STAND BY ENEMY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 24868, 14 April 1944, Page 3

STAND BY ENEMY

POSSIBLE STRATEGY CARPATHIANS BARRIER GERMANS STILL UNDEFEATED SYDNEY, April 13 The apparent ease with which the Russians have forced the Sereth line in Rumania and the speed with which they captured Odessa suggest that the enemy has decided that his next major stand can only be made along the Carpathians and in the Galati Gap between the Transylvanian Alps and the mouths of the Danube, says the military correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. This decision would be the natural, if not indeed inevitable, outcome of his failure to stabilise a front down the Sereth through lasi to Odessa. To the extent that the Germans still have some such plan in reserve, he adds, they still retain at least partial control of their strategical position. Although heavily defeated, with grave losses of territory, manpower and equipment, their retreat lias not yet degenerated into a rout. Paucity of Prisoners It remains most significant that the Soviet communiques do not claim any large numbers of prisoners, the correspondent continues. Even the rapidity of the German collapse in Odessa did not apparently result in mass surrenders either in the city or in the bottleneck across the mouth of the Dniester. Apart from the Skala trap beyond Cernauti, now reopened by German relief columns coming in through Buczaez, events seem to confirm the German insistence that the withdrawal has I been controlled. The details of the I fighting along the consecutive river barriers, and at such strongpoints as lasi. further support this interprets- j tion. Plenty of evidence lias been adduced regarding local demoralisation at various points, but this is consonant with rearguard actions covering wider withdrawals, and it would be unwise to assess the present position in Rumania on the basic assumption that the enemy no longer has any strategical cohesion. Rapid Advance Likely Kvi-ii so, however, the nest phase of the fighting .should witness a fairly rapid Soviet advance over lower Bessarabia and the region oil both sides of the Ser.eth. up to the Carpathians. It is tempting, but unrealistic, to speculate about the forcing of the Carpathian passes before Lwow and Stanisiawow are reduced. In military terms, 1 a drive across the passes must be a multiple movement; elementary facts about communications, as well as the events of the last war, prove conclusively that the six major passes from j the Dukla and the Lupkow south of ! Przem.vsl around to the Jablonica j below Stanislawow form a single entity if the objective is to break through to the Tisa valley. Reduction oi Passes Due pass after another might be neutralised if the Russians were to drive to the west north of the ranges with the passes blocked on their flank. However, unless the enemy is unsuspectediy weak, or unless the local re- ! sistance movement in Ruthenia is more ! widely organised than is believed, it ! would not be sound tactics to drive j down the - Jablonica Pass alone, j Whereas a joint advance could give I the Russians the advantage of a series j of variable piston thrusts, a conccntra- j tion on the defiles of a single pass might result in a death-trap. The passes in the stretch between Jablonica and the end -of the Galati line are of less military importance, because they lead into the tangled country of Eastern Transylvania, and the main operations in Rumania are more likely rather to be directed toward smashing a way through the gaps between the marshes on either side of the Danube