No Action?

"Will the coming of spring bring a great offensive on the Western Front?" Last week, as the first third of the dread month of March slipped away, and the curtain was poised for a fall on the whole northern theatre of the war, this question was asked and answered by the man whose own opinion was more likely than any other outsider's to influence High Commands and War Offices--Captain Basil Henry Liddell Hart.

Just before war broke, Military Expert Liddell Hart published The Defence of Britain, postulating his theorem that in modern warfare, "defense is the best attack." A 3-to-1 superiority in mechanized weapon power is necessary for victory on the attack, and such superiority would be almost impossible to amass in a war between great powers. Many an ardent soldier criticized this thesis. "It was," as its author says, "an offense to their offensive spirit."

Nevertheless when war broke out, and especially when Poland fell and the conflict became a one-front affair, Allied practice followed Liddell Hart theory closely. The dropping of War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha, a faithful disciple of Captain Liddell Hart, was supposed to presage an Allied swing to the offensive. But up until last week the Allied High Command had shown no signs of turning away from Liddell Hart orthodoxy. And last week, in a North American Newspaper Alliance dispatch, the Captain himself showed that nothing in the war's first half-year had changed his mind. His thoughts about a spring offensive:

"It is obvious that General Gamelin can hardly be expected to achieve now, by an offensive, what he judged that it was unwise to attempt when the Polish Army was in being and the forces defending the Westwall -- itself now made deeper -- were far smaller. No military information is needed to arrive at such a conclusion, but only a sense of proportion.

"For the Germans, the prospect for an offensive might seem more promising. But, by any modern process of calculation, their margin of superiority in numbers is not enough to support that promise. So far as can be gauged, only the introduction of some radically new weapon, or extraordinarily bad generalship on the Allies' side, could give them any chance of real success.

Otherwise they would be inviting a heavy repulse -- which might have far-reaching repercussions. . . .

"There remains the question whether the Germans will try a limited coup on the flanks of the main Western Front for the advancement of their strategic position. Neither Belgium nor Switzerland offers a very tempting target. The water lines in the one case, the mountain ranges in the other, form a formidable obstacle to rapid penetration, while Allied reinforcement to either if attacked would be comparatively easy. An incomplete success might bring more complications than advantages to the invader.

"Holland is a more accessible and more vulnerable target, besides being more difficult of reinforcement by the Allies.

And if Germany should be counting on decisive results from an air offensive against England, the establishment of her air bases in Holland would be an important step forward.

"On the other hand, if such an air offensive failed to succeed, and succeed soon, she would have incurred the strategic disadvantage of greatly widening the path and increasing the scope for the Allied air forces which would become an increasing boomerang with every stage of the latter's growth. She would also immediately simplify the British naval blockade."

>Meanwhile German generals kept right on talking and acting as if a huge offensive--leading of course to victory--were all wrapped up and ready for delivery.

Commander in Chief Walther von Brauchitsch toured the Western Front, admonishing his men as he went: "Always look ahead, always go ahead without regard for what is happening to left or right of you." He inspected newly arrived troops near Grenzach, just across the border from Switzerland. Their mustering had been sufficiently alarming to the Swiss General Staff to make the latter call up two new classes (36-and 37-year-olds). At week's end Switzerland had 450,000 men under arms--as many as in November, when the Swiss had their first big here's-where-Hitler-will-strike scare.

General Wilhelm Guderian, commander of German mechanized forces, climaxed a set of articles celebrating the fifth anniversary of Hitler's reintroduction of conscription with a warning. German mechanized troops had crushed Poland, he wrote.

"They shall, in the same ruthless, aggressive spirit, at the proper time and decisive place, strike the deciding blow of the battle and war for the Fatherland."

Extended troop movements at the Swiss and Luxembourg extremities of the front were observed by the Allies, despite a "flying Westwall"-- a stronger than usual barrier of fighter planes kept up continuously by the Germans to prevent observation behind their lines. Simultaneously the German Air Force intensified reconnaissance flights over northern France--always approaching and retiring, it was noticed, by way of Belgium.

All this added up to a suspicion that if Adolf Hitler plans a March or April campaign, it will conform to his traditional "artichoke plan" of conquest--small nations, leaf by little leaf.

>A few noncombatants faced the possibility of a March offensive without perceptible nervousness. Two elderly British lady trippers marched into the American Express office in Paris, last week, and asked for a short, not-too-tiring, conducted tour of the battlefields.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.