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A Review

By ARTHUR RAYMOND

North African Offensive |s
Preliminary To Second Front

IR POWER, sea power, land power; each has had its protagonist. But now events’
in the Mediterranean are moving inevitably to astage where all three elements will
combine in what may prove to be one of the decisive battles of the war.
Allied North African operations have turned the enemy’s flank on a hemisphere
scale. To an army in the field, this, as a rule, is a disaster of the first magnitude.

What happens is that its con-
centration on one front, the
movement of men and supplies
in the direction of that front,
are suddenly thrown into con-
fusion by the arrival of a hostile
force on its flank. Everything
has to be wheeled round quick-
ly; guns have to be turned, dis-
positions hurriedly changed,
fransport switched over on to
new lines.

The story of war is full of oc-
casions when the confusion thus
created has brought disasiler
and destruction to the victim
ef this manoeuver. Napoleon
was a master of the art of sud-
denly appearing on his enemy's
flank.

But the successful exploita-
tion of this mManoeuver depends
very largely on how quickly the
enemy thus caught can be at-
tacked. He must not be given
Hime to make his new disposi-
tions secure or to recover from
the shock imposed upon his mili-
tary machine, his transport, his
organization of supplies; or to
deliver a counter-blow against
his opponent’s flanking move.

Were then, you have the es-
sence of the military problem
in North Africa. The Axis is in
a more advantageous position
than an army outflanked in the
field. For between Allied forces
in North Africa and the forces
of the enemy in Europe there
lies a very formidable natural
barrier, the Mediterranean Sea,
guarding the latter's southern
flank.

At its widest, between Algiers

and Toulon, it is nearly 500 miles
across,

Valuable time has therefore
had to be conceded to the enemy-~
He has occupied the French
Mediterranean coast; he is rush-
ing planes to Sardinia, Sicily
and Crete; and he has beaten
the Allies in the race for Tunisia.
There he has already put per-
haps aS Many as 70,000 men,
by flying or shipping them
across the comparatively mnar-
row straits that separate Sicily
from the African coast.

His immediate purpose is to
keep separate the converging
Allied armies and so reduce the
effect of the Allies’ great flank-
ing movement, while at the
same time maintaining air con-
trol over the bottleneck through
which supplies to the Highth
Army must go if they are to
take the shortest route. His ul-
timate purpose is to prevent the
Allies reaching a position from
which they can exploit their
manoeuvers by stabbing at the
flank of Europe.

B* GETTING to Tunisia first
he has considerably short-
ened the sea and air route for
his supplies.

From Sicily to Tripoli is over
300 miles and a very hazardous

300 miles.
three of his ships carrying sup-
plies and reinforcements to
Rommel was sunk on the way,
either by our submarines or by
aircraft probably operating
from besieged Malta.

But now the advancing Highth
Army has occupied Tripoli and
its advance forces have already
crossed the Tunisian border
from Libya in close pursuit of
Rommel's decimated Africa
Corps, reduced now to some 70,-
000 men.

Nevertheless, thé enemy still
has access to the shortest route,
from Sicily to Tunisia, only a
bare hundred miles.

The German radio claimed
that by the Allied occupation
of North Africa, the Nazis had
been handed Tunisia as a cer-
tain gift. Certainly, so long as
they retain it, Allied Mediterran-
€an convoys will have to run
the gauntlet of shore-based Axis
aircraft operating, for the first
time, from both sides of the
famous bottleneck.

But if they are thrown out
of Tunisia, the situation is at
once fundamentally transform-
ed.

The bottleneck becomes then
a bridge—into Europe.

In fact, all the symbols are
changed. Two years ago, when
the Alliés lost the aid of the
French fleet, a German military
writer described Italy as the
boot which would kick them out
of the Mediterranean.

