THE STALIN LINE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 203, 29 July 1941, Page 6

THE STALIN LINE.

UP TO 300 MILES DEEP. Tlio Stalin Line, which the Germans claim to have penetrated, is a deep zone of defence, commenced about 1932 in the Leningrad-Ladoga sector, and extended to the whole length of Russia's western frontiers in accordance with the plan outlined by 'Stalin to the Eighth Moscow Congress of the U.S.S.R. in December, 1936. It was worked out by Marshal Voroshiloff, his deputy, Tukachevsky, the then Chief of Staff Jegoroff, General Blucher, and the cavalry commander, Budenny. The first emphasis was upon the northern sector, between Latvia and Lake Ladoga, and upon the Dniester border-line of Rumania, between Tiraspol and Kamenets Podolsk.

No fewer than 300,000 labourers worked on the construction for years on end, and after 1938 the line was completed by a system of extreme depth, in White Russia, with Smolensk and in the Ukraine with Kiev as bases. This is no equivalent of the Maginot Line, and the Russian system is deeper even than the Siegfried Line in Western Germany. It is based on mobility, on the destruction of Toads and railways, and on the holding of river positions supported by block-houses. So far as an actual line can bo said to exist at all, it is from 100 to 300 miles in depth, and its defence as a whole is operated from the north-south “baseline” from Leningrad to the Crimea. There can be no final breach of the Stalin line as the result of one fixed positional battle. If the Soviet tlieor'- works out, a German victory in the outer zones should only mean a stiffening of resistance farther in, and the passage of each successive river crossing should be enormously costly. The new military highways, forming the skeleton upon which the depth system is constructed, might, however, produco conditions approximating to positional warfare, and might even, in the long run, provo weakening to the Russians if confusion should prevent the application of their destructionist tactics. The Germans, lor instance. probablv used the new Minsk “autostrado” in their first penetration east of that city.