FANATICS CLASH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20602, 1 November 1941, Page 2

FANATICS CLASH

STRUGGLE,IN RUSSIA EFFECT ON GERMANS OPPOSING IDEOLOGIES The German soldier was born in the bitterness of the World War, bred in the strife and revolutions of the years that followed, and trained in the iron school of Nazi discipline. To-day for the first time he is fighting an enemy who matches his offensive fire with a defensive 'fanaticism backed by the same power from which the German draws his strength—a revolutionary ideal, writes a correspondent in Central Europe.

The Russian-German war is the death struggle between two revolutionary ideologies. It is a war of hatred, and often of personal vindictiveness, in which the normal rules of “civilised combat” have no part.

It is a war in which no man can fight and remain unchanged. The German soldier who began it with all the elan which marked his other campaigns now has to fight as he never fought before. He is learning to fight with bitterness as well as youthful ardour; he is learning to fight savagely as well as coolly and calculatingly, and he is learning that there are times when all the will in the world cannot drive men past an impregnable position defended by soldiers who refuse to give up.

No one who has not taken part in it can fully the ferocity with which the Battle-of Russia is being fought. Those who have experienced it and are able to report on it cannot and do not attempt to conceal their feelings—the weariness of long forced marches through a countryside where everything has been destroyed; the dust, the filth and the near despair felt when the village or town which was to afford relief from all of these is found a smoking heap of ashes; the sudden shock of unexpected combat far behind the lines when Russian snipers go into action or guerrillas strike at night; the endless fatigue of days and weeks of sustained combat with only more miles ahead of each objective gained; the hopelessness often felt by those confronted with the vast space of Russia. How Russians Fight

German front-line correspondents admit that the Russians fight with courage and hatred —hatred which inspires them to play dead for hours in hope of killing one more German before they die; hatred which keeps them fighting hand-to-hand in the nethermost depths of their underground forts when the Nazis have destroyed all resistance above; hatred which turns each retreat into a desperate counter-attack. The German correspondents speak, too, of undying hatred even in the eyes of Russian prisoners..

Take one incident of the early tremendous battle for the Stalin Line. German troops were preparing to force a breach through which their forces could pour, as they did in France, to encircle other forts and take them from. the rear. The forts were of the Maginot type, with miles of connecting tunnels and with only concrete walls topped by steel gun turrets visible.

For hours the German artillery bombarded the forts with heavy shells. Stukas came to finish the work of the artillery with well-placed bombs. Then the order was given: “Assault troops and pioneers forward!” The forts were ripe for the kill. The Germans. advanced, hugging each shell-hole, sliding on their bellies from cover to cover, crawling through what was left of the barbedwire defences. German machine-guns and anti-tank artillery were pounding the Russian gun turrets to keep their firing slots closed. The Russian forts were silent and to all appearances dead.

While advanced assault troops covered them with light machine-guns, the pioneers with their explosives moved right up to the concrete walls of the key fortress. Then the forts came to sudden life. Machine-gun fire rained from the turrets, opened when the Germans had to withhold, their fire to spare their own men. Showers of hand grenades exploded among the scattered German troops. Rifle fire spattered from the flanking forts. The German advance stopped dead and the pioneers fell back. The Fort’s End Once again the German artillery pounded the forts, and in the whistling rain from their own guns the Germans tried for a second time. This time they made it. Two explosive charges were shoved beneath the walls; explosions heaved the pillbox up, leaving a long ragged gap between earth and concrete. Shock troops now went forward to finish the job. Yet, as the Germans closed in, machine-gun fire met them once again from the ragged hole in the side of the bunker. And again the attackers had to fall back.

In the end the Germans had to fight their way from door to steel door. The Russians retreated to the stairs, and when grenades had blasted the staircase, they went down to a lower floor. Outside the German infantry was flowing past the fort, through the breach in the line; but, inside, the light went on. The jig was up, and the Russians knew it, yet they had one blow left to strike. Suddenly the earth heaved bene&lh the Germans. They heard from far below a great dull thump, and from the shattered doorway there burst a thick cloud of yellow smoke. The fort with everything in it was dead at last. The Russians had fired the munitions chamber.

Such is the fighting spirit and courage of the Russians the Germans are now facing. The Nazi Soldier

The German soldier is intelligent, dynamic and highly trained to utilise his capabilities for individual initiative. But the key to his character lies in his attitude towards his job as a fighter—he is a soldier, not a mobilised civilian. Fighting in one form or another is the only thing many of Hitler’s troopers have ever known. Their life has been one long struggle, through the years of childhood, through the street fights of their political years, to the battles of to-day. For many of them the transition back to normal life seems scarcely imaginable. This writer has met numbers of youthful German soldiers from all walks of life and all branches of the service who simply do not think of what they will do when peace comes again, so wholly have they been gripped by the fascination of army life in war time. It must be remembered that until