BRITAIN’S PLACE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 12 May 1945, Page 6

BRITAIN’S PLACE

THE VICTORY

LINK THAT ALSO UNITED SOVIET MIGHT

(By Peter Matthews, well-known British journalist and commentator on international affairs)

Without the sharp contributed by each of the three great Allied partners, Germany could not have been defeated. Each has made a vital contribution. Russian successes improved the conditions for the Anglo-American landings; the Anglo-American landings, and Ihe need for guarding against them, contributed to the Russian successes. Success on each front lias depended upon success on every other. Sea power has been the link knitting together the three main European fronts. If control of the seas had been lost, Russia and Britain, not Germany, would have been blockaded. Without control of the seas, there would have been no landing in Italy, no Italian capitulation, no invasion from the West, no despatch of supplies from the arsenals of the United States and Britain to the Soviet Union.

Germany planned to deal with her victims in isolation. The pact with Russia of 23rd August, 1939, was intended to leave the Reich free to overwhelm the Western Powers. The attack on Britain, in the summer of 1940, was to have been the prelude to an attack upon an isolated Russia, fighting without allies; when that attack failed, Rudolf Hess, the Fuhrer's deputy, wqs sent to Britain in the hope that a patched-up peace would leave Germany free to concentrate upon the Soviet Union. FIRST RESOUNDING DEFEATS Up to the summer of 1940, the German plgq prospered. Poland was defeated before she could receive aid from the West; in virtue of the fact that Germany had started serious preparations for war several years earlier than the Western Allies, France was overrun and the British army withdrew fiom the Continent.. Then, in July, August and September. 1940, things began to go wrong. Despite its massive nUYnerical superiority, the German Luftwaffe failed to destroy the Royal Air Force. Although Britain hgd little more than a single equipped division, / the invasion of the British Isles did not materialise. Behind her shield of air and naval power, Britaiq was able to train and equip the army which wgs to inflict the first resounding defeats upon Mussolini's Italy and bar the way to Suez. In the Mediterranean, Malta stood firm, to become an “unsinkable aircraftcarrier” 60 miles from the Sicilian coast. Despite the loss of the French navy, the British Navy kept the Mediterranean secure, to become the avenue of approach to southern Europe and the route for supplies through Persia to the Soviet Union. If Malta and Suez had been lost, the German armies, advancing upon Bulgaria and the Caucasus, would have had the support of other forces moving northwards through Palestine and Syria. As & was, Britain and the United States were able, when the time for an offensive strategy arrived, to assail the African positions of the Axis simultaneously from east and west. The failure of the Germans to overwhelm the British Isles was, however, far more catastrophic for the Axis than the failure to gain control of the Mediterranean. If the British Isles had been lost, Germany woqld have had at her disposal a vast “safe area” in western Europe for the manufacture of war material. In this “safe area” it would have been unnecessary for the Germans to disperse their factories, to defend them against air attack, or even to enforce a black-out. FROM BRITAIN’S ARSENALS Millions of Germans, who have been engaged on passive defence duties, repair of bomb damage and anti-aircraft defence in Germany and the West, would have been set free for other work or for other branches of the German armed forces. Thousands of guns, niany of them equally suitable fpr use as anti-tank weapons, would have become available for the Eastern Front. Germany would have been absolved from the necessity of keeping in the west the thousands of day and night fighters, with their air crews and grouqd establishments, which have been contained, and destroyed, in the course of Germany’s defence against British, and later Anglo-American air attacks. Equally, Germany would not have been obliged tp employ hundreds of thousands of workers upop the construction of the “Atlantic Wall,” later shattered by the Anglo-American attack. From the European bridgehead, kept intact by the successful defence of the British Isles, have issued forth the great fleets of bomber aircraft which have carried the war into the heart of Germany, reducing her capacity to produce weapons of war and fuel, striking at her transport system. From Britain’s arseqals have come thousands of guns, tanks, aircraft and for the Eastern Front. And, from this same bridgehead, came the AngloAmerican armies which smashed the western defences of the “European fortress” and made possible the liberation of France. From naval and air bases in Britain, British and Allied warships and aircraft have played their indispensable part in keeping open the sea-routes between America and Britain, and between America, Britain and Russia.

SIGNIFICANT FINAL PHASE

It is Significant that, in the final phase of the war in the West, the Germans’ hopes of averting defeat were based upon the attempt to eliminate Britain by attacks upon southern England with

flying bombs and other secret weapons. The Germans recognised in Britain the link which unites the power of the Soviet Unicfn with the rfiilitary, naval, air and industrial power of the United States. But the blow, when it fell, found Britain prepared, both morally and physically. Britain, the solitary. bastion of 1940, has remained to the end the indispensable base for the libex*ation, by British, United States and Allied forces, of western Europe, and for the offensive against 'Germany itself. The faith of five long years has been justified; the sacrifices of a free people determined to preserve freedom for themselves and others have not been in vain.