Mexborough & Swinton Times – Saturday 19 July 1941

Blunted Blitzkrieg

With the fourth week of Hitler’s cynical onslaught on Russia nearly spent the campaign takes on less and less the aspect of the blitzkrieg.

As each phase of the battle has developed the Russian leader appears to have kept a card in hand and so far as trumped most of the German aces. To conceal his discomfiture the Hun is taken refuge in a more gigantic farrago of lying than ever. We can only marvel at the determination and stamina shown by the Red Army in the face of the astronomical losses wished on it by Doctor Goebbels. The German Panzer columns, having to face reality, can cherish no such illusion as those fondly fostered among the people at home by the Reich propaganda machine. They are finding that the Red Army not only gives ground grudgingly but leaves the soil barren and worthless to the invader.

And the Nazis are not left to enjoy even this dead sea fruit in peace. They have been shaken by many audacious counter-attacks of the fierceness and persistence quite out of keeping with their experience of one-way warfare.

How long this state of affairs can last depends on many things which it is not possible to predict, but such intensive strife must bring a weakening somewhere sooner or later. We hope Russian doggedness will prove a match for the mechanised thrust of the arch enemy.

Already precious time of the month and there are no signs of the disintegration which the Germans hoped to achieve with deadly rapidity. Every day of continued resistance drains the Nazi war machine of its lifeblood and brings nearer the looming menace of the Russian winter.

In the West we are smashing away inexorably at the rear of the invading army. Only the vulgarities of the weather can interfere with the terrible blasting which German industry and communication are receiving at the hands of the Royal Air Force. Mr Churchill vividly hinted at the weight of the aerial barrage when he mentioned that in the comparatively short period since large-scale air attack was mounted we have dropped already after the tonnage of bombs in Germany that the Luftwaffe has cast on our cities since the start of the war.

Hitler will retaliate. That is certain. The Prime Minister has warned us and we must steel ourselves to endure savage reprisals. Such attacks, however, will now be qualified by the proven ability of our night defences to give the German bomber squadrons a mauling which may well give them pause. Whenever Hitler switches his planes back to the Western attack we shall have won another round, for this move will be a confession that the blows of the R.A.F. are biting deeper into the body of the Reich than it can long endure.

If that moment comes with the Red Army still to be reckoned with in the East the writing on the wall should be visible even to the Reichfuehrer.