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Show Washington, D. C. NO MILITARY ERROR Those close up to the war picture are convinced that aside from faulty intelligence, there was no one single military error which brought on the swift and disastrous German breakthrough. break-through. Undoubtedly some intelligence officers of-ficers will be disciplined or broken for failing to evaluate the concentration concentra-tion of German troops opposite the First army about a week beforehand. before-hand. But there were other factors contributing to the reverse, none of which can be laid at the doorstep of a single commander. Basically they are factors which only General Eisenhower and General Marshall themselves could properly evaluate and act on. Here are some of the inside, basic factors involved: I. General Marshall himself ordered the V. S. offensive which began November 8, and which continued with battering-ram tactics until Von Rundstedt turned the tide against us. Marshall, Mar-shall, visiting the battlefront in October, said that during the winter the Germans could mobilize mo-bilize 100 new divisions, s it was wise for us to clear tbem off the west bank of the Rhine before winter closed in. 2. There was and is no disposition to doubt the wisdom of General Marshall's Mar-shall's decision. However, these battering-ram tactics cost men, also tire men out. The American system is to keep divisions on the front line, bringing up fresh men only for replacements. re-placements. Thus the divisions now at the front have been fighting steadily stead-ily since the landing in Normandy last June with, of course, a lot of men coming up as replacements. Germans Rested Troops. 3. This is considered an excellent system and gets results. However, the Germans immediately took out their battle troops after Normandy and sent them to rest behind the lines. The Nazi boys and old men we encountered in the Siegfried line made us think the German army was shot to pieces, but it wasn't. The experienced battle troops, now refreshed after a long rest, are taking tak-ing the offensive against us. 4. The war department itself was responsible for 'a lot of the favorable news which gave the public a general gen-eral feeling of overconfidence. One of its most important indications was that some 800,000 German troops were killed or taken prisoners during the clean-up of France, making mak-ing a sizable hole in the Nazi army. Of these, however, about 400,008 were Russian-Ukrainian labor battalions. bat-talions. Thus the American public had reasons to believe that a large slice of the German army was decimated. deci-mated. 5. Germany's new Royal Tiger tank is superior to ours and we have krown it. It is extremely difficult to knock out of commission. commis-sion. However, we thought the war was going to be over soon and that we could finish up the job with the tanks already on hand of which we had tremendous tremen-dous quantities. More recently, however, we have started building build-ing a big tank which can equal or better the Royal Tiger. Robots Beat Airplanes. 6. Robot bombs and rocket bombs can fly in any weather whereas airplanes air-planes can't. Also they don't require re-quire men. Thus the Germans have been able to bomb us from the air by robots and rockets while because be-cause of bad weather we couldn't bomb them. The Nazis lay out a square of territory in and behind our lines, then systematically pepper pep-per it with rocket bombs. They tan aim them well enough to hit within certain areas. 7. The German system is to attack at-tack suddenly with tremendous force and heavy armor in one small area; they concentrated hundreds of tanks in their first attack. Once they broke through, they spread out. Also the Nazis had little to lose. 8. However, it remains a fact that we had advance Information of great Nazi activity for about a week before the attack came, though apparently we sized it up as preparation for retreat rather than attack. Note Gen. Courtney Hodges, against whose First army the blow was launched, is regarded as an average American general. He was not able to make the grade at West Point, but immediately enlisted in the army and has worked his 'way up. He was a major in command of infantry in the last war, one rank higher than Marshall, who was then a captain, and has commanded infantry in-fantry all his career since, having risen to be chief of infantry shortly before we entered the war. UNDER THE DOME !. The expansion in the tire industry, announced by WPB, inspires no cheers from anyone in the tire industry. in-dustry. Labor is -unhappy because manpower difficulties rule out Akron as the site for the new plants. Akron is a strong union town, and organization organi-zation there is fairly simple. . . . The big rubber companies are unhappy un-happy because they have no assur- ance that the new tire plants will be ripped apart after the war. They : are afraid of new postwar competition. competi-tion. I |