, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

NOT ALL QUIET

GERMAN MOVE ON RUSSIAN FRONT

The Allies continue to gain ground steadily in Italy, but German defence of key-points, to coyer withdrawals of threatened forces, is stubborn still. Meanwhile, the Germans have broken the long quiet of the Russian front by a large-scale attack in Rumania, near Jassy. The general situation in Italy remains little changed by events recorded in the news. The.signs are that that the Germans are withdrawing from their salient in* tie centre, in the Liri and Sacco Valleys, into the mass of mountains between Rome and Pescara, so that a new front may be established running roughly east and west, instead of north and south, with Pescara as the hinge in both cases. At present the front is fluid in the centre, the line running from the west coast of Italy at a point between Anzio and the mouth of the Tiber, past Campoleone, Velletri, and Valmontone down the Sacco Valley to Frosinone, and thence eastward across to a point in the Upper Liri Valley, north of Arce, now in Allied hands, but south of Sora, threatened by the advance of the New Zealand Division from Belmonte. The Germans are obviously trying to hold the western sectorcoast to Valmontone —at all costs, while fighting a stubborn rearguard action along Highway 6 to cover a withdrawal to the Rome-Pescara line. German Counter-offensive? While it looks as if Kesselring might save a portion of the German army in Italy, if not Rome itself, in this way, Manstein—or whoever is in charge of the German armies defending Rumania, Hungary, and the Carpathians—Pripet Marshes gap in Southern Poland—has broken the "all quiet" on the Russian front by what looks much more like an attempt at a counter-offensive to upset the Russian plans than a mere local counter-attack. The scene is near Jassy, where the Russian drive stopped over a month ago for regrouping and rest after a strenuous winter and early spring campaign. It had seemed at the time as if the armies of Zhukov, Koniev, and Malinovsky might have pushed on to clear the Germans out of all that part of Moldavia and Bessarabia bounded on the west by the Carpathians, on the east by the Black Sea, and to the south by the delta of the Danube and its tributaries the Pruth and the Sereth. But German resistance had stiffened in the Carpathian passes and round Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, and Tiraspol, the Russian bridgehead over the Lower Dniester. Fighting stopped, or died down with the Germans holding the right bank (south-western) of the Dniester from its mouth at Akkerman and Ovidiopol—towns on each side oj the river—up to near Tiraspol, and then due west to Kishinev, Jassy, and the eastern Carpathians. The line then followed the Carpathians up to the Jablonitza Pass and past Stanislavov across southern Poland, to near Kovel on the fringe of the Pripet region. Some Possibilities. The whole of this line from. Kovel to the mouth of the Dniester is well suited for a counter-offensive The northern section from Kovel to the Carpathians has been described as "the main gateway into Europe proper." It was the main battlefield of the Eastern Front in the last war, and, like Belgium and northern France, is one of the natural cockpits" of Europe. Writing in the middle of April Captain Cyril Falls, military correspondent of "The Times" of London, said of this area: "It is even the most suitable corridor for a vigorous counter-offensive. Marshal yon Manstein, a patient commander, who awaits his chance but hits hard when he has gathered together a striking force, has v already achieved some local success here. . . . Mans^ might possibly do more. A major counter-offensive ■ would be covered, by the marshes on the one flank and the mountains on the other. It would run with the grain of the country, not being barred by obstacles such as the Bug and the Dniester, which run parallel to its probable axis.' A "Pincer Movement"? Where the Germans are attacking just now is, of course, not in this northern corridor, but further south between the Sereth and the Pruth. The danger is that this southern thrust may be one jaw of a pincer movement to drive the Russians back on the Pruth and Dniester, while the other jaw, coming down the corridor, catches them in the rear. This is only a possibility, but the Germans prefer the counter-offensive to standing pat, unless they are on favourable ground, as in Italy. The Russian general plan for the assault on Hitler's "Fortress Europe" must be to secure some of the Carpathian Passes, to press forward through "the main gateway of Europe" and to break into the Balkans across the Galatz gap between the Danube and the south-east corner m the Carpathians. The utmost the German counter-offensive can hope to do is to forestall and upset this general plan. Both sides have tried this limited counter-offensive in the past— Timoshenko at Izyum and Barvenkova on the Upper Donetz in May, 1942, and yon Bock in the Kursk salient offensive of early July, 1943. Both efforts failed and were followed by the great offensives of the other side, which carried the Germans to Stalingrad on the Volga and the foothills of the Central Caucasus and the Russians, a year later, back to the Dnieper and beyond.