NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 14, 17 January 1945, Page 4

NOTES ON THE WAR

ATTACK WIDENS

RED ARMY IN POLAND

The news today from the Eastern Front in Europe indicates that the Red Army's offensive in Poland is widening the penetration of the German defences south of Warsaw. The important rail centre of Radom on the War-saw-Cracow line lying to the north of Kielce, already in Russian hands, has been taken in drives from bridgeheads over the Vistula north of Sandomierz. Marshal Zhukov, Stalin's right-hand man, is in supreme command of these Eastern Front operations. The drives into East Prussia and towards the Vistula north-west of Warsaw, though subsidiary to the main offensive south of the Polish capital, will have the double effect of threatening to split the German forces and isolate Warsaw. In bitter fighting on the Western Front the Allies are forcing the Germans out of the Ardennes salient, and the British Second Army has opened a minor new offensive to eliminate the older German salient at Geilenkirchen, due north of Aachen, protruding into the Allied line after their NovemberDecember Roer offensive. The Germans are still active in northern Alsace, threatening Strasburg from two sides. The status quo has not yet been restored by the Allies. Italy is still quiet in the grip of a wintry cold snap. There is little news from Budapest or of the operations to the north and west. The Americans are making steady progress in Luzon, but the Japanese still hold the mountains on the left flank in strength. The British Fourteenth Army is nearing Mandalay along the main Irrawaddy railway from Shwebo. The Initial Front. The line in Poland before the opening of the present major offensive ran roughly from the corner where the boundaries of Lithuania and East Prussia meet near Suwalki along the Narew River to where it enters the Vistula just north of Warsaw. From Warsaw south the Russians held the east bank of the Vistula to the confluence of the San River at Sandomierz where they had a fairly broad bridgehead on the western side towards Cracow. The line bent back further south towards the east to the Carpathians, the eastern ranges of which, with their passes, and including the eastern part of Czechoslovakia, have for some months been in Russian occupation. South of the CarJ)athians recent operations have greaty extended the sphere of liberation— in the foothills of Czechoslovakia sloping to the Danube, and in Hungary, which east of the Danube is almost wholly in Russian hands with a wide extension to. the west. Yugoslavia is now at least half liberated. Excellent Prospects. The Russians are therefore in an excellent position to pierce the defences of the Reich at one or more points, along this extended front. The belt south of Warsaw along which the l main attack for the moment seems to j be driving presents the best chances of success. East Prussia has proved an awkward problem for the attacker in this war as in the last. The zone of lakes and marshlands to the east and south lends itself to defence, and the Germans, in the static period of the autumn, have made the most of it. A Russian attack line towards Konigsberg in the autumn fell short of success. It may win' through this time, if there are insufficient German strategic reserves to reinforce weak points all along the front. The south Polish gap, through which the Germans mainly poured into Poland in September, 1939, is much easier. It runs also through a thickly-settled industrial country of mines, factories, and iron works, including cities like Czestochowa and Katowice. Its borders in German Silesia, with its capital, Breslau, and the region where Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia meet, the greatest industrial district in Europe after the Ruhr. There is also the easy road to Vienna via the Moravian gap. It seems likely therefore that the main force of the Russian offensive will be directed towards this point, with side thrusts, north, to cut behind Warsaw and outflank 'the defences of the northern Vistula, and south to clear the Carpathian passes through to Hungary. The whole, area is well covered with a network of rail and road communications, and, apart from other considerations, would be a valuable prize to the Russians.