SIEGFRIED LINE

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 October 1939, Page 8

SIEGFRIED LINE

GAMELIN’S TACTICS EXPAINED. The Siegfried Line is not a line but a great defence zone. It is necessary to appreciate this to understand the method that lies behind the French tactics on the Western Front. This opinion was given in a recent recorded broadcast by a British military authority.

When the war started everyone knew that the Germans had few troops on the Western Front, he said. The question was continually asked why the French did not launch a great attack, and thus render Poland more effective aid. The only way to prove that such an attack would have been unwise and that Marshal Gamelin had taken the right course was to describe the nature of the German defences. One of the lessons the Germans had learnt from the Great War was the futility of wasting lives in shock offensives against a line, or two or three lines of defences. As a result they had created the Siegfried zone of defences with first a deep outpost zone, then machine-gun nests in concrete embasements, and behind this ebneerte forts for artillery. In addition, there were great stretches of tank obstructions.

The object was to draw an attacking force into the defences and then endeavour to disintegrate it, ample provision being made in the defences ’ for the launching of counter-attacks. ' The commentator pointed out that this ; was actually -what was happening, but ’ the German counter-attacks were being repulsed as a result of the French policy of proceeding carefully and consolidating every gain. The defences did .not rest with the Siegfried Line, said the commentator. Behind thes elay another set of defeices known as the Wotan zone, and behind theso defences more had been begun since the outbreak of the war. llf the Siegfried Line was captured the defenders would fall back to the I Wotan defences. From the Switzerland border to the Palatinate, the Rhine River presented a tremendous obstacle to attackers, being heavily fortified. Up to the present there had been little fighting in this area, activities mainly consisting of troop concentrations. The main fighting had taken place along the frontier extending from the Rhine at Karlsrue to Saarbrucken, to Merzig and thence to the Luxemburg frontier. In this area the outpost defences were from one to two miles in depth protected from the front by anti-barbed wire, while behind were concrete forts. Before the outbreak of the war there were from 25 to 50 of these forts to the square mile, and it was considered that fresh ones had been built since. It was in this zone that the French had met with a fair measure of success. But the task of the attackers did not rest with taking these defences. There were strong defences along the Saar River to Trier. Some' distance in the rear was another “position,” and behind that further series of defences. “I do not doubt but that the Germans have been working hard on more defences since the beginning of the war,” said the commentator. | Some idea of the problems Marshal Gamelin was tackling could be secured from this outline of the defences, said the commentator. To have rushed into them would have invited disaster .and heavy losses of life, and would have been of little assistance to the Poles. In tackling such defences it was necessary to reduce the outposts one by one and then to consolidate every : gain. ;

Reviewing the fighting on the Western Front, the commentator said it was useless to think that the French had not done anything. Practically the whole of the front zone from Sierk on the French-Luxemburg border to Saarbrucken, and thence to the Rhine, was empty and useless. Mines were idle for miles, railways and bridges had been extensively damaged by artillery. The Germans had been compelled to evacuate valuable industrial towns. This represented a very important month’s work, which had been carried out. with great skill and little loss of life.