THE BATTLE OF BERLIN
By STRATEGICUS
THE battle of Berlin has matured very swiftly. In about ten days a third of the capital has been occupied, and there is little reason to doubt that the rest will be cleared quickly. The one surprising factor in the whole situation is the .secrecy with which the Russians concealed their movements. It was only partly justified by the needs of security, and it has allowed the German bombast about a prolonged resistance to have a long rtin. It has left information about the actual movements by which the Russians are accomplishing the capture of the city incomplete and vague. It seems that already Berlin is almost encircled ; and in such circum- stances the end should not be far off.
What then remains? If we realise that, though the end is in sight, there is still much heavy. fighting to do and it is this and not proclamations that will decide the issue, we can regard the question of "pockets" more dispassionately. One lesson at least the war has pressed home already. It is doubtful if anyone has been un- affected by the German propaganda. It is, indeed, very natural that we should take seriously Hitler's declared intention to drag on the war until the whole of Europe is engulfed in a common ruin. We do well to bear this in mind. When we have digested the appalling lessons of the prison camps, which show at least a complete in- • sensibility to human values on the part of the Nazis, it would be sheer folly to ignore the p6tentialities of the latter for causing trouble to the very end.
• General Bedell Smith, in a brilliant survey of the recent phase of the war, said all that is necessary about the course that lies ahead. But he said something about the way in which the Germans have been repeatedly outwitted ; and this, though well known, adds a necessary corrective. Much more might be said usefully ; for the last lap of this long and bitter struggle cannot fail to be the hardest, if only for the reason that it is the last. It comes when everyone is wearied of a war that has lasted so many years, that nas seen so many vicissitudes and has cast up a horror- which scarcely anyone this side of the Channel would have thought passible. Even now that the veritable orgy of sadism has been revealed, the very revela- tion seems unreal ; 'and the tendency is to close one's eyes to it or attempt to explain it away. Is it, therefore, unreasonable that, with the end in sight, one shou'd become impatient of the upsurge of the purely irrational in a resistance that can serve no purpose?
Nevertheless, it is the facts which should concern us ; and the first that shoftld be grasped is one which- concerns the origin of the pockets." It is not the Germans who are creating these pockets, it is the Allies'. The fragmentation thrusts which Eisenhower has been developing across Germany have that for their natural effect. It does not enjoy even the merit of novelty. It differs only in the technique employed, and in degree, from what any military com- mander,' with the power, inevitably seeks to do ; and its success is conditional on the impotence of the opponent. Does anyone think the Germans wou'd allow their armies to be cut up into fragments if they could help it? Is there any German commander who would Like refuge behind even the most skilfully contrived fortifications if he could stand in the field and give battle with any chance of success? The Maginot Line was produced by the Maginot mind, and, produced, it emphasised that mental outlook. What is it the Germans postulated for victory ; what is it that every commander demands as the best that fortune, can give him? It is simply the chance to take his enemies in detail, whether behind walls or in the open.
Who was it that created the Ruhr pocket? It was not the Germans. Even when Eisenhower flung a cincture about the area the Germans would have done almost anything to avoid it, as they did all in their power to escape from it. If the Germans think there is any particular virtue in pockets, they show a strange reluctance to embrace it. It was a particularly brilliant series of operations that shut the Germans up in this pocket ; and there cannot be many areas that are so well designed to make a pocket defensible. It is
a built-up area of considerable extent ; and it was as well known to the German Army as any area in the Reich. Yet in less than three weeks it was liquidated. It was even reduced by this same frag- mentation thrusting that has been applied to the German armies across Germany. It was held by a larger force than could be con- centrated in many pockets ; and it yielded more than 300,000 prisoners. If we believed in the indefinite resistance of pockets, or towns, or selected areas, has not the Ruhr pocket planted the seeds of doubt in our minds?
When the Ruhr pocket collapsed there was some tendency to imagine that the course of this battle might have gone very differ- ently if the Ruhr had been a mountainous area. Mountains have, indeed, been burned into our minds by experiences in Italy. Despite its flashes of brilliance, the Italian campaign has been disappointing because of the mountains, which offer such admirable defensive country. This has to be admitted ; and if we had studied the apparently interminable campaign against the small knot centring in Cassino, instead of. a momentary discouragement from reading the day-to-day reports we should have gathered an impression that would fill us with boundless pessimism today. Yet it is the fact that, recently, the Germans had such a pocket in the Hartz moun- tains, and that, too, has gone after yielding 56,000 prisoners.
Excuses can be found for this poor showing, even if excuses for the Ruhr are more difficult. It may he urged that when pockets have been closely reconnoitred, carefully provisioned and skilfully organised, the resistance will be prolonged indefinitely. There is no reason to think so. Every sort of pocket which the Germans threaten to occupy today has been seen in the war ; and none has resisted attack Mr any undue length of time. All of them have been taken by the different armies in their stride. The Crimea has been conquered and reconquered, Sevastopol taken and retaken ; and still the practice has continued of attempting to create " pockets " because they produce such uniformly disastrous results for the defenders. The Russians created such a pocket at Korsun in the Ukraine. It resisted for a fortnight, although armies outside were trying to break in to relieve the defence and the defenders were attempting to break out. Stalingrad was a great pocket ; and it ended as they all do.
It cannot be urged that this belongs to a 'past phase of military practice. The French have just creased another pocket in the Black Forest. They are not blamed, but praised, for so doing ; because everyone knows that the pocket is a trap. Even moun- tainous, wooded pockets are traps ; and the modern technique of attack has many methods of reducing them in whatever circum- stances they are found. What is it we hope most from the Italian offensive? It is simply that General Clark's group of armies will be able to seal up the very skilled German divisions in a "pocket." There is some reason to doubt whether in fact they will. If these German divisions can contrive it, they will not be caught in Italy, because, presumably, their orders are to fall back and either provide the gate-porters of the Redoubt or enter it as part, if not the bulk, of the garrison.
So far the threat of being cooped up in a pocket has been enough to impel the German commanders in Italy to make all speed away from the armies deployed to create it. Hitler has said that Berlin and Prague will save Europe from Bolshevism ; and everyone takes that to mean a determined stand. But these two cases are scarcely comparable. If in about ten days the Russians can break through the impressive defences on the Oder and the Neisse against troops fully equipped and rested, and can then pene- trate the heart of Berlin, the prognosis does not seem very favour- able for Prague. Berlin in itself means very little. It is the reserve price that Hitler has set upon it that gives it value. He and Goebbels have made it so convincingly a test case that its fall must have a tremendous moral effect. Its military effect will depend largely upon how its falls and what forces the Russians deploy to clear up
northern Germany. Whether they can cut off the retreating Germans from Denmark is one of the most important questions which await answer in the next few days. But Prague is, or should be, a different and a more difficult problem. The two Russian Marshals have made magnificent headway across Hungary and Czechoslovakia ; but they have not yet cut the mountain knot that may make the defence easier. Even the Moravian Gate has not as yet been penetrated.
The end is not yet. Our own troops particularly have some diffi- cult battles to fight. In Holland on the present showing a heart- breaking struggle seems likely to develop, with the gage not so much a clear, if belated, victory as a success won by reducing an ally's country to ruin. But we have not seen the limits of our operational skill ; and it is difficult to imagine how a numerically inferior German force could capture the country in 1940 intact if we cannot secure victory before the Germans have reduced it to a marsh. All of these problems will assume a different shape when it is only pockets that the Allies have to reduce. At present there are numbers of organised units in the field ; and we have to wait until Russia applies to them the fragmentation process which the Allies used against the armies which confronted them in the west.
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