COUNTER SROKE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 155, 29 December 1944, Page 3

COUNTER SROKE

THE NAZI HOPE

"SHALL WE BE ABLE?" fhe idea of the Nazis haying a final counter-stroke *vas dealt with by Lieu-tenant-General H. G. Martin in the London "Daily Telegraph" at the beginning of October. I , "When a commander finds himself in a situation so adverse that he can no ■longer make a plan of action which promises success, then he has nothing for it, if he would still fight On, butj to accept the plan which is at least less bad than all the rest," he wrfite. "Such is the situation in which the German High Command finds itself. It must have a plan. What, then, is this plan —this last refuge? In all probability the High Command sums up the situation something like this: " 'Our aim must still be to win a decision in the' West. There is no • alternative. To this end our three main requirements are a temporarily stabilised front in the West, behind which we can regroup and reorganise;, a mass of manoeuvre with which to deliver a strategic counter-stroke; and a resuscitated Luftwaffe to co-operate. How do we stand in regard to each of'these?

'"The stabilised front in the West we have already achieved. It has re-sulted-primarily from our deliberate policy; of denying ports to the Allies. S?his policy has certainly cost us a lot pf men, but as their sacrifice has kept the Allies so extremely .short of port facilities, and v particularly of facilities "conveniently .'placed, they ■ are naen well expended.' . . END OF ALLIED PURSUIT. - "■ "After the Wehrmacht's defeat 'in Normandy, the High Command might further reason: lit was touch and go whether or not :it could prevent the pursuing Allies from flying both the biegfried Line and the Rhine. The deciding factor was supply. Just so ong as the pursuit-remained a.pursuit the Allies could carry on. They were using up food and. petrol, certainly, but not much mort. By the time, however, early, in September, that the pursuit had reached the Vosges, and .Moselle, the Eifel, the Ardennes, and the great river and canal systems of .northern1 Belgium and Holland—areas, all of them,, specially created for defence—we, had been able to give the wehrmacht a blood transfusion, and it was fitting up and taking .notice. So the .Allies had. to fight once more. , _ When they began to fight they Began to use up ammunition, and the supply, of • ammunition for large-scale operations is a very different service Erom the-day-to-day supply of food and pejrol. We. had -set the Allies a real problem in logistics. If they could have solved that problem then and mere, they might have hurdled on right into.the Reich. In fact, they soon tound that, for the solving of it they must, have time.; So we, too, gained time, when time was vital to us. ."Not all the Allies were equally immobilised. By September 17 the Briish Second Army was ready for a fur- ££ er- advance from where it stood on the Meuse-Escaut Canal. For at least a week previously, however, we had foreseen the of an Allied uhrust through .north Brabant and Nijfe^ f n designed to turn the deiences ™k T Sa! e! fl led Line and the Rhine, and, we-had held two S.S. divisions in readiness-for action in the Nijmegenft.rnhem region accordingly. ' i. ._ A DANGER POINT. "'Thus, though we were completely 2S%the,cope:of the ai?borne landings when the Second Army's gJJ^,l*? began,' and though, too, through incredible ineptitude, our troops wlf ed, ga-eat bridge over the ¥n&**i Ni jmeS.en-to pass intact into Allied hands, we were able to hold the crossings :of the' Lower Rhine wh£e a reff int d control in the Arnhem Ku ??r 17- we yet abandoned hope fir Itf £ g Nl^ cegen bridge by counbombin °re'' c of destro >ring &by n^? ere. tOO- then, by containing pempsey s/army in south-east Holland between-the Maas and the flooded areas ,of western Brabant, we have rontrived.to stabilise the'front. n X^ c + fu^ alise ' merely a temporary^stabilisation. Dunkirk will soon H A^- way■-.?? Calais- Progressively, Se^. lieswilL bring more and more ?n« t> llbera. ted 1 Ports into commisK2; Progressively they will improve their communications. As soon as they $ Z£ e??%?- M li- lcely to follow S§ hLS °f Nijmegen ■ and Eindhoven m^n ? Fev^ and Emmerich, the fnfl pSnKh and the, R T uhr > and Tatton oSS £° h- by way of Luneville, Epinal and llemirement towards' Basle and .Strasbourg. "on the Upper Rhine Meanwhile w e> must make the best of the Sp Sf Fr2 nt so that we m*y fend off the Allies, from our vitals in the Rhmeland and jhe Ruhr until such tune as we can launch our strategic nte- + t ti"° ke-- ■ ? or this PurJSe Se can withdraw into; tactical reserve across^the. Moerdi.ik bridge the doS or so divisions of the 15th Army which have escaped across the Scheldt leav ing behind only such garrisSns as may :feSSv ■ r the Zeeland island '.)". Strategical reserve. "One question the High Command '■3K *I? aSk Self ■ <Sha" we b™ e Sir thl ? Ur l0S? es \ and Particularly It nearly J°^iv Ctual M nearly a.million men m France and the Low Countries—shall we be able KJ- S? me later date t0 assemblla strategical reserve strong enough to mf.k^ °ur counter-stroke effective? <w T°day we cannot look to the Reich $™nIT dlvasions- Such drafts as hnmoH 8 ay mOW squetee.out of the home front will suffice at best' only -xis? »l CZ%SU^ es in divisions which ■:^i + uead/' For our strategic reserve therefore, we must look to the S ral battl| fronts, and each must bt made to produce its quota J^I rOJ^- Ovih• Finland' Rendulic's peven divisions are in retreat to Norway; seven divisions of Norway's nine can thus move on to Denmark; seven divisions from Denmark (where prePiously there were but four) can then move on still farther to play thei? part on the Western Front. „*.« « J + taly Kesselring's 27 divisions ? ghimf. ? rearSuard action. -To us North Italy is nothing but a liapility. But for Hitler's tiresome complex we should have left it long since Now at last, in his own way and time Kesselnng can disengage his 27 divisions towards the Alps of the Tridentma, to northward, where in due course tie will lmk up in the mountains with our new front farther east. . . ; Tarther east Weichs's 20 or more divisions are in . retreat from the Aegean,. Greece, and Macedonia towards Hungary. If Weichs can reach . Hungary he will find there such remnants of our Sfxth and Eighth Armies as have escaped, from Bessarabia and Moldavia,, together with perhaps 20 Hungarian divisions, the whole bolstered up by the German occupan°n n n™roops Hungary itself, some 100,000 men. North, east, and south the Hungarian plain is already threatened, and Hungarian morale is crackmg. The plain is indefensible We have resigned ourselves, therefore, to the loss of the oil-wells and cornfields of Hungary—but not until we have extricated Weichs's armies from the Balkans. CONTRACTED FRONT. ■ "'Then we shall contract our front, to stand • upon the great mountain barrier nearer home, where our front will run across Europe from the Kalian Alps of the Tridentina through the Ostmark to the Danube at Bratislava, and on again through the mountains of Slovakia and the Beskids, beyond .which last it will link up with Dur armies of Silesia on the Dunajec River before Krakov. When we have assembled all our armies of Italy, of the Balkans, and of Hungary, perhaps fro.m 70 to 80 divisions on this strong mountain front, we shall be able to withdraw from it a ,due quota of, say, 15 to 20 divisions to the West.

"'Finally, there are our 200 divisions on the main Eastern Front. The Russian armies on the Vistula are already very far from their main base at Moscow. The prolonged pause in the Polish salient suggests that the Soviet Command may be anxious to consolidate and expand its lines of communication before it embarks on a prolonged campaign beyond the Vistula—rand on the very threshold of