The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1944. The Events Of A Fortnight

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22992, 8 September 1944, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1944. The Events Of A Fortnight

piE victories in Western Europe, the magnitude of which can scarcely yet be realised, have tended to throw out of perspective the march of events in the east. Yet it need only be recalled that in 14 days Russian arms have forced the surrender of three of Hitler’s satellite nations — Rumania, Finland and Bulgaria—to realise that the eastern walls of Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” have suffered a collapse almost as spectacular as that in the west. A mere recital of events is seldom helpful to an understanding of the war situation: but where events as great as these have, in so short a time,' crowded upon the mind, it is not unhelpful to pause and take stock of what has happened, however briefly and simply. Something of the historic immensity of the events of the last 13 or 14 days may be grasped if the main victories in the west and in the east are enumerated. This, then, is what has been happening.— August 24 —Rumania capitulates. August 25-27—Paris liberated. August 28 —Allies cross the Marne; the Russians advance through the Galati Gap toward Ploesti and Bucharest. August 30—Allies cross the Aisne; Russians capture Constanta. August 31—Reims liberated; Russians occupy Ploesti and its oilfields. September I—Amiens, Rouen and Verdun liberated; Russians take Bucharest and reach the Bulgarian border. September 3—Advance into Belgium; Dieppe and Arras liberated; Russians clear the north bank of the Danube. September 4—Brussels liberated; Rus-sian-Finnish armistice. September s—Advance into Holland; Antwerp and Louvain liberated. September 6—Russian-Bulgarian armistice; American patrols cross German frontier; Namur and Nancy liberated; Russians advancing to Yugoslav border. In this historic fortnight the Germans have been routed and almost cleared from France, Belgium, part of Holland, and Rumania. They have lost three satellite Pow'ers in the east, and in the west have been forced back to the main borders of the Reich itself. The Yugoslav Partisan forces, still fighting a few days ago in isolation from and out of land contact with their Allies, now see the Red Army sweeping to their assistance. The Germans remaining in Greece are being outflanked by this advance, and if they attempt to evacuate they must traverse areas controlled by Marshal Broz-Tito’s Partisans on land and by the Mediterranean Air Forces in the air. In Italy they are still resisting stubbornly; but if events continue to move as they are moving now in the Balkans, the enemy forces in Italy may in their turn find themselves outflanked and cut off.

In this situation more significance than might once have been attached to a German spokesman’s comment may be found in the words of General Dietmar on Wednesday: “The decision of Germany’s fate now lies in the hands of her last reserves. Four years ago we were undisputed masters. Now we have been beaten by the methods we forged. We have lost the military balance in the west. To ask why all this has happened is not helpful. Our duties were too great for us. We now have to fight in a reduced space. It would be folly to pretend that we wished for this situation.” That a German spokesman should use, in tvhatever context, the words “We have been beaten,” is an admission of defeat. It was left to other German commentators (one of them in Oslo) to make the usual references to “new tricks of'ffiilitary art,” and to “revising our armaments.” But one of these retracted the boasting of earlier years when he said: “Now, as in 1939, we are not quite ready.” It seems clear that the swift impact of the east-and-west offensive has shocked the Nazi propagandists into a belated realism. That is one of the lessons, and a bitter one, that the totalitarian State is learning in its death-throes—that has its limits, that a time comes when only the truth, however grudgingly acknowledged, will serve. The fact of military defeat, which the Nazis denied in their account of the events of 1918, now confronts them; it is printed in bolder type than the Nazi-controlled Press can command, and permits no mitigation by broadcast pronouncements. It is difficult enough for the free world to realise what has happened in the space of a fortnight. It must be bew'ilderingly difficult and disillusioning for the German people, now that the voices and the reassurances on which they have been drilled to rely have turned in that time from warning to threatening, and from threats to defeatism.