The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1944 PROBLEMS FOR RUNDSTEDT

New Zealand Herald, Volume 81, Issue 25055, 20 November 1944, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald AUCKLAND, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1944 PROBLEMS FOR RUNDSTEDT

Allied offensive operations on the Western Front have developed with a vigour and speed which must seriously disturb the Germans. If their supreme commander in the West, Field-Marshal von Rundstedt, is inquiring at tiiis stage which of the many thrusts is the decisive one, he will* search in vain. General Eisenhower is not revealing that vital piece of information just now, either in commenff from his headquarters or by the deeds of his armies. Even when Rundstedt considers all the factors of relative strengths, topography, time and space, the weather and morale, he can reach with absolute certainty only two conclusions. They are that he is being attacked by six armies on four definite and historic routes into Germany, and that while he may be able to deploy sufficient forces to hold one or two of these assaults, he will be extremely fortunate if he can block them all. If from the concentration of three armies in the Aachen gap he makes the deduction that this is the decisive stroke aimed at the dislocation of the main defence and the Ruhr industrial district, he will have to move quickly. Here the Allied armies are debouching on to the wellroaded Rhineland plain where, after the thick crust of static defences has been broken, they may be able to move their armour and transport with disconcerting speed toward the Ruhr. Rundstedt's experiences in this war will have convinced him that fixed defences alone will not arrest an advance. Their function is to canalise the assault, to absorb and exhaust it, after which the decisive counter-offensive must be made.

Since no counter-offensive is possible without a mobile force in the hands of the commander, the problem for Rundstedt devolves into one of finding a reserve. This is part of the dilemma General Eisenhower has created for him. The hastily-organ-ised levies from Germany's civilian population will be of no use for this purpose. It is exceedingly doubtful whether, for some time, they will be of much value even in the wellconstructed .posts of the Siegfried system. Something more than ability to aim a rifle or fire a machine-gun or mortar is needed. Men must be conditioned to stand against attack and conditioning is the product only of long training. Rundstedt therefore must find a reserve from his battle-tested troops now disposed on the 400-mile front. If he withdraws troops from the Moselle Gap where General Patton is attacking, or from the Vosges Passes toward which General Patch is pressing with the Seventh Army, or from the Belfort Gap into which the fierce Algerians and Moroccans of the French First Army are moving, in what better position would he be 1 From a purely military point of view, Rundstedt might argue that to obtain the advantages of a concentration of force and hence a mobile reserve, it would pay him to yield the Vosges, the Belfort Gap and the basin of the Upper Rhine and hold a new defensive line through the Saar Basin and the Palatinate and hinged at Karlsruhe to the Schwarzwald on the right bank of the Rhine in Germany. Such a Solution of the problem, however, is not likely *to be acceptable to Rundstedt's higher command, which has charged him with the duty of keeping the Allies out of the Reich.

Although the offensive east of Aachen has been mentioned as one which must be met quickly by adequate "reserves the same remarks apply in varying degree to the other attacks. The latest reports suggest that Patton's attack is in two wings, one at the entrance to the Moselle Gap and the other about Metz. It is not yet clear, however, whether Patton's objective is the gap or the Saar Basin. The most that can be said at the moment is that both objectives are open to him and that, rather than attacking the Moselle route directly, he is edging into it. Patch's to the six passes over the Vosges is a neat piece of strategy in the classical style of the advance to such a mountain range. It calls for the classical response of withdrawal, which appears to be under way, and then the posting of guards at the top of the passes and a reserve behind, in this case in the well-roaded Rhine Valley. These are problems enough for Rundstedt and up to last week he might have taken his own time to consider them. But since then he has seen the redoubtable and apparently over-stretched British Second Army turn a local operation into a major assault in the genera] offensive. He has been given another example of the use of heavy bombers in close support of a ground attack. To cap his misery, Rundstedt finds himself the victim of a commander who can afford to disperse his force, thus compelling enemy dispersion as a preliminary to concentration - against an undisclosed decisive point.