THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, December 15, 1941. IN REVERSE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24790, 15 December 1941, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, December 15, 1941. IN REVERSE

The German explanation—not the first on an embarrassing subject—that the rapid departure of the Nazi forces from points arduously won around Moscow is not a retreat, but a “tactical” withdrawal to winter quarters, fails to convince the Russians. The newspaper Pravda dismisses the statement tersely as nonsense. The Soviet troops, at Moscow and elsewhere on the Eastern front, who are indenting and breaching the German lines in a dozen sectors, thereby forcing the surrender of further ground by the Nazis in their effort to maintain a front intact, may wonder why a withdrawal should be so ill-managed, if it is not dictated by necessity, and why so' much valuable German, equipment is being jettisoned. The dictionary definition of retreat is to go back, retire, relinquish a position. Putting aside German modifications of the word,-it is apparent that the process of going back, retiring, and relinquishing a position, generally called retreat, is at present engaging the attention of the Nazi armies in Russia. In the Don area they have been going back for a week, scattering equipment in their wake; on the Crimea Peninsula they are retiring; around Moscow they are busy relinquishing a number of positions, the occupation of which only a few days ago appeared dangerously to threaten the Soviet capital. And as fast as they fall back—and not infrequently somewhat faster—the Soviet forces are upon them, speeding them upon their way—which process, in M. Litvinov’s expectation, will be a continuing one. Coincidently with the dramatic turn in the fortunes of war on the Eastern front, Berlin is faced with the necessity for further explanations of a certain marked movement of the Nazi forces in Cyrenaica. This movement is not towards the Egyptian frontier; nor, in this warmer clime, can it be attributed to the desire to seek winter quarters. The bitter truth is that on both the main fronts on which the Axis has been giving battle, the armies of Germany and her satellites are in retreat. This is a heartening fact for the Allies, who have laboured long and grimly, against difficult odds, to secure such a result. It is the first time in more than two years of warfare that the Nazi forces have suffered serious reverses on land. . The inhuman Hitler machine is at last discovering to the world flaws in its construction. So engrossed has the world been in studying the new development of war in the Pacific that the full import of the sudden change in German fortunes is difficult to comprehend at once. And people inured to -news of a different tenor will, quite wisely, be slow to exaggerate the importance of the despatches which show the Nazis in reverse. There is, however, one nation that, amid all its preoccupations, will not overlook this startling new trend. It is, perhaps, to the Japanese rather than to the Russians, that Berlin should address the ingenious explanations of when a retreat is not a retreat.