THE STRUGGLE FOUR WARSAW
SEELY, Lt. Comdr. C. S.
The Struggle For Warsaw By LT. COMDR. C. S. SEELY HITLER apparently has bolstered up his Eastern Front enough to stave off an early collapse. His Konigsberg-Warsavv-Lwow-Black Sea line is holding...
...Our invasion of the Riviera probably was done for political, rather than purely military, reasons, as Hitler will in any case have to abandon all Southern France as soon as we appreciably increase our forces in the Normandy-Brittany area...
...But precisely because of this the Russians certainly will go all-out to take that area...
...The Warsaw area is the most critical—and the most strongly held— part f)i the Eastern Front, and it will be defended at all cost...
...However, until Warsaw falls the Red Army cannot advance very far west of Lwow without considerable risk...
...Eastern Germany Unfortified The whole area between Warsaw and Berlin is generally level country, well suited for motorized warfare...
...The Nazis did not expect to be called upon to defend Eastern Germany, so they did not bother to fortify it...
...It is not at all probable that the Nazis could long hold the Danzig-Lodz-Krakow line, and they certainly could not hold the Oder River line...
...The Russians almost always attack the strongest enemy positions...
...I feel quite safe in saying that there is nothing now between the Konigsberg-Warsaw line and Berlin, or can soon be built there, that can seriously interfere with the advance of the Red Army...
...Also, it is not possible that any considerable number of Nazis can be trapped, in the Lwow area...
...The Riviera Invasion Many Americans, British, and others who formerly dreaded the very thought of a Russian advance westward now have sons, husbands, and other loved ones whose lives may be spared if the Russians do this...
...His Konigsberg-Warsavv-Lwow-Black Sea line is holding fairly well except in the Lwow area...
...The opinions and assertions expressed above are the private ones of the writer and are ywt to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Navy Department or the naval service at large...
...But casualties should be light, and we should soon have all of France, south of the Havre-Paris-Belfort line...
...They felt that world public opinion would not permit a Russian attack on Germany proper, and for a long time they were perfectly right...
...I was in Warsaw, Konigsberg, Berlin, the Polish Corridor, Danzig, and much of the adjacent territory just before the war, and looked over the situation...
...But the situation changed when the "Second Front" was opened...
...There are no appreciable natural or man-made defenses along these lines...
...It is probable, if not certain, that a bad break (not just a bad bend) in the Konigsberg-Warsaw line would finish Hitler...
Vol. 8 • August 1944 • No. 35
