PORTENTS OF DISASTER

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25338, 23 September 1943, Page 4

PORTENTS OF DISASTER

Defeat in the Orel salient two months ago is having disastrous consequences for the German armies in Russia to-day. In that short nerve centre of the entire 2000-mile eastern front the German Command had concentrated a third of its numerical strength and an even larger proportion of its armoured divisions. The offensive failed, the initiative passed into Russian hands, and it has never been lost by the Red Army. When the Russians crumpled the German defences to retake Orel and Byelgorod the enemy was at once confronted with the necessity of reshaping his entire defence system. From the pivotal centre the Russian counter-offensive spread rapidly and with everincreasing weight both to the north and to the south. The German thrust from Orel, which relied, as we have said, on a dangerously high proportion of Hitler’s available strength in men and armour, was made on a front only thirty-five miles in width. To-day the active front of the whole Russian offensive extends from north of Smolensk to the Sea of Azov and across the Taman Peninsula, a distance of between 800 and 900 miles. A glance at the map will suffice to show what has happened. “The Power controlling the offensive in the Orel salient is in a position to determine the shape of the fighting everywhere in Russia,” wrote an astute' observer late in July. , This was an exact prognostication. As one fortified centre after another fell again into Russian hands, with the Red Army at all points asserting its superiority in men and equipment, the German dilemma was revealed in the absence of strong second-line positions on which to fall back. The war of mobility was forced by the Russians, and the familiar by-passing manoeuvre was repeatedly employed to isolate some Nazi strong-point, which was then cleared in more or less leisurely fashion by troops behind the spearhead divisions. Now the Germans are being compelled to concentrate on the Smolensk-Kiev-Odessa line as the last defensive zone short of the former line—from Riga through Dvinsk and Minsk down to Odessa. Smolensk and Kiev are less than 200 miles from the Polish border. Three Russian armies are converging on the great fortress of Smolensk, and have battered a way through the outer defences, to come at one point within twenty miles of the city. The left flank of the Russian wedge pointing towards Kiev has been cleared, and a pincers assault on that stronghold is in the process of development. In the far south the German forces in the Kuban are facing the grim possibilities of encirclement and annihilation. Novorossisk is once more a Russian base, and Russian command of the sea and air will make escape via the Crimea, which must soon be attempted, a sufficiently hazardous operation in itself. But that is not the whole story, for the reason that of the two Russian armies driving towards the Dnieper bend one is already Zaporozhe, and the other, farther south, may take Melitopol and cut the escape railway from the Crimea through the narrow Perekop Isthmus. These are the factors with which Hitler and the German Command are contending on the eastern front, at the moment when the drawing off of reserves for the Balkans, Italy, and .possibly France and the Low Countries is a necessity that may be unavoidable. All in all, the military picture in Europe is, for Germany, one of desperate crisis. And Hitler has had authoritative warning of the fact that there is worse to come.