South Yorkshire Times, August 26th 1944
Forcing the Pace
Without much specific information being available about the new Allied attack in the South of France it is still obvious that it has started exceptionally well. The initial opposition seems to have been weak, which is scarcely surprising when we remember the length of coastline which Germany has to man, and the serious preoccupation of the Nazi armies in the North.
However, experience of these landings has taught us that first impressions are not always a true guide of what is to follow. There must inevitably be a period of consolidation when a beachhead has been gained and much depends on the preparations the enemy are able to make against the time when the invading forces seek to break out of the coastal areas they have captured. In this instance the Germans are probably not in any shape to launch the massive counter attack which is the best and most obvious reply to amphibious invasion. They never succeeded in mounting a worthwhile counter attack in Normandy and after the punishment they have undergone during the last two and a half months it is unlikely that they will be able to improve on this performance.
If they offer serious opposition (and so far, they have always made a point of doing this wherever they have been attacked) their best hopes seem to lie in delaying actions designed to block an Allied advance up the Rhone valley, a defensive line based on the narrow coastal route from the Riviera into Northern Italy, and perhaps (though this is less likely) some show of opposition to any move towards the West coast and the Biscay ports. In the face of the heavy losses they are bound to have suffered by the defeat of their Seventh Army in the North the prospects of the Nazis holding the South for long are remote, but some four hundred miles still separate the Allied armies and this distance can no more by brushed aide than can the efficient spoiling tactics of the well-trained Germany army.
This question of space cuts both ways however. It may seem that the Allies have chosen a spot very remote from the heart of the Reich to start the fourth front, but the position is not without the advantages in the circumstances in which Hitler now finds himself. If the Fuehrer is banking on selling space to spin out the war and eat out the patience and endurance of the United Nations, he cannot effect these sales without financing the transaction from capital of a sort which in the Reich is in desperately short supply – manpower.
If in addition to his great losses on the Russian front Hitler is now going to throw away men in the West on the scale of the present Normandy defeat he is competing in a market in which he cannot fail to be the loser. His best strategy is clearly to draw in his decimated armies closer to the frontiers of Germany to defence lines where they will be easier to supply and where their numbers need to be less thinly spread. Every time he postpones withdrawal of his troops on one of the four fronts, he has now to sustain he leaves a vulnerable limb which is remorselessly hacked off by his adversaries.
The body of the Reich cannot stand these frequent amputations indefinitely. Now the world can see the broad outlines of the concentric attack which doubtless formed the core of the grand strategy formulated by the United Nations leaders at Teheran. And here still remains the possibility of a Balkan front, opened up either by a fresh Red Army drive or by British forces from the Middle east or both, to probe the tender place created by Tito’s intrepid forces. Pressure is being piled on at a rate which should soon show what Germany is made of.