1940-05-21 — Page 14

PAGE 4. HONGKONG TELEGRAPH

Continuing the remarkable BANSE Revelations

BELOW is further chapter from the German military text-book by Pro- fessor Ewald Banse, who changed Germany's famous Schliffen plan to meet modern conditions.

Events in France and Belgium this week were planned in accordance with the Banse formula, and previous chapters in this absorbing serios have already told why Holland and Belgium have been in- vaded and how the Nazis intend to drive through France.

In the chapter below, Professor Banse tells Ger- 'many what pitfalls sho must avoid if she is not to meet with disaster in the

war.

WHEN one examines the German plan, of compaign in the last war from the point of view of military #20- graphy-it-was-all-settled.

as early as 1898 and not al- tered in the manner here to bo indicated-one feels that

it took no, or too little, ac- count of England,

It reckoned with the French army and oven with England's Ittle expeditionary force, but not with England as the mainstay of a protracted war, the organiser of the blockade, which starved us out, the fountain head of supplies.

This was hardly to be expected- of Schlieffen himself considering the situation in his time, but his successor ought to have been awake to these things.

Our right flank ought not only to have besieged Antwerp-wo had Lorraine, plenty of men in Alsace where they were falling over each other, in fact-but should have made straight for the const und occupied the Belgian and still more the Channel ports, the bases of the British expeditionary force, as-far Boulogne or better stlli Abbe- ville which would have been quite easy to do.

Nobody thought of this, because the purely land minded Germuns Look no decount of the rea and sta power. Indeed, it is a question whether it was not a bad mistake- in military geography to content ouratives with marching through Belgtum

of occupying instead Holland, also, equally a neutral and our kinsman to boot.

In this chapter Professor Banse frankly

admits Germany will lose if Blitzkrieg fails

NAZI CHOICE:

TOTAL WAR

OR DEFEAT.

In addition to that, if destroys an army's mobility, it turns the soldier into a householder, who ends by being unwilling to leave a neighbourhood to which he has grown necustormed, and even deve- loped 'n certain attachment, for fear of exchanging if for a worse. The warrior becomes bourgeois- ised. the active spirit becomes passive, the conqueror turns pro- perty owner.

An immobilised army is forced into lines of thought which have no connection with its real func-

It begins to think of peace rather than war, und finally of Insubordination rather than obedience; or it feels the incom- petence of Its commanders from the fact that operations have come to a standstill.

The disadvantage of this pro- cteding, namely, the fact that it

lion; of Involved a second violation noutrality, was as nothing com- pared with the first violation; but the advantage was incalculable. for it would have pul the whole opposite coast of England within our range; given our fleet

much longer and stronger base, which would certainly have preserved it from inactivity.

no

Finally. It would have made the possibility of an luvasion of the

south-eastern coast of England so immediate that the

with practically English, army, would probably have con- claded a reasonable peace with all speed rather than have their country overrun by German soldiers.

The military occupation of Holland, the home of a race of German traders and peasants thