THE PEOPLE Page Five ober 21, 1942 Europe Waits ODAY the Germans are concentrating their main attention and efforts on the Soviet-German front in the Stalingrad ja and in the North Caucasus. This ensures the success of ive Allied operations in the -Atlantic Ocean washing the 1942. d Then the wide Russian offen- re on the eastern front with- ew large forces of the German my from the western front id Verdun. Today the situa- tn is just the opposite. The erman command is still avail- g itself of the opportunity to age war On one front, with- ‘awing troops and aircraft ith impunity from the western tores of Europe and from orth Africa. eSertheless, the defenders of ingrad have stood up to the aught of the German war ma- .¢ and have already annihilated iy Nazi divisions. Hitler has 1 compelled to look for fresh ‘rves. : ne first step in this direction has 3 to bring additional pressure Rumania. He is seizing Poles Frenchmen. He is taking the ch, whom he is calling Germans forcibly conscripting them into army. Recently the Germans ounced compulsory registration the population of Alsace-Lor- e, hoping to find reinforcements meg them for the German army. itler decided to do the same in emburg. But the population of tiny country found the strength courage to refuse to comply 2 the orders of the fascist dic- The political significance of events in Luxemburg is far- hing and is linked above all 1 what is taking place in France. e iE French people are in a state of tense, but by no means sive, expectation. Recently the iy government decided to do er another favor. Realizing the elessness of resisting the British ips, Madagascar’s Governor-Gen- had addressed a proposal for armistice to the British. Mada- tars population supported the lative of its Governor-Gtneral. owever, negotiations were in- upted, undoubtedly as a result pressure brought to bear by ay. Simultaneously an announ- ent was made that the Petain- al government was negotiating 1 Hitler to allow the Germans to Dakar. Unquestionably the is’ plans to capture Dakar are etly linked with the increased vities of the fascist agents in ch America. re Hitler’s pressure on the Eur- ean peoples is increasing eir resistance. The French ople, like all the peoples of irepe, are suffering terribly der Hitler’s ‘New Order and e ready for struggle. Inspired ' the example of the Hed my they are at their post, iting for support from the lies across the Channel. = eS res of Africa and western Europe. A British military writer recently listed more than one and alf dozen theatres of war where the British army is allegedly sing operations and considered this as an argument pre- ding the need for opening the s econd front in Europe still the attention of the world is centered on events de- oping in the principal, decisive theater—the Soviet-German nt—and particularly on the titanic struggle in the Stalin- id area. Nobody beyond the confines of the USSR, and least all the German command, ever thought that the German ay would encounter such unexampled resistance at Stalin- The daily press has frequently compared the Stalingrad ‘rations with Verdun. But the scale of the fighting at Stalin- d, the resistance of the Red Army in face of the enemy’s icentrated weight of material, the losses sustained by the smans, exceed anything experienced at Verdun. MOSCOW. N ADMTRAL of 36, Vice-Admir- al Golovko, today heads the Soviet naval forces engaged in the battle of the Gulf Stream — the battle to hold the vital lifeline con- necting the Soviet North with the outside world, For fifteen months the Germans have been trying to gain control over the northern stretches of this most unique stream in the world that finds its beginning somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico and dissipates itself in the boundless expanses of theh Arctic waters. Wothing has come of these at- tempts to sever the communication lines of Russia, Great Britain and the United States that converge here. The fascists made a bid for Mur- mansk by land, but the tens of thousands of men and officers they lost in the hills of the far north brought them no nearer their goal. They bombed the city from the air but without the desired results. They. tried to blockade Archangel but failed. They sent large surface and an underwater fleet and size- able air forces but fell short of the mark. They made an attempt to take Sredny and Rybachi penin- sulas, these springboards on the way to Kola Bay, in their stride but the results were nil and the cost tre- mendous. During these fifteen months of bitter struggle the submarines alone of Admiral Golovko’s northern fleet sent more than 700,000 tons of ship- ping to the sea bottom. Golovko characterizes modern naval warfare as a war for commu- nication lines, hence the tremendous role of the underwater fleet and air force. Comparing submarine operations in the Barents Sea during this war with the first world war, he told me that the total war of today is dis- tinguished by the absolutely un- bridled operations of the enemy. “Then,” he sald, “a submarine approached a transport vessel and established whether it was carrying War supplies or not before sinking it. The first submarines appeared in the north in 1916. The