South Yorkshire Times, October 7th 1944
A Winter Campaign?
With Christmas less than three months away and the Germans still hanging on grimly to their frontier lines, hopes of an end to the war in Europe this year have received a set-back. There is about a month of good campaigning weather left (in theory) before wintry conditions put a check on mechanised operations. In practice, however, the bad weather has already made its presence felt. It is not putting the effect of the weather too high to suggest that it has saved Germany – for the time being at any rate. Daring as the allied airborne attack was, it needed an extra broad smile from fortune to give anything, like a guarantee of complete success. As it was, rain and cloud did more for the Nazis than the Luftwaffe has been able to do for years. They interfered with the supplying of the gallant First Airborne Division by air and delayed its relief by land.
For most of the time after the troops had been dropped, visibility was too bad to put down supplies or reinforcements accurately, or to provide close air support to make good the artillery deficiencies inherent in an airborne attack. Also, the rain turned the Dutch countryside into a quagmire which frustrated the good intentions of our tank squadrons. The marvel was that in the face of so much evil luck this ambitious enterprise went so near to registering complete success. As it is, a valuable salient has been driven into the German lines, the front on which they are actively engaged has been extended another fifty miles northward and the Allied armies are well within striking distance of a particularly tender spot in the defences of the Reich. These are solid gains, but on the other hand while the British have deployed menacingly near the German frontier, they are still without direct coast to front line communications.
The Nazis are clinging to the ports, though many of these have been outflanked by General Dempsey’s advance, just as they did when the Allies raced through France. We can already see what the effect of this strategy is likely to be. In France it provided the Nazis with just that breathing space they required to pull themselves together and turn to stand on the threshold of Germany. Only after sieges in detail have the Channel ports been freed, and still there remains the problem of making them usable after the Germans; systematic demolitions.
As in the West, so also in the East and South, the defeated Nazis have refused to allow themselves to be completely stampeded. They have temporarily halted the main Russian threat pointing towards Berlin, and in Italy have not conceded a yard of ground without the bloodiest and bitterest defensive fighting. From the economic point of view the perimeter of the Fortress of Europe has now become so restricted that the Reich cannot hope to keep the field longer than a term to be reckoned in months. The Romanian oil supplies are lost, the looted food supplies from the conquered countries are at an end, and Germany’s own productive centres, both of food and war materials, are mostly short-range bombing targets. Despite this hopeless outlook all the evidence points to a Nazi effort to prolong the war to the last possible minute. Though even by their desperate reckoning that can hardly be beyond next year. But their plight is such that they find it no longer profitable to peer too far ahead. For the time being their efforts seem to be concentrated on keeping their end up long enough to force a winter campaign. The next few weeks will show whether their hopes are to be realised for our Generals are not the men to accept the inevitably of a delayed victory. They are out to finish off the Nazis this year and will mount at least one more all-out effort before General Winter takes command of the conflict.