THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, October 11, 1941. THE DRIVE ON MOSCOW

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24735, 11 October 1941, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Saturday, October 11, 1941. THE DRIVE ON MOSCOW

The hews from the eastern front emphasises the gravity of the position that has developed in the v si central sector, where the m n German thrusts are converging on Moscow in a vast encircling movement. What seems to be suggested is that Marshal Timoshenko’s armies —already, it would seem, badly disorganised by the penetrating tactics of the enemy—are virtually cut off from the possibility of assistance either from the north or the south. In the centre the German command is employing forces of enormous strength, masses of infantry being supported by all the available resources of the Luftwaffe and by every mechanised unit capable of being detached from other fronts for the purpose. It is useless to argue that in an offensive undertaken on such a scale the enemy must be suffering appalling losses. He is prepared to suffer them, and has obviously reckoned the extent of the sacrifice that may be necessary to gain his objective against the advantages that will accrue if Moscow falls and Russian resistance in that area can be broken. The loss of Orel has already involved the cutting of an important transport link between the capital and the Eastern Ukraine, where the Hun drive continues towards Kharkov. Complete occupation of the Moscow area—even should that city hold out as Leningrad and Odessa have heroically withstood siege—woujd deprive the Russians of what Vis their main source of industrial supply in European Russia. What is more, the severing of the whole system of communications that run behind the fighting lines between Leningrad and the Sea of Azov would add the grim complication of shattered transport to the problem that would be the effect of the loss of industrial resources. The Russians are indeed, in this hour, fighting with their backs to the wall. It is too early yet to say that the German plan for the encirclement of Moscow and the virtual isolation of those of Marshal Budenny’s armies which are stubbornly resisting enemy penetration in the Donetz Basin will succeed in its entirety-. The Russians have been in seemingly hopeless positions before, and have extricated themselves, with large forces still intact, by; reason of their capacity for making skilful withdrawals to new defence lines. But the dangers inherent in Nazi thrusts of such weight and momentum are too real to be ignored, and certainly give weight to the appeal, said to havq been made by a Russian newspaper, for an Allied diversion in the west which might relieve the intolerable pressure on the harassed defenders of Russian soil. It would be idle to attempt any examination of the strategy of the war as conceived by the British High Command. What must be obvious is that the implications of the present decline from solidarity on the Russian front will be well appreciated in London, and that whatever steps may be possible to avert military disaster there, by seeking to engage and seriously embarrass the enemy elsewhere, will be taken. A fortnight ago, when the apparent need for aiding Russia by the employment of diversion tactics was agitating British public opinion, Mr Churchill declined to discuss any question of future Allied strategy. Dangers and possibilities and how best to meet them, he said, were being studied by the military authorities day in and day out. It may be assumed that in Russia’s extremity, as it seems to exist today, intense concentration will be given to plans for bringing military assistance to bear.