Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1945. NAZIS’ DEATH THROES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 73, 23 February 1945, Page 4

Manawatu Evening Standard. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1945. NAZIS’ DEATH THROES.

The mighty Russian offensive against Nazi Germany is now in its seventh week. In that time Marshal Koniev has advanced 300 miles from his starting point to the Neisse River west of Sommerfeld; Marshal Zhukov has reached from Warsaw to Frank-furt-on-Oder, and Marshal Rokossovsky made a jump of 170 miles to the west of Cliojnice. The late General Chernyakovsky’s forces have also impressive gains in the Baltic area. The map of Eastern Europe has been transformed as most of East Prussia has been overrun, German Silesia taken from the Nazis and some of its powerful industries switched to the Russian war machine, and the provinces of Pomerania and Brandenburg deeply invaded. The threat to Berlin grows more serious as the Russians poise for their next strike; Stettin, its port, is menaced ; and Dresden, the capital of Saxony, partly in ruins from the massive aerial bombardment delivered some days ago, is one of Marshal Koniev’s immediate objectives. This offensive has precipitated for. Germany her supreme crisis of the war. Unlike the western frontier with its massive Siegfried Line and the Rhine there are only natural defences in the east which the Russians have taken in their stride. Marshal Zhukov now stands at the Oder gathering force for the great spring across this waterway to Berlin. The Nazi Command knows the peril, and knows that time is not on Germany’s side as it was on Russia’s in 1941 and 1942. _ In the words of General Guderian, Germany has no Urals ancT no steppes to retire behind until the enemy exhausts himself.

The final round is now in progress. General Montg'omery s characteristic message to his troops says the combatants are now in the rinf for this round and there is no time limit. It will continue until the Allies have given the Germans a knockout blow from which there will be no recovery in a military sense. His confidence of the result springs from the knowledge of the Allies’ prowess, of the splendid fighting material under his command and in the American ranks, and of the magnificent armies the Soviet has arrayecl against Germany in the east. The enemy is not yet vanquished, but his death throes are appreciably closer, and the final plans laid at Yalta for the destruction of German militarism must soon be revealed in colossal strikes. The “eight decisive days” of which General Guderian spoke, a “question of life or death” for Nazi Germany, have passed and there is no sign of the great counter-stroke many times promised. Resistance has been in the form of isolated counter-attacks on sectors where, already strong, the Germans eannot afford to yipld ground. There has • yet to come co-ordinated strikes that made the Wehrmaclit mighty in battle. One reason may 'be, that the Nazis underestimated the speed and strength of the first onslaught of the Russian armies and their retreat was so swift that their forces have not yet been completely re-estab-lished. Co-ordinated blows in the east and west will deprive the Nazis of the strength they would wish to use against the Russians.