HE Allied strategists have

conceived a different image
of Italy. If you look at the map
you will see how Italy lends it-
self to the picture of a fuse
stuck into the under-belly of
German-occupied Europe. The
needle-like promontory of Tun-
isia becomes a poised striker,
pointing at the detonating cap
which is-Sicily.

When it goes off the fuse will
become ignited and the spark
will be carried to the main
charge, which is German-oc-
cupied Europe.

Along a flank of 6,000 miles
there are many points, of course,
at which the Allies may make
use of their sea power in the
traditional way to disembark
an offensive force. But this
route, ‘Tunisia-Sicily-Italy, Is one
which seems marked out by the
necessities of both Allied and
Axis strategy for a battle -that
must have vital results.

It is a battlefield of three di-
mensions, land, sea and air;
and not one of these elements
alone can bring abovt a final
decision. It will be a battle in
which both sides, for the first
time, will nave to employ their
three arms, and in which the
struggle must inevitably be one
for the mastery of the air, land
and sea bases.

One out of every ~

Desa first stage of the struggle,
which has already been suc-
cessfully determined in favor
of the Allies, was for the control
of airfields. The Axis started off
with the advantage.

To its reinforced airfields on
Sardinia, Sicily and Pantelaria.
it has added those of Tunis
and Bizerta. Thus it holds two
strategic triangles, the (first,
Bizerta-Cagliari-Marsala, theo-
retically controls the western
entrance of the Mediterranean
bottleneck; the second, Tunis-
Marsala-Pantelaria, covers the
eastern half of the bottleneck.

If the Axis could maintain air
mastery in these two triangles,
the bottleneck remains a “bottle-
neck for Allied shipping and
Tunisia remains a bridgehead in
Africa for Axis land forces.

Allied forces have, however,
hemmed in the enemy at Tunis
and Bizerta along the coast and
from the south. Their aim is to
deprive the two triangles of
their apexes.

With Tunis, Bizerta and Sfax
in Allied hands, the picture is
completely changed.

Its place is taken by a new
strategic triangle — Sfax-Malta-
Tunis and the straits between
Sicily and Tunisia become a
death-trap for Axis shipping and
aircraft. An Axis bridgehead in
Tunisia becomes untenable.

Infantry airborne or ground
forees cooperate with the air
force in the capture of these
Tunisian airfields, and prepare
for~the occupation of Tunisia
as a possible springboard for
the attack on the Axis southern
flank.

HIS attack can, finally, only

be carried out with the aid
of sea power which, aS soon as
German and Italian troops are
eleared from Africa, acquires a
new east-west mobility.

It opens up the prospect of
complete and absolute recovery
of Allied sea control over the
Mediterranean along its entire
length from east to west. And
the Allies shall haye acquired a
fine new naval base at Bizerta,
halfway between Gibraltar and
Alexandria.

Such a picture of the Mediter-
ranean scene emphasises the fact
that the North African cam-
paign is not the opening of a
second front, but an advan-
tageous preliminary to one.

A large-scale flanking move-
ment has been carried out, and
from now on what we must
watch for is its successful ex-
ploitation.

That possibility is rendered
easier by the fact that the Axis
is still faced on its main land
front by an army—the Russian
army—which is now delivering
such shattering blows along the
entire front from the Black Sea
to the Baltic.

Murmansk Rail
Carries Supplie

REE morning soon after the Aurora Borealis has £
from the sky at Murmansk, Allied convoy port, a
whistle echoes shrilly over the countryside.

It is so regular that the people
of this artic port set their clocks
by it, and it is the final answer
to all Germany attempts to cut
the vital Murmansk rail link with
the Soviet interior.

That whistle comes from the
Murmansk supply train getting
into its stride on the first lap
of the long run to Moscow.

The railway is still working
without a hitch, says a Soviet
war reporter who has just re-
turned from the Far North.

Describing the life of the city,
he writes that when the fog rises
over the bay and full daylight
bas come, the trawlers, bulging,
their holds come nosing through
to the fishing jetties.

