Evening star., 1942-09-16
Nozis Poy Dearly
At StoIingrod
Russion Defense Tactics
Acclaimed by Noted
Commentator

By Maj. George Fielding Eliot.
NEWPORT, r. l.. Sept. 4-The Ger
man assault on Stalingrad is gaining
ground, but it is gaining very slowly.
The Germans are moving forward yards
in the time it took them to move miles
a few days ago, and for every yard they
are paying price in blood and material.
They are advancing by a succession of
violent efforts. To understand the STOP
and-go nature of their progress we must
understand the character of modern
defensive position. This is not line of
Notifications, but broad and deep
series of defended localities, each COM
plete little fortress in itself and capable
of all-around defense. These centers of
resistance are arranged so that their
fires are mutually supporting. The ap-
proacheS to them and the intervals be-
tween them are swept by the interlocking
fire of automatic and anti-tank weapons
and covered by obstacles such as bitches,
barbed wire, foundations and tank traps
or tank barriers of various kinds, all
designed to hold the enemy infantry and
arrnored troops where the fire of the
tenders can reach and destroy them.
All of these plans of interlocking local
fire are co-ordinated with the fire plan
of the supporting artillery, which, on re-
quest, can lay down any sort of concen-
tratlon required of it with a precision
possible only when firing over a thor
oughly known and reconnoitered terrain.
While the enemy finds every route
blocked by obstacles and swept by fire,
the defenders will have prepared in ad-
vance carefully camouf1aged routes not
only for combat patrols of various sorts,
but for counterattacks by local reserves.
Every village will have been made into
a defended locality in which each house
Is fort, its walls strengthened and loop
holed; communications are provided
from house to house by means of
trenches, fields of fire cleared. streets
barricaded and mine, laid where un-
suspecting enemy tanks may advance.
When you read in communique that a
populated center has been captured by
the Germans it means that the Ger
mans have taken such village, house by
house, with bayonet and grenade and
tommy gun against the desperate re-
sistance not only Of the regular Soviet
troops but of the inhabitants, who are
all enrolled in the local militia and have
a certain amount of equipment and
training.
The great virtue of the modern system
of defended localities is that when you
have a deep fortified zone composed of
great numbers of such centers, the
capture of each is an individual opera
ton requiring a great effort, but each
such capture is of strictly limited effort.
An attack on such a fortified zone is
bloody and piecemeal affair. The case
of Stalingrad is particularly difficult
because. apparently, the city has been
converted into a solid block of such
defended localities, resting securely
against the backstop of the great Volga
River. Here are no lines to break
through, no flanks to envelop, no oppor-
tunities for those displays of tactical
genius so dear to the German military
mind.
Here is Just the job of f1inging one
division after another into the bloody
shambles to break off, if it can, little
fragment of the Russian defenses and
then each division, not hurled back by
counterattack, must be withdrawn to
refill its shattered ranks and replace its
losses of equipment, while another, which
has just undergone this process, takes
its place.
How long the Germans can keep this
up depends on how long their supply
system can stand the strain of supply
ing their armies beyond the Don with
100000 tons Of food, ammunition and
other supplies for each and every day
of the great battle.
1t likewise depends on how long Ger
man flesh and blood can stand the strain
of this constant rotation of units on
the endless chain that drags them down
into the fiery hell of Stalingrad and lifts
them out only to plunge them back once
more. Many a general in days gone by
has been nicknamed "the butcher" be-
cause of his cold-blooN~ d e2 oenditure of
the lives of his men With Stalingrad
Marshal Fedor Won Book has established
his right to permanent possession of the
title.
(Copyrisht, 942, New York Tribune Inc)