THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Tuesday, March 20, 1945. THE RHINELAND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25798, 20 March 1945, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Tuesday, March 20, 1945. THE RHINELAND

It has been laid down that there are three basic phases in air attack, when air power is used to supplement a land offensive. The first tactical aim is to beat down the enemy’s air force, so as to make it impotent to interfere with air and ground action. The second is to isolate the battlefields by cutting the enemy’s lines of communication, smashing his roads and bridges and shutting off his supplies. The third is to give direct support to the ground forces by attacking enemy concentrations and wiping out his strong-points. All three of these procedures are being witnessed in the Allied onslaught against the defence systems of the middle and lower Rhine. “With cold, surgical precision,” wrote the correspondent of the Daily Mail on the Western Front a few days ago, “ the whole of the Ruhr is being isolated. The Allied air forces are in the midst of a scientific plan designed to make it impossible for Germans to move, work or fight in this great strip of the most populous and industrialised territory in the world.” This statement might be applied to the Rhine territory as a whole. When the importance of the Rhine as a defence barrier is recognised, it still remains true that its primary purpose in the German war plan is economic. The Saar and the Ruhr are two of Germany’s greatest industrial areas. The over-running of Silesia by the Russians threw this fact into high relief, for it meant that the enemy then had to depend almost solely on the Rhineland and the less developed industrial portions of Czechoslovakia. The seizure of the Rhineland by the Allies would automatically reduce the German war effort to a degree that must spell disaster, soon rather than late, for the hard-pressed Wehrmacht. Including Lorraine, already in Allied control, the territory on the west bank of the Rhine produced some 12 per cent, of Germany’s coal and 80 per cent, of her iron ores. In addition, many of her irreplaceable heavy industries are there, the very nature of them—the magnitude of the installations in relation to the availability of power and raw materials—having made their removal to safer areas impossible. It has to be emphasised, also, that the development of the river as a highway has marched with the rapid industrialisation of the region. It is against these immense economic resources —the vast plants and the intricate system of communications built around them, dominated by the river with its associated canals, highways and railways—that the Allies are thrusting. The successes won so far have involved the enemy in staggering losses of industrial and other war potential. Around Munchen-Gladbach and Rheydt were clustered plants for the manufacture of textiles, munitions, aluminium, locomotives, and all types of railway equipment. Krefeld, with a prewar population of 168,000, was the centre of a textile weaving and finishing district, including material for parachutes. It was also the site of the largest combine in Germany that produced high-grade steel —a plant feeding other Ruhr factories —and of the important I. G. Farbenindustrie plant for the manufacture of sulphuric acid and other chemicals. Cologne, occupied after having been virtually destroyed by Allied bombing and shelling, spread its factories and vital communications network along both banks of the river. Just south of it was the Knapsack power station, the major source of power for the Rhineland and the Ruhr, but 'the town also contained chemical works and a ferro-alloy plant. At Dueren, in the western portion of the Cologne area, 4000 workers in the factory which originated the famous duralumin metal were engaged in the manufacture of nonferrous metals and aircraft components. Neuss, the communications centre on the bridgehead opposite Dusseldorf, had a harbour at the junction of the Erft canal with the Rhine, and was widely known for its engineering, textile and oil installations. The area west of Cologne is estimated to contain onethird of Germany’s total production of brown coal, the use of which for industrial purposes was phenomenally developed after the last war. The whole of this region of the western Rhineland, with its enormous riches in raw materials and established industry, has already been lost to the enemy. Moreover, the area of Allied occupation is extending itself daily, as the link-up of American and British divisions continues. In one captured town on the Cologne plain occupying troops found a placard displaying this extract from “Mein Kampf"Give me five years and you will not recognise Germany.” The Rhine territories, apart from the rest of the bomb-devastated Reich, * are to-day vividly and ironically testifying to the truth of Hitler’s ill-chosen vaunt.