More often than not the cap-
tain of the port is waiting to
greet them and congratulate them
on their skill and daring at

German Defenses In —
Occupied Territory

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MOSCOW. |

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bombers. 7
At the first rays of the su
streets, which a few hours kb?
were lit fitfully by shell fle*
are teeming with people. iS
The majority of them ar;
their way to work in one o-
other of the Murmansk fact ”
Enemy planes try to i
through, and innumerable
trails from diving and swoi
planes are traced in the eli
jing air.‘The Red Air For:
well represented, and the
waffe has taken many a
ing over the approaches to
port. :
Outside the city, youths ar
ing trained in modern wea
and in the fields of the subu
to feed Murmansk are tende
State farms the crops that
expert hands.

LONDON.

( CES fearing both Allied invasion of the Conti
and internal crackup in occupied countries, is buil
defenses frantically and resorting to mass arrests in Pol,
Norway and France, according to reports reaching Lon

The Norwegian government-in-
exile reported that Germans were
engaged in “feverish efforts’’ to
strengthen defenses on the Nor-
wegian coast.

Stanislaw Mikolajezyk, deputy
prime minister of Poland, told of
a heavily fortified corridor 80
miles wide running through. the
center of Poland as a possible
future line of defense against the
Russians.

A spokesman for the govern-
ment of Norway described de-
fenses erected at Bergen on the
West Coast.

“At first there were only small
trenches and machine-gun posts
in parks and on street corners,”
he said, “but by the end of Noy-
ember bigger and more perman-
ent defenses nad been construct-
ed.”

The spokesman said that great
concrete tank blocks and block-
houses. wth concrete walls two
feet thick barred approaches to
Bergen's harbor. The harbor at
Sandnes was mined.

Defenses also were established
near the harbor railway station
and barbed-wire barricades were

Fascist Coup In

HEN Paraguay’s president,
Gen. Higinio Morinigo an-
nounced last week that new presi-
dential elections would be held on
Feb. 14, it represented an import-
ant victory for friends of the Unit-
ed Nations in that strategically-
situated country, most notably for
organized labor. Exiled Paraguay-
an labor leaders here expect Gen.
Morinigo’s announcement to.be
followed shortly by the release
of the hundred or more unionists

arrested last month in an elabor-

ate plot by pro-Axis groups to
force postponement of the elec-
tions.

The plot began, letters to Para-
guayan exiles disclose, with an

set up at Larvik on the sc
western coast of Norway.

e ee
IKOLAIJCZYK asserted
open warfare had broken

in Poland, with guerrillas ci
ing with Nazi soldiers and k
ing 14 villages occupied by
Germans. Thousands of {
Were arrested by the Gestap
Warsaw, he said.

The Germans, trying ruthli
to stamp out underground re
ance, were reported to
turned Poland into “Eur
chamber of horrors.’ Execui
by hanging and the firing s:
were said to have been cai
out daily.

All Polish workers whe hel
-build the great German defe
line between eastern and w:
em Poland were Killed in or
te keep the fortifications
eret, Mikolajezyk said.

In the Lublin district of Pol
Germany Elite Guards and
cret police have started to <
out the population of village <
village, he said. Dutch, Belg
Norwegians and Germans |
been imported to replace fF
deported to Germany for fo
labor or sent to concentre
camps.

Paraguay Blocke:

MONTEVIDEO
attempt by Benitez Vera, |
mander of the First Cavalry
vision in Asuncion, to fel
officers expressing themselves
favor of a constitutional res
At Vera’s instigation, many
cers were arrested by Mus]
Villaseca, Chief of Police,
Marcos Fuster, Director of
vestigations, both well know:
their Axis sympathies.

Fifty leaders of the Rail
men were arrested, along
leaders of the Maritime Wor
the Textile Workers, the
munist Party, student orga
tions and the Partido Colc
Geading liberal and pro-d
cratic party). -