Evening star., 1944-08-31
When Our Armies Pour In

mentatorS nave begun to declare,
that the Nazis may be able to con-
tinue fighting desperately long after
Germany has been invaded, the
theory being that they may organize
for guerrilla warfare in the manner
of the Yugoslavs, but on a greatly
magnified scale. There are some
factors in the picture, however, that
argue powerfully to the contrary.
To begin with, the armies of Ger
many are now in the process of
being mangled and destroyed-so
much so that they seem incapable
OF making truly protracted stand
anywhere outside the borders of the
Reich. Chief reasons for this are
that they have been overwhelmingly
attacked by land and air from every
direction, that they are at the bot
tom of the barrel as far as reserves
60, that their lines of supply have
been cut to pieces and that they are
up against a combination of armed
power so immense that they ap-
parently can no longer wage posi-
tional warfare against it but must
simply keep on trying to avoid
entrapment in vast battles of
maneuver.
1t appears reasonable to suppose
in the circumstances that once the
walls of Germany itself are preached
and our Allied armies pour in, the
same thing that has been happen
ing in France and in Eastern Europe
will begin to happen there. That
is to say, the remainder of the
enemys divisions will face the
prospect of being Systematically
chopped up, caught in pockets, cut
off from supplies and punished in
so many other ways that they will
at length be reduced to impotence,
so that the Reich may we'll be given
up to our forces in much the same
way and quite as rapidly as France
is being given up now. AS for guer-
rillas, any analogy between the Ger
mans and the Yugoslavs seems
seriously open to question because,
unlike the Yugoslavs who have had
to face only relatively minor Nazi
detachments and who have been
able to count upon eventual liberia
ton with our help, the Germans will
have no allies anywhere and will
scarcely find it very useful to stage
hit-and-run raids in their occupied
land against the combined might of
Britain, Russia and America.
And over and above these military
considerations, there is the human
factor Despite the bestiality of
elements among them, the German
people are made of ordinary flesh
and blood and they can stand just
so much and no more Since long
before 1889, they have been denying
themselves butter for guns. And
since the start of the war, con-
stantly blockaded, they have seen
their cities blasted to rubble and
millions of their sons lost. In body,
mind and spirit, their fatigue must
by this time be enormous, made all
the more unbearable now that they
know our Allied armies are poised
to invade their own soil and that
most of Europe has been wrested
from them, making imminent the
time when they will be starved not
only for the raw materials of arma-
ments but for food as we'll
It seems to be crediting the
Gestapo and Hitler's SIS troops with
an exaggerated degree of power to
suggest that this home front
honeycombed by millions of hostile
foreign workers-can be rallied be-
hind any protracted struggle. All
things considered, unless the Nazis
suddenly produce secret weapon
of unimagined deadliness or unless
the Allies fall out at the last minute
which is unthinkable-the chances
appear better than even that all
Germany will 60 down at about the
same time that it's military might
receives the coup de grace in
the field.