South Yorkshire Times, September 23rd 1944
The Fight for the Rhine
Since the last war the fact that Germany “gave in too soon” has often been deplored by those who believe the Hun got off lightly, after ravaging the rest of Europe. This time there has been a general feeling that Germany should not be allowed to contract out of her liabilities so easily that the fight should be carried on to the soil of the Reich; and that the salutary effects of the Allied bombing attack should be reinforced by the tangible presence of invading Allied armies, driving across the German countryside, and establishing themselves by indisputable force and superiority of arms in Berlin itself.
The criminal Nazi Government has embarked on a course which makes the fulfilment of this design inevitable. Hitler’s determination to hold on “till a quarter past twelve” dooms his country to the very fate which most of her enemies consider to represent her just deserts. When the Armistice was announced in 1918 the German frontiers were inviolate; the threat to Germany was not comparable with the menace which she faces now. Internally the German people remain united, even though the unity is based on terrorism and thug rule. So it is that while civilians continue to dig, soldiers continue to die in a forlorn bid to bolster up a doomed regime. And yet, despite the hopelessness of Germany’s position and the inevitability of the most resounding defeat in German history, the Allies are still compelled to go all out in their efforts to make an end. Repatriated prisoners of war have told this week of the unutterable devastation in the cities of the Reich, blasted apart by bombing, the German army is being daily decimated by death and capture, and the people, however abject their mentality, can hardly be gulled much longer by Goebbels’ propaganda. Truly the Nazis are finding that when sorrows come “they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
And yet, in the face of all this, Sunday’s mighty airborne attack became necessary to avert stabilisation of a defensive line which the Nazis were struggling (not without success) to achieve in the West, as they had previously done in the East. The Northern link in the Western chain of defences is the strongest and at the same time the most vulnerable. Holland’s water-courses, some of them mighty rivers, provide natural defence lines in depth. The British struggle along the Albert canal, before even Belgium was left behind, gave an idea of what might be expected if these canals and rivers had to be forced one by one before the last great barrier of the Rhine was reached. Scattering an airborne army across this maze of waterways the Allies prepared the ground for a big leap forward which has brought the lower course of the Rhine into the field of operations. Nazi reaction is as violent as was no doubt expected, for once the Allies are across the Rhine in any strength the route into the heart of Germany will be as wide open as General Patton’s path into the interior of France. That is the extent of the vulnerability of this section of the Reich defences. Farther South the Rhine, with its flanking mountain barriers, constitutes an ideal defence line, and though pressure must be maintained against this line, best hopes of an allied breakthrough must be centered in the northern thrust.
It has been brilliantly begun and if the Rhine line can only be turned here, the military disintegration of Germany cannot long be delayed. Knowing we are at last at their throat, the Nazis can be expected to put up a fanatical resistance, but reserves, not fanaticism, will be needed to win this battle. Hitler must find the men quickly and even if he can do so, which is unlikely, there remains the possibility of further onslaughts. What more can the Allies attempt? That is the nightmare question for the Nazi commanders. To know the answer would be to formulate a shrewd idea how long the war in the West will last.