DANUBE ROUTE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23083, 23 December 1944, Page 7

DANUBE ROUTE

Soviet Armies’ Drive “To Heart Of Germany” By Willi Frischauer Germans thought of the Danube when, through the ages, they planned and plotted their "Drang nach dem Osten” (Drive to the East), said Willi Frischauer, in a talk broadcast by the Bd3.C. By a turn of almost poetic justice it is to-day the Danube route which Soviet armies are following in their drive to the West towards Germany. As much as the Rhine, the Danube is once more Germany’s river of destiny. A German engineer designed and built the Iron Gate, which extended the navigable part of the Danube deep into the Balkans. It is no accident that Germans, above all, celebrated him and erected a monument in his honour. It is their favourite trade route. They have always regarded it as their inalienable right to extract the agricultural wealth of the Danube basin for their own use in exchange for cheap industrial produce. The greater part of four of the six countries through which the Danube flows on its 1700-miies course are already under Russian control. Their first great offensive took them from the distant Volga to the Danube Delta, which runs through Rumania into the Black Sea. Bulgaria, which the Danube frontier divided from Rumania, fell to their combined political and military operation. The Russians crossed the Danube at the famous Iron Gate and, together with Yugoslav partisans, have liberated Belgrade on the Danube. Another poli-tical-military development took them deep into Hungary toward Budapest, that other lovely Danube city, and well on the way to Bratislava and, ultimately—Vienna. Guarantee of Swift Advance

They have followed a traditionally strategic route. Unlike the Rhine, Which protects Germany, the Danube dagger points towards the heart of Germany; the valley of the river with its best transport system, presents almost an invitation to attack, a guarantee of swift advance. Let us follow the Danube to its source in the Black Forest. Conquest of Belgrade has avenged one of the war’s bloodiest air massacres—the ruthless destruction of the city’s beautiful centre by the Luftwaffe in 1941. Side by side with the Russians, storming toward the vitals of Germany, are Tito’s armies—which the mountains and forests of the Danube Valley in Yugoslavia have provided with many hide-outs during the last three years—with great opportunities to harass the German shipping, which took vast quantities of Balkan loot and particularly Rumanian oil. They will be there when Soviet armies take Budapest, which contends with Vienna for the prize of the loveliest of all Danube cities. Grim memories are associated with the Danube at Budapest. Their significance will neither be lost on the Russians nor on Hungary’s Fascists. At Budapest, Horthy and his "white” terror bands sent the bodies of murdered Hungarian Communists “swimming in the Danube” after the last war. At the “Hotel Britannia” Hungarian reactionaries tortured their socialist and democratic compatriots. The Danube was red with their blood. Continue on the slow and rather tortuous trip upstream. Until Allied mining operations stopped it you could meet on the Danube a great fleet of fast German armoured boats which patrolled the river and protected the traffic. Often have I made this trip in a pleasure steamer before this part of the Danube became so completely commercialised.

Beauty Spoilt by Nazis Developed by the Nazis, the sleepy Czech town of Bratislava (Pressburg to the Germans, Pocsony to the Hungarians who once held it) is a busy inland harbour, handling tens of thousands of tons of oil, wheat, vegetables and ore. The Nazis spoiled the lazy beauty of the small city, which has always been dominated by her big sister across the Austrian border—Vienna, the traditional mistress of the Danube. In Vienna, on the banks of the Danube, are the huge oil depots and refineries which transformed the crude produce of Rumanian wells into highoctane fuel for the Luftwaffe. Vienna and the Danube (not really blue) was Hitler’s spiritual home, which he first absorbed the notions of anti-Semitism and ribald ideas of Pan-Germanism; here originated the German plan of the “Anschluss,” the union of Austria and Germany, which became Hitler’s first “only territorial demand.” In Vienna, too, Hitler first discovered the political dynamite of the Danube Valley, the explosion of which has shaken the Balkans so often and plunged the world into war. But he failed to learn the lesson of the Hapsburg Monarchy which he hated so much; that no statesman has ever managed to maintain the Danube countries, though an obvious economic unit, in a political union for long. From Vienna to Linz! There Goering built one of his biggest armament factories, and another Danube inland harbour which served the German war industry. Not far from here, at Passau, the Danube reaches Germany proper. Allied air communiques frequently report attacks on many Danube towns, such as Regensburg or Ulm—centres of industrial production; there is an even more profitable target: The Black Forest region, which hides scores of German war factories, is one of the secret armament centres of the Nazis. It is a curious coincidence that Anglo-American troops are now not far from the Black Forest source of the Danube, across th'e Siegfried Line and on the other side of the Belfort Gap. This is difficult, wild country; from a tourist's point of view a glorious climax to the lovely sights which a trip along the Danube presents at every stage. , • , But there is little time now to think of the beauties of the Danube, or the Austrian Wachau with its old castles and ruins, associated with historic names, reminiscent of wild battles in which the ancestors of the Austrian and German aristocracy still fought as genuine robber knights. The inspired tunes in which Johann Strauss and scores of other composers hailed the Danube fade into grim battle cries, reminding us that Danube sentimentalities are overshadowed in war and peace by grave political and strategical problems.