subma- rines in those days were far from perfect, their radius of action was short and the conditions of the 36- Year-Old Soviet Admiral ~ Guards Vital A\rctic Sea Lanes northern naval theater very hard on them, “For a modern submarine, how- ever, these natural conditions are no serious obstacle.” The worst obstacle, he said, were mines which he described as being “as numerous as peas in pea soup’’. In the last war there were few Russian sumarines in the Barents Sea, Admiral Golovko stated, but then the Germans were squeezed within the Cuxhaven, Wilhelms- haven and Heligoland triangle. In this war, while the Soviet underseas fleet is inflicting heavier losses on the enemy than it has been able to inflict on the Soviet fleet, the Germans have gained a tremen- dous strategical advantage by ob- taining Norwegian bases. Qn the other hand, he pointed out, the British are regularly strik- ing from the air at German indus- try which is building submarines. “Admiral Schenk, commander of the German forces in -the north, could tell you very well what our fleet is like now. He knows how our submarines operate,” were his words in closing the interview. : ——— e e 3 Barents Sea The Soviets’ Northern Supply Line anne : E a Se Sr RT = = z ey 3 aff eres MURMANSK a = = BR CRUSSIA ¢ P EIRKENES =| = over these routes. Drive across = = Gla : H ou 43 Norway would protect them, = oN ls 4 s = establish common U._ S.-Brit- = =o De neadard “. KANDALAKSH&: ze =| ish-Russian front. <: A A D = = eS are in north where coastline |- te pea = NARVIK{ | is hard to guard and terrain ARCHANGEL FE = EOF: ideal for infiltration tactics. [> | yee = iene Se eo ee = Arctic==Circle = : = BADAN, PSS U. S. S. R. ICELAND = ee , = GUARDED BY | G3 SB SSIS TS == 3 J] BLOCKHOUSES |. == ke HY nex 5 ae —— = <= ae ETROZAVODSE land would play vital in-~ zs See ree swe? | Se vasion role. = aN Z aK RISTIANS ee ti Faeroe SS ALESUND, ‘ 4 it SSS - LENINGRAD E 2 SS ss ee. STRDLAND “GUNS FROM MAGINOT LINE: Saintes St E =e = Bess used in building strong deferses 2D ° Mos = from Trondheim south. 2 Cows i= Shetland: Sans eas e A © AR of Ameri- Sale == ; STOCKH STARAYA cans, Canadians, British could : = BERGEN AY “ OSLO ji S © RUSSA strike from Britain and North oO “eat {op $e Ireland. >» Pe - Bare Se TAVAN SA SVT Fy . ——F i SF ow te g f ‘ VITEBSE Atlantic 53 ces Sa EG o = MAND Al, GOTEBORG ? “: ABERDEEN: sy Se * LITHUANIA # ~~ ULS.S.R. S: COTLAND See of = A ~~~ } a= orth Sea ‘ = rs) = @ MIN: Ocean = = COPENHAGEN 4d MALMO=Se Nt aa INBURGH ay ey a 200 z ==5 5 _ et SMILES BS =e 18 = NEWCASTLE RIEL Se IMPORTANT = HEAVY GUN - HELGOLAND==3_ - oF © NAVAL EMPLAGEMENTS LIVERPOOL: ee 7h = : SSS -LMSHA BREMERHAVEN —— 2 LIGHT, ENGLAND Seen YEN 5 == KNOWN ae COAST « = 4 GERMANY peRin MINE FIELDS DEFENSES Says Egypt Cannot Become Second Front “FAHE Egyptian front can under no circumstances draw off the main forces of the opposing sides and become the decisive arena of the destruction of German-Italian fascism. This task can be solved on the Huropean theatre of war.” This is the conclusion drawn by Colonel Tolochenoy in a review of the war in Africa published in the Soviet newspaper (Red Star. “Development of large scale op- erations in the central and southern areas of Libya and Egypt is im- possible in practice due to the im- passable and uninhabited terrain. , The width of the front there is de- ,termined by the width of the lit- toral populated zone. “When General Rommel] launched his offensive on May 27 along the line passing to the west of E] Ga- zala and further south he undoubt- edly foresaw a limited scale. In the beginning of July British troops checked General Rommel’s German and Italian units west of El Ala- mein and since then there has been “Tt is clear that the situation that arose in the course of the fighting cannot remain as it is for long. In June the Axis troops covered more than 600 kilometres, thus stretching their communications exceedingly. Despite their fighting operations, the German and Italian troops have been compelled to remain in a zone of barren desert with only an in- considerable distance separating them from the fertile Nile valley. “Under these circumstances, it is obvious that Rommel cannot re- main satisfied with the present Situation, nor for that matter can the British command. It must not be forgotten that the British lost a considerable part of the coast whose ports play an important role in the struggle for the Mediterranean. “Rommel realizes the Epyptian- a lull on the Egyptian front. Libyan theatre plays a very insig- nificant role in the general course of the world war. “All the attention of the German high command is centered on the Soviet-German front. Hence Rom- mel cannot expect any substantial reinforcements. Just the contrary; in view of the large number of planes being dispatched to the Soviet-German front he has been compelled to weaken still further his small air force. “Despite the vast area of Libya and the Egyptian theatre, its oper- ative scale is small. Its poorly de- veloped network of roads, absence of local resources and difficulties in supplying troops—all these spe- cific features of the given theatre preclude the possibility of large scale operations.”