The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, May 2, 1944. THE LAST STRAW.

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1944, Page 4

The Grey River Argus TUESDAY, May 2, 1944. THE LAST STRAW.

A Japanese economic expert who has hopped out of the Axis camp, after a good opportunity to study Germany, indicates that the enemy is short of vital supplies, Allied diplomacy lately has been directed, as much as Allied . air attack, to a further shortening. While 'the ordinary individual is now looking for the second front to open, a paradox in the situation is apt to be forgotten. The success of the invasion can be better assured before it begins than it can when it begins. By destroying enemy defences from the. air it is possible to remove resistance from the very territory where the second front must start. It .is not precisely at destined beachheads that such resistance is based, but in the means of transport and supply located nearby. Replacement, in which the Japanese observer says the Germans have done wonders, is neverthe less increasingly difficult in territory subject to attack every day. like the whole of Northern France, Belgium and Western Germany. As in German-occupied Italy, the railways and roads of all the area related to the “Western Wall,” as well as the. airfields, factories, and supply centres have gradually been destroyed. There will be no need for the Germans to scorch the earth, should they find retreat an early necessity, but .the fact is cold consolation in rela-| tion to any plan of repelling invasion. Except for the non-stop air attacks in progress nearly all round Hitler’s fortress, there is at present a comparative lull, although naval actions are beginning to increase in the invasion a tea; and everything points to this as being the calm before the storm. What is remarkable is. not the fact of the Germans claiming that they are attacking invasion craft, but Jibe fact of their dims in this respect being so very moderate. It appears that they are unable to put up such an attack to any extent worthy of mention, and therefore their ability to repulse an invasion is obviously unequal to the task. . It is doubtless that convention, which explains the confidence with which Allied spokesmen promise the success of the invasion, which they agree in saying will be but one phase of an attack in which all of the United Nations’ forces on the European theatre will coordinate their action. Ultimately the issue boils down to what has been said by the Japanese observer —the industrial power of the Western Allies is so superior to that of Germany that she cannot continue to compete in war production. Military tactics even yet do not show the Germans in any bad light. Their failure is strategical. They took on Russia and have had to get out. They have banked on >a decision being obtained before now, and miscalculated. They still declare they never will give in, but even that decision no longer rests with them, because the will to resist is useless without the means to resist, which are dwindling in their hands. In that respect this as much as the last is a war of attrition, and though the invasion may hasten, it may hot alone finalise the process. The end may begin this time behind 'the enemy lines in a far greater degree than the Germans claimed it did in 1917-18. While, therefore, the land invasion will continue the process of decimation begun by the air. invasion, it will at the same time star! another process. It will so increase the strain within Germany as to precipitate an inevitable collapse.