The Charlotte News

Tuesday, July 28, 1942

FOUR EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports from the North African desert that Rommel was standing now definitely on the defensive, pushed back 75 to 80 miles from Alexandria by the British Eighth Army and foundering for want of supplies.

To the north, the Russians admitted having to evacuate Rostov, key to the Caucasus. The drive was now on by the Wehrmacht to secure Stalingrad. While the Nazis remained 600 miles north and over the Caucasus Mountains from the main oil fields of the region in the vicinity of Baku on the Caspian Sea, things were not looking good for the Russians.

On the editorial page, Colonel Frederick Palmer provides a synopsis of the previous year's strategy by Hitler in Russia: surround and cut off both Leningrad in the north and Moscow in the center and Rostov in the south, and the Russian defenses would crumble. But then came the early winter and the long supply lines of the Wehrmacht being stretched too thin, retreat was the only option open.

As to Rostov, the Germans the previous year had been without Sevastopol and Kerch, and thus exposed to flanking maneuvers by the Russians had they moved further south toward Baku.

Now, with both Sevastopol and Kerch in the Nazi camp, that was no longer a problem. Neither was the long supply line as the 2,000 mile front had been dramatically reduced to just the area between Voronezh and Rostov. The question still remained, however, whether Marshal Simeon Timoshenko's forces in the Causcasus, back against the wall, could now hold out long enough for the winter weather again to spread forth its icy hand in salvation to freeze out the German troops and force retreat once again.

What of Stalingrad? Could it hold?

The clipped quote of the day: "Thy modesty's a candle in thy merit." --Henry Fielding

Unfortunately, yesterday's was not only clipped from our higher resolution version but from our old version as well.