Russians Fight With Fire and Skim-Plough

Northern Advocate, 17 September 1941, Page 8

Russians Fight With Fire and Skim-Plough

Says a writer in a recent issue of the Sydney “Daily Telegraph".

Distant thunder of German Panzer divisions across Spain and Czechoslovakia warned Soviet peasants of the storm that would ultimately break across the Ukraine. Even in their farming methods they became defence-conscious. Collective farm technicians, in recent years, developed an agricultural implement to aid the policy of “scorched earth.” The peasants call it the “skimplough." It is attached to the rear of a big harvester-combine. As the harvester reaps the ears of ginin. this large skim-plough turns in the stubble, In a few hours, tractor, harvester and skim-plough can turn vast fields of standing wheat into fields of rich dark fallow. The stubble, the Russians said, would provide shelter for the advancing Germans, and bind the mud in the wet season, making the path easier for tanks and motorised infantry. Hence the skim-plough. The German tank-drivers will today be cursing it, as the muddy fallows clog their caterpillars. Truck drivers will be down on their axles, where they expected a paving of straw. The infantryman, his boots filled with slush and his uniform caked with mud, will have greatest cause for complaint as he marches in the open, without cover from air-spotters and divebombers. Strategical Necessities The strategical necessities for Germany in Ihe first month of invasion, were:— 1 — To thrust so rapidly that scorched earth—destruction of bridges, rail junctions, factories, towns, mines, petrol and food dumps, and power stations—would be prevented. 2To take the Ukraine before the peasants could gather the harvest, and turn the standing crops to fallow with their skim-ploughs. 3To reach communication centres and mobilisation depots in the heart of Russia, by surprise attack, before the Soviet could mobilise 12,000,000 Red Army reservists, labour battalions, war-workers, guerillas, earth-scorch-ers, air-pilots and naval crews. The Russians had to check the Germans in Bessarabia, Poland, the Baltic States and on the Finnish frontiers long enough lo accomplish all these things. ■ Tile old Czarisl Army, in 1914. took 12 weeks and one day to mobilise. The I Red Army, with its bigger and more complicated war machine, requires six weeks. The Russians were partially prepared ' when Hitler attacked, but still needed four weeks. It must have been touch and go in Western Russia. What History Will Record History will probably record that 1 scorched earth, defence in depth, and a remarkable Russian mobilisation defeated Hitler in the third and fourth weeks. Here are the average daily rates of advance, taken over four fronts on which the German Panzer units thrust: First week . . 12.5 miles a day Second week . . 18 miles a day Third week .. 9 miles a day Fourth week .. 2.5 miles a day And then, on some fronts, came stalemate. The Russians broke all records in mobilisation. It was complete by the end of the third week. The peasants hitched their skimploughs to the harvesters, gathered almost the entire Ukrainian harvest, and left their vast farms to become a sea of mud, dirt and misery for the Germans. Rain—and Snow With great regularity the rainy season begins in mid-August, and carries on through September and October. Then the snow falls. In Western Russia now. the rain pours steadily out of a leaden sky. Aircraft are grounded. The Ukrainian mud, graveyard of a thousand armies, closes over the tanks, the trucks, and the dead of the mightiest army that ever floundered into it. Unpleasant for the Germans, yes. But millions of Russians will also suffer. Cities, towns and villages, holding more than the combined populations of Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have been given over to flame and dynamite. Industrial production greater than the combined output of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Port Kembla, Newcastle and Broken Hill has been wiped out. Wheatlands greater in extent than Australia's Riverina. Wimmera and Mallee may not give a harvest next summer. But the Soviet has not lost its main war industries by scorched earth. These are in the Donbas, in the Urals, and beyond the Urals, out of range of German bombers. The Soviet still has plenty of coal, iron, oil, copper and nickel for its factories. But in Western Russia, now scorched or threatened, were produced many of the consumption goods that made life comfortable for the Russians. The Greatest Loss Greatest loss of all has been Dnieprostroy. The cutting off of industrial power was bad enough. But there was more to it than that, A few charges of dynamite swung living conditions of the Ukraine and parts of the Donbas back to Czarist times—or worse. In the wet autumn and coming winter, the Germans will find them unbearable. And many Russians will have to suffer with them. Dnieprostroy power had transformed the domestic life of Ukrainian peasantry and townfolk. Oil lamps, candles and primitive Russian stoves disappeared: The houses and streets became a blaze of light. The contrast was seen on the Russian-Bessarabian border. In Rumanian peasant houses, there was an occasional dull red glow from an oil lamp; over in Russia, the white glow of electricity.

Russian homes got electric hot-water and heating systems, electric kettles, stoves and irons. When electricity goes, domestic life collapses. The Russians can't even return to meagre Czarfst comforts, because there is no domestic firewood available. “Scorched Earth” Scorched earth is almost as old a tactic as warfare itself. Long before Stalin told his peoples to “create conditions unbearable for the enemy," Romans had scorched the Carthaginian earth, the Great Khans of High Tartary had laid waste the territories over which they swept, and piled the skulls in pyramids, so that no enemy could rise in their rear. Scorched earth was applied in its classic form against Napoleon by tlie Russians when they burned Moscow. It reappeared in modern times in China. Lest you have any illusions about the sacrifices it involves, read the report of a British Volunteer Red Cross nurse who recently visited scorched earth areas in China. “All along the roads coming down from the Yellow River from Shansi, and from the Yellow River back to the Lunghai railway, it was. a terrible sight,” she wrote. “Some Chinese were being carried, some in horribly jolty carts and some crawling along. Many were a ghastly sight—they become mere skeletons and have a horrible grey colour. “I have never seen such an epidemic of relapsing or typhus fever before. I suppose a bad epidemic always comes in a time of semistarvation.” There is no romance behind the phrase “scorched earth.” The Russians can obviously handle the problem better than China, but the scorched Russian earth will also yield untold misery and suffering. And perhaps these fields that are being sown with death may be fruitful for the pestilence germ—unless Russia gets adequate medical aid.