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Show 4 I ,liiliilii:i!iiiijiiiiiiill!,jl), FORWARD MARCH By H. S. Sims, Jr. JlllllllllllllllllHUIIIIillillllllllllllUHIIIIIHIIHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIillllllHIIIIIII CHURCHILL'S "VICTORY MAY COME PERHAPS SOON" GIVES A FAIR SUMMARY OF THE WAR "On every battlefront, all over the world, the armies of Germany and Japan are recoiling," declared declared Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his latest summation of the state of the war before the House of Commons. Never optimistic opti-mistic in public, the British leader lead-er admits that "I no longer feel bound to deny that victory may come perhaps soon." The situation that confronts Germany, as the United Nations close in for the kill, is absolutely desperate from a military point of view. The Russians, in Mr. Churchill's Chur-chill's picturesque phrase, "have done the most work in tearing the guts out of the German army," but the stupendous military triumph tri-umph that began in White Russia less than two months ago is attributable, at-tributable, in part at least, to the American and British efforts in the West Russia Hastens the End . . . It is well to frankly acknowledge acknow-ledge as Mr. Churchill admitted, that "there was no force in the world which could have been called call-ed into being except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German Ger-man army and subject it to such" a terrible slaughter and manhandling manhand-ling as has fallen upon the Ger- mans by the Russian Soviet ar- mies." The record of warfare shows few campaigns that match resistance, resist-ance, much less exceed, the speed and power of the campaign that broke Germany in Eastern Europe. Eu-rope. No blitz of the Nazis has equalled the Russian performance. In 37 days, along an 800-mile front, the Russians gained 90,000 square miles of territory, advanced a maximum distance of 460 miles and toppled German strongholds from the Baltic to the Carpathians in quick succession. German Strategy Collapses . . . The Soviet estimates German losses at 381,000 officers and men killed and 158,400 captured. The accuracy of these figures are borne out by the amazing debacle of German defenses and tlie precipitate pre-cipitate manner in which the enemy ene-my abandoned strong-points. It is emphasized by the plight of German Ger-man soldiers, practically stranded in Finland and the Baltic region. It is evident that no voluntary retreat re-treat permitted the Russians to push 200 Nazi divisions backward until the fighting line stands only a little more than 300 miles from Berlin itself. The map now reveals the collapse col-lapse of German strategy, both in the East and the West. The hope of the Nazis to contain the Anglo-American Anglo-American invasion, while buying time with territory in Russia, has failed and with it the plan to inflict in-flict such prohibitive losses upon the invaders as to secure time with which to turn full strength against the Red army. In the West German losses exceed our own and in the East there is little evidence that Russian losses equal those of the Germans. U. S. Forces Score Break . . . The battle for Normandy has been successfully concluded with the breakthrough of Ameriqan troops along the eastern side of the Normandy line. This fast-moving fast-moving mechanized drive swept the Germans aside and onened ur new avenues of advance to the Allies which are still being exploited. ex-ploited. Where the push will stop is not apparent but that the Nazis are hard-pressed and facing majQr strategical decisions in France is clear. Germans Facing New Peril . . . The purpose of the Allied drive was to win space to deploy superiority super-iority in men and material. So long as the forces were confined to the Normandy peninsula the Germans could put up a resolute defense of a short line where the terrain offered great opportunities opportuni-ties for holding operations. Our campaign has also been seriously hampered by bad weather but there exists the possibility that further advances will force the Germans to abandon large areas of France or risk entrapment of the defending forces. The Italian campaign which moved swiftly toward the Gothic line, has naturally slowed down somewhat in the process of ousting oust-ing the Germans from good fortified forti-fied positions. All across the Italian Ital-ian peninsula the Germans offered stubborn resistance as they attempted at-tempted to make a stand on the new line, running above the cities of Pisa, Florence and Rimini, where there is an exposed coastal shelf inviting attack. |