FIGHTING IN WEST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 253, 25 September 1939, Page 7

FIGHTING IN WEST

THE SAAR CONFLICT. STRATEGIC FACTORS. The military problem is very different in Western Europe from the east, because of the two fortified Lines. General von Metsch, the famous German strategist has clearly differentiated “the West European” and “East European” army types. The former is de- , signed for static warfare, and has been revolutionised in recent years by technical developments, by permanent fortified lines, and by extremely strong war-potentials in the rear, writes the military correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. On the other hand, the East European type depends on mobility and on the human factor. ■* Mechanisation is weak in sufch a type and the stress is on “a nation in arms.”

In the West, then, spectacular achievements cannot be expected in a short time. The basic military problem is to avoid frontal attacks against concrete emplacements and yet, if possible, find a weakness in the enemy’s line. This is easier in respect of the German Line than in the French, because tho Siegfried Line is less continuous than the Maginot Line. In many places it is a combination of the old trench systems and modern forts, the idea being to give a depth of defence which the Germans say is lacking in the Maginot conception. The Germans are also affected by the River Rhine. Usually this is a help to them, hut in some places, where it curves away from the frontier, it leaves a small hinterland which invites attack.

From the Swiss frontier almost up to Karlsruhe (lie Rhine is the frontier, and, while the main part of the Siegfried Line is up in the hills of the Black Forest, works on the river itself are strong enough to impose immobility. Frenchmen and Germans just sit in their fortifications and face each other across the river. Then the Rhine makes its great curve up to the junction of the Moselle at Coblenz, and' once again the main Siegfried Line is on the left bank of the river, except lor the extremely strong sector known as “the Hunsruck Salient,” linking the Moselle and the Nahe Rivers. -NATURAL GATEWAYS* But this is almost a hundred miles from the French frontier, and the German works on the frontier itself are mainly designed to impede invaders, rather than hold them up indefinitely. If the Moselle Gap is a natural gateway leading invaders into France, the Moselle and Saar regions equally invite attack from France. Physical conditions of all kinds make the Saar the logical region for a French attack; the only hope of getting into Germany, if the smaller States are neutral, is via the Saar and the Paldtinate,, although German writers hold that, even if this occurs, the invaders will be caught in a pocket, and trapped in the endless mountains that extend the Lower Vosges in that region. Nevertheless Saarbruck is a gap; it was through Saarbruck, it will be remembered, that the Germans first struck on their triumphal march to' Paris in 1870. There is another reason for striking here: The Saar is one of the greatest coalmining and metallurgical industrial regions in Germany, and nowhere else near the French frontier can an industrial arid a military blow be dealt simultaneously. One of the major military problems to-day is to reduce Germany’s industrial productivity, which is one-third larger than that of Great Britain. This aim can best be accomplished by such largescale, aerial raids as that when 300 French ’planes bombed Aachen and Esehweiler, and by a land-offensive that might cut off the Saar and threaten industrial regions further inland.

But a word of warning must again-* be given about expecting too much mobility, if only because this region is full of military traps. The French know, too, that Lorraine iron means more to the Germans than Saar coal does to themselves, and French strategists have always talked about the possibility of a German feint on the Moselle to conceal a real blow in the B'itche region further to the south-east. Nor must a crossing of the frontier or even a move up the Saar AMI ley' ho described as breaking the Siegfried Line.

London.—The Exchange Telegraph Agency’s Istanbul correspondent states that the Government is asking the Assembly to pass military credits totalling £20,000,000 (in Turkish currency)..