Evening star., 1942-08-23
Nazis Seen Gaining
More Than Allies in
Second Front De|ay
Winter Lu|I to Speed Arm.
Output, Permit Shift Of
Divisions to West
By LELAND STOWE,


Daily News.
MOSCOW, Aug. 22.-Will The
British and American forces be II
relatively much stronger position
to invade Western Europe mex
spring than they would be at any
time IN the next three weeks?
This is a fair question. Certainly
a correspondent in any overseas
war zone has available only a small
fraction of the information which
the general staffs in Washington
and London possess. But there are
some very important facts about
the NaZi war machine which in
evitably reveal themselves most
clearly to those who are inside the
Soviet Union and closer to where
Eltlers war machine is dealing its
blows.
How did the Nazi general staff
prepare their Don River-North
Caucasus offensive? How have they
fought and how are they fighting it?
II there is no second front this
autumn what kind of strength can
we expect Hitler to marshal to
stymie a British-American expe-
dictionary force next spring?
Winter Production Counts.
The answer to the first question
is this: 1t took the war industries
of Germany, Occupied France, Bel
gium, Czechoslovakia and Italy
approximately six months to pro-
duce and pile up huge reserves of
tanks and guns for the present
Nazi drive for the lower Volga and
Baku. From last November until
early May these sinews of mech
anized warfare were poured out
from thousands of factores and
transported across Poland and RL-
mania into the Ukraine.
Only these five or six months
of ncsapped winter production have
enabled the Nazi offensive to keep
rolling at its amazing uninterrupted
tempo ever since early June. Nazi
divisions have penetrated many
hundreds of miles into the depths
of the Don steppes and deep down
into the Caucasus. Nevertheless.
their armored motorized divisions
keep receiving fresh tanks, armored
cars, trucks, guns and mortars
across one of the most extended
supply lines ever recorded in mill
tary history.
All Reserves Massed.
AS a feat in organization and ef-
flclency this is an extraordinary &C
comphshment. Without it, the Ger
mans southern armies could never
have driven, since June %, to with
in few score miles of the Volga
and far in the southeast of Kuban.
But. first of all, the long winter lull
and the Nazis' tremendous piling up
of vast reserves in war materials all
through that period made possible
Hitler's great Baku-or- bust offensive
II Hitler gains his most important
1912 objectives, Stalingrad and Baku.
his piled-up winter reserves will be
one Of the chief factors in the cost
liest and most dangerous victory the
Nazis have ever won. F
Now as to how the German war
machine is fighting this South Rus
sian offensive. The keynote of the
entire campaign has been a combi-
ration OF massing unprecedented re-
serves in manpower, tanks, guns,
planes and of the age-old German
military practice of fighting only on
one front at time. All through
this summer the Nazis have not
struck or attempted to strike a
single major blow anywhere north
OF the pivotal point of Voronezh, 300
miles south of Moscow.
They have concentrated absolutely
everything on the southern front.
They have brought in scores of Ru-
manian, Italian and Hungarian di-
visions. They have transferred a
score or more divisions from France
Belgium, Holland, plus large num-
bers of garrisons and troops from
Germany itself.
Hitler Fights on One Front.
Just as at one stage the Germans
threw everything they could pos
sibly spare into Poland, at another
stage into Norway, at another into
the Low Countries and Flanders, at
still another into Yugoslavia and
Greece, so this summer an over
whelming concentration of the Nazis
and Axis satellites military power
has been thrown into the North
Caucasus offensive. This is the only
way the Germans believe in fight
ing-with the greatest possible local
superiority on single front.
With these facts in mind, what
can any military observer expect
the Nazis' high command to do to
Illustrate British American second
front if it is delayed until next
spring? Obviously and inevitably
Germany's strategy will follow the
same pattern which has won the
Nazis such great successes in South
ern Russia this year. If there is no
Allied invasion in Western Europe
within a very few weeks, then Hit
Ter will seek to stabilize all his Rus
sian fronts from October on.
Stalemate in Russia?
He will then bend all his efforts
toward keeping the Russian war
theaters in stalemate, toward hold
ing the Soviet troops pinned behind
the Volga toward exploiting the oil
fields of Maikop and probably OF
Grozny-even should his divisions
still be unable to reach Baku. AnC
above all Hitler's war industries
will be concentrated on building ul
gigantic reserves to use against the
British and Americans in the West
next spring.
Until the present moment the
Nazis have been using about 27 ar
mored divisions in the titanic bat