TWO MAIN FACTORIES

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3895, 28 April 1937, Page 3

TWO MAIN FACTORIES

IF RUSSIA GOES TO WAR. TACTICS OF ARMY CHIEFS. Red Army chiefs are counting on two main factors for victory should Russia go to war, says the London correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald. These are: Constant attack and an eventual rapid break-through, led by tanks and cavalry; and revolutionary risings in the enemy’s rear, combined with land of troops by parachutes behind the lines. This is revealed in the new “provisional field regulations” issued for use by the Red Army officers. These show the extent to which the general staff is now enamoured of what prewar French generals used to call the ‘ mystical doctrine of the offensive.” The regulations also show how thoroughly the army has been taught to expect revolutions among the enemy civil populations. These risings will, in the view of the Red general staff, synchronise well with giant bombing attacks and mass descents of parachutists and dynamiters. Thus, it is believed, according to the Moscow' correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, that dismay and canfusion will be followed by rioting and sabotage in the enemy’s territory. SOCIALIST FATHERLAND. “The Red Army,” the official field regulations claim, “carries on its banners the holy defence of the Socialist Fatherland, the freedom of downtrodden humanity from slavery and misery, and liberty for the toilers of the whole world. To win over to the Eide of the proletarian revolution the working class and peasant masses of the enemy’s army and the civilian population of the enmy’s war • zone is the main necessity for our victory. “The basis of the education and subsequent action of every officer and every soldier of the Red Army must be constantly to attempt to force the enemy into a decisive battle. Without any special orders, the enemy must be bravely and violently attacked wherever found.”

The field regulations further rescribe in great detail the combined operations of all arms in the field for a mass “break-through” by the Red Army forces! —tanks co-operating with cavalry, long-range tanks acting independently, and other tanks leading the infantry. Combined with these operations would be the landing by parachute behind the enemy’s lines of light motorised brigades and machine-gunners.

Once, however, the enemy’s attempt to rally his demoralised forces and retire in good order has been smashed by long-range tanks and the retreat cut off by parachute landings, then, the regulations state, “the Red army will be generous to enemy prisoners, and do everything possible to save their lives.”