South Yorkshire Times, 08 July 1944
Hammer And Sickle
Russia, whose war machine the Allies have never ceased to nourish, now sees her great opportunity and is grasping it with both hands. The fall of Minsk is a grave loss for the Germans who themselves have described this White Russian city as “the gateway to Berlin.”
Such cliches are automatically suspect, particularly from Nazi lips, but the sweeping advance of the Red Army is creating a critical situation on Germany’s Eastern Front. In less than a fortnight Hitler’s armies have been driven back some 200 miles, and the Russian push is now beginning to present a serious threat to the armies holding down the Baltic States, Vilna is a vital rail junction through which these forces are supplied and also through which they could most effectively be withdrawn. It lies right in the path of the Red Army pursuit formations which are thrusting towards East Prussia, where it is probable the sacred soil of the Reich will experience the first dreaded violation by an avenging host.
As their manoeuvring ground becomes more and more restricted Hitler’s generals will find that the technique of elastic defence will serve their ends less and less. The time when the towns and villages of not only East Prussia but the Eastern marches of the Reich itself will become scorched earth draws near; a bitter chapter to which the present rout in Western Poland is but the prelude.
If Hitler wishes to insist that the Western Front is the decisive one, who are the Allies to quarrel with this further manifestation of his intuition? The fronts in the East, the West and the South are inextricably linked; Germany is being bled to death on all three. Such is the measure of Allied strategy, developed with painful patience but with inexorable sureness.
For an anxious period Great Britain and the Empire in magnificent isolation defied the Axis, then came Russia’s turn and she bore the brunt of the struggle for a cruelly long spell. Now, bereft of allies and served only sycophantically by fearful satellites, Germany finds the tables irrevocably turned upon her. Her only hope, a scant one, is to hold one of her adversaries while she turns the balance of her failing might on the other. How forlorn this hope really is emphasised by the overwhelming defeat she has sustained round Minsk, I and the unfaltering way in which the Western Allies are consolidating their hold on the wide French bridgehead. Before the Nazis stretches a grisly prospect of endless withdrawals executed only at the cost of men and equipment; a nightmare of bloody sacrifice which can have but one end, the unconditional capitulation which Hitler with all his scheming and squirming, his vindictive play with secret weapons and the like, cannot evade.
The question which must remain unanswered is how long Germany intends to submit herself to this flagellation before bowing before the inevitable and throwing in her hand. It is a decision she is being encouraged to make quickly by the only method which the Germans understand; the merciless application of armed might.