WESTERN FRONT

Evening Star, Issue 23508, 23 February 1940, Page 10

WESTERN FRONT

POSSIBLE STRATEGICAL MOVES THE VOSGES GAP In view of Goebbels’s boast that the decisive blow will be struck any day, now, it is permissible to speculate where, it is likely to fall .(writes the military correspondent of the ‘Sydney -Morning Herald As most of Germany’s troops are still on the western front, it is possible that at -least one part of the Nazi offensive Will be against the Maginot Line. If this be so, the field narrows. Schlietfen’s dying words were the instruction to his successors, “ Keep the right flank strong!” Germany is for* , tuuate in this regard, because, the entire front between Luxembourg and the North Sea is immobilised as long as she wishes. She knows that the Allies cannot reach the 'German frontier by land because they will respect the integrity of’the intervening neutrals. If Germany wishes to strike somewhere else, her northern sectors are protected by the bastion of Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg. So far as the common Franco-German frontier between the Moselle and Switzerland is concerned, the strength of the original central- part of the Maginot Line would seem to preclude a frontal attack unless Germany became desperate. This particularly applies to the section between Sierck (on the Luxembourg frontier) and the western slopes of the Vosges. Strategically, however, there is one possible region in which Germany might attack. A geographical gap exists between the Lower Vosges and the Rhine. Since.it is only 10 miles wide, -such a gap would be a trap to an inadequate attacking force; but it might afford a test of the German claim that no isolated sector of any fortified. system can stand up indefinitely to terrific attack by aeroplanes and heavy artillery. The French lines are in a V shape, with Lauterburg (at-the confluence of the Lauter and the Rhine I. 1 forming their tip. This was the scene of the earliest battles of the Franco-Prussiari War; and Germany may be tempted to move here, because the Vosges gap beckons inland to wider strategical schemes. Any advance here would also draw the enemy further away from the vital industrial region of Karlsruhe. On the other hand, the French have always known that the Vosges gap constituted a military threat to them, and they ’ have made their preparations accordingly. Warned by German raids in this region early last November, they have greatly strengthened their fortifications, especially in the neighbourhood of Haguenau, about 12'miles inland from the frontier. Moreover, the Vosges gap leads equally into Germany, and there aro many French strategists who believe that, if real warfare breaks out on the western front, the Lauterburg spearhead might become the base for a general attack on the Rhineland industrial area from Karlsruhe to Mannheim.