South Yorkshire Times, 12 August 1944
Down But Not Out
It would be cheering to think that the United Nations had finally got Germany on the run. But though the news from both East and West is eminently satisfactory it still does not justify such finality.
In the West we have decidedly got the Germans on the move. The Americans have lived up to their national reputation for hustle by an advance which for dash and drive has overshadowed the best that the Nazis could do in their Blitzkrieg days. Brittany is being swiftly cleansed of Nazis, and before long there will be additional ports of great value for the supplying of the huge Allied armies now spreading themselves in a business-like way over the North-West corner of France.
Soon the German High Command will have to decide whether to write off the South of France, or whether to leave valuable divisions there. It is the problem which faced them in the Baltic States over again. They may be wiser this time, but either way they are bound to sustain another set-back. Sooner or later, and probably fairly soon, the Germans must fall back to the Seine line. When they do that, the great Allied hunt will be on; the chase will last so long as the Nazis can withstand it. The Anglo-American huntsmen are not quite in position yet, but their great Southerly swing is shaping well. Notwithstanding these favourable auguries it is well to remember that the quarry is cunning, savage, and desperate.
This week’s macabre pantomime of a trial, which has cloaked the latest Nazi purge in Germany shows how fanatically determined Hitler and his clique are to fight to the end. Ignominious hanging of high officers of the German Army said to have been involved in the plot against Hitler is a warning to all other dissidents. Removal of opposition to the suicidal regime which holds sway in the Reich will be ruthless. In the field the same pitiless doctrine holds good. Flayed by the most searching air attack any army has ever faced, the German soldiery has to face this deadly onslaught and make the best of it. Incredible weights of bombs are dropped on them, their armour is riven by rocket firing fighters, but still they disengage, retreat, re-form; mechanically it is true, but efficiently enough. They have taken more punishment of this sort than any other army in history, but they are still fighting, still going back reluctantly, selling their lives dearly.
In the East, too, a stiffening can be sensed. A nation with a military reputation such as Germany’s is not to be brushed casually aside when defending its own frontiers. Now it is the Red Army which has long communication lines and an awkward change in railway gauges to deal with. There will be no partisans to disrupt the Nazi rear once the Reichswehr is finally based on its own soil. This is not lost on the Russians, who bide their time. They know the danger of the harboured beast. Germany may be down, but she is not by any means out.