THE RUSSIAN FRONT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21305, 18 January 1944, Page 2

THE RUSSIAN FRONT

"We are victims of the climate,” exclaimed Napoleon to his entourage when his planned retreat from Moscow went awry. Hitler finds himself up against something more than the Russian climate. While it may be true that his legions, less warmly equipped than their Soviet adversaries and less inured to the rigours of an eastern front winter campaign, are thus fighting under a handicap, it is also correct to adduce from recent communiques that the Red Army as a sheer lighting machine has the upper hand of the Wehrmacht. The original offensive south from Neval in the direction of Vitebsk rooted the Germans from a line which, in anticipation of the winter, they had made as comfortable as campaign conditions would permit and which they had hoped to hold till the coming of spring gave them a chance to launch a big counter-attack.

There is nothing snug or peaceful, however, about the German winter one in any sector. Superior numbers and superior arms, especially artillery, are enabling the Russians to keep up r.neir remorseless pressure at every vital point, and the German High Command cannot be sure on what part of the front the next blow will be delivered. The Paris radio says the whole Soviet front is ablaze from the Crimea to Finland, and Reuter s Moscow correspondent reports that the new Russian break-through north of Neval has torn a dangerous gap in the defences in that area. The thrust towards Latvia and the Baltic may be under way, and who knows how soon the Germans still further north will sulier the penalty of their persistent shelling of the civilian population of Leningrad? At this stage of the war they cannot stir up a hornets nest with impunity. The massive manoeuvres of the Soviet forces are now rolling back into position the old map of Europe and, the savage Nazi counters in the Ukraine notwithstanding. the really decisive encounter on Russian soil may not be tar distant.