The Southland Times MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1941. Russia's Problem of Supply

Southland Times, Issue 24576, 27 October 1941, Page 4

The Southland Times MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1941. Russia's Problem of Supply

MORE AND MORE, the future of Soviet resistance is becoming a question of supply, both within Russia and from outside it. Has the Soviet Command enough heavy equipment, especially tanks, armoured vehicles and aircraft, to supply its huge armies until winter puts an end to mechanized warfare on the present scale? Can the Soviet then manufacture and obtain from Britain and the United States enough heavy equipment to resist the inevitable German attack in the spring? The numbers of tanks with which Germany and Russia began the struggle can only be guessed at. They were undoubtedly huge on both sides; and both sides have suffered heavy tank losses. But recent reports from the battlefields, official and unofficial, have indicated in a variety of ways that the mechanized forces at the disposal of the Russians are now numerically inferior to those of the enemy. In a review of the war situation quoted in a cable message this morning the Soviet newspaper Pravda frankly declares that the Germans on the Moscow front have superiority in both mechanized and motorized forces. There is evidence that much the same position exists on the southern front. Indeed, without this superiority it is inconceivable that the German mechanized divisions could make the advances—and take the enormous risks—that they do. The Russians still have vast tank forces, and the story in today’s cables of the destruction of a Nazi column near Kalinin illustrates how magnificently they are being used. But a defending army whose mechanized forces, however large, are numerically inferior to the enemy’s is placed at a disadvantage on such a vast battlefront, where the attacker has the opportunity to concentrate the maximum weight of his tanks at widely-separated, decisive points and to swing them rapidly from one sector to another. The growing shortage of mechanized equipment in Russia is the result of the unavoidably heavy wastage on the battlefields (which is, of course, common to both sides), and the diminution of the Soviet’s industrial resources. However hard Soviet workers strive in the factories east of the Urals, they cannot make good the loss of industrial plants in the Ukraine or overcome the supply difficulties that must now be hampering many factories in Leningrad, Moscow and the Donetz basin. The Germans have to bring their tanks and armoured cars over hundreds of miles of mud-clogged roads, but their industrial resources, at any rate in eastern Germany, are unimpaired. With every fresh incursion they make into the industrial regions of the Soviet, the industrial war, by which the war in the field must ultimately be decided, is moving in their favour. Britain and America have accepted the task of redressing the balance; and it is a formidable task indeed. Probably nothing they are able to do will affect the outcome of the battles of the next critical few weeks to any appreciable extent. But when Russia gains the respite of the winter months they must try to make good her deficiencies before the spring. Production in both Britain and America must be increased, the very grave problems of transporting heavy equipment to Russia must somehow be overcome. For it is of vital importance to the Allied cause that the Russians should be able to continue their resistance and maintain an eastern battle-front.