HOW RUSSIA WILL BEAT GERMANY

Otaki Mail, 25 January 1943, Page 4

HOW RUSSIA WILL BEAT GERMANY

MAX WERNER’S ACCURATE FORECASTS

Those who have studied with an open mind writings on war from single articles to books both before and during the present struggle will have a lot of time for Max Werner. His now famous “Military Strength of the Powers,” published in the era of appeasement, has been proved by events to have been an extraordinary accurate appraisement and forecast. Liis “Battle for the World,” issued in 1041, was an equally luminous survey of the first period of the war, ending in the collapse of France. Ills latest book, “The Great Offensive,” which has appeared in Britain and America, has, so far as one knows, not yet reached this country in quantity, if at all. A review by John Chamberlain in the “Now York Times” of November 3 is therefore worth quoting. The Germans, or at least a sizeable number of them, says Mr. Chamberlain, think about little except war. They arc supposed to be masters of the military art. But, actually, what’s good about their war thinking? Having read Max Werner's “The Great Offensive, ” which is an excellent and heartening book, one can ask this seemingly preposterous question in all seriousness. For Mr. Werner’s story is one of blundering and miscalculation on the part of tlie Germans ail along the line. They have thrown away opportunity after op portunity, and now they are throwing away the last of their good first-line troops.

The Russians have been pushed back over the map for two summers, but at the end of every German advance the surprising Bolshevik generals have managed to catch the Nazis off balance and save vital objectives by throwing in the decisive reserves. The Germanhave fought a sterile warfare, taking scorched earth, compounding their communications problems, losing blood and metal in an unending stream, and fail ing either to obliterate the Russian armies or to reach the oil of Baku.

This is the gist of Mr. Werner’s analytical chapters. To Mr. Werner the battle for the Stalin Line, which the Germans won in the early summer of 3641, ended with a “victory in a vacuum.” The battle for Smolensk was won by the Soviets, for it ate up time, ended more or less in a tactical draw, and prevented the Germans from assaulting Moscow in time to beat General Winter. The 1941 battle for the Ukraine went to the Germans for the simple reason that the Russians re garded the central Moscow front as the decisive front, and refused to be lured into splitting the bulk of their forces. When Hitler failed to reach Moscow the Soviet wisdom became apparent to the world. In the summer of 1942 the Germans continued to confuse tactical gain with strategic advance. They went deeper into the Ukraine and reached the North Caucasus. In doing this they disturbed all the organic inter-relationships between their northern, central and southern Russian fronts. Committed to holding immense territory in the south, the Germans cannot concentrate sufficient power to take Moscow or Leningrad. The Russians, who have twice the manpower at Hitler's command, can always throw in reserves to take advantage of any pronounced Nazi weakness when winter grounds Nazi planes and slows the tanks. Mr. Werner wrote his book before the defence of Stalingrad came along to underscore his points. The defence cannot have surprised him in the least. I for in “The Great Offensive” he says; the Germans cannot win a decisive i victory in the North Caucasus and pre- j sumablv lack the power and the ability . to scale the mountains and reaeh the ] oil of Baku. Mr. Werner thinks the Russians will’ continue to throw in reserves after Hitler has scraped the bottom of the| barrel on any given front. The Rus- ( sian arms industry is practically intact,, for most of the machinery in the Ukraine was salvaged in time. The Russian machine-tool industry has only been diminished by 10 per cent, since the beginning of the war. Steel is a different matter; the Soviets lost 50 per cent, of their steel capacity in the Ukraine-Donetz Basin campaigns. This will not prevent the Soviets from maintaining their superiority in artillery and armed infantry, which has saved them every time. . “Strategy?” a German general once asked rhetorically. “Strategy is garbage. Let’s talk tactics.” Well, strategy i 3 garbage as Ludendorff and 1

Hitler have talked it. You cannot win a “total” victory over 190,000,000 Russians, 45,000,000 Englishmen, 130,000,000 Americans, and 400,000,000 Chinese with 80,000,000 Germans and 60,000,000 Japanese. Anybody who rays you can should be teaching arithmetic to Count Screwloose, of Toulouse, Mr. Werner does not put it that way, but that is the conclusion to be drawn from his sound and enlightening book.