The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1945. How Long Now?

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23181, 20 April 1945, Page 4

The Timaru Herald FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1945. How Long Now?

THE universal thought now is how much more punishment Germany will be able to endure before her people concede defeat and accept the Allied terms of unconditional surrender. An answer to that question must depend to a great extent upon the present political structure of the country. It may be that the Nazis have plans for a desperate though ultimately unavailing stands, and the revelations which have been made this week prove anew what was well known before: that the N azis will stop at no brutality to maintain their hold on victims outside and within the country. Il is possible that a large enough portion of the Army and civilian population is sufficiently terrorised by the Hitler regime to continue resisting even at a time when all reason is against it. The Nazis have worked well upon a susceptible generation of German youth who bear the shackles of Nazism easily; thev may fi.'sht until the last of them is dead. Should this be so, organised resistance in some form may be carried on long after the military strength of Germany is broken in all the main lines of battle. This may involve delay in the completion of t ictory, but the German people as a whole must be able to see now that the Allied victory has been won and that each day’s resistance only adds to the needless toll of destruction and misery that war involves.

Although it mav be possible for the German Army to delay the Allied approach to Berlin from east and west, the battle of Germany has been decisively lost. The entry of General Patton’s 90th Division into Czechoslovakia has divided Germany. The Americans have gone in at the northern tip of Czechoslovakia, pulling a wall of armour between it and the Belch. Whatever sources of supply the Germans still had in Czechoslovakia can no longer be used. Thus the process of strangulation in the south is completed. This predicament is bad enough, but it is onlv one of the three terrible blows the Germans have suffered. The battle of the Ruhr pocket, which has now been decided in favour of the Allies, appears to have resulted in one of the greatest military disasters of the war. Without the resources of the Ruhr Germany cannot survive. Recent Allied advances deprived the enemy of the use ol the Ruhr, but the German High Command decided that large forces should remain in the Itlmr to create a pocket of resistance which might at some stage be an embarrassment to the Allies. In isolating the Ruhr the Allies gained one advantage, but the second, that of eliminating another portion of the German Army, was equally important. That objective has now been attained. German resistance has completely collapsed in this region and the count of prisoners taken exceeds 300,000. This number may or may not be included in the total of 2,000,000 prisoners taken in the West since last June. That prisoners have surrendered on such a vast scale is a certain sign that the common German soldier, the best judge of the situation, knows the war to be lost.

Smashed though they are in the west and the south, the stricken enemy still has terrifying perils to meet in the east as the Red Army advances from the Oder for the final thrust at Berlin. The German News Agency is reported to have described the Russians as attacking under a permanent air umbrella with fresh troops coming forward “as though on a conveyor belt.” Present indications are that the battle for Berlin will be decided within the next few days. The loss of the capital will have no material effect upon the enemy; the city must long since have ceased to exist as a focal point in the organisation of the Reich, but its loss must be a tremendous blow to German morale, and might easily be the one which will finally break the spirit of the people. The Germans are suffering now as few people have ever suffered in war, and if the will of the people can prevail, the respite offered by surrender should not be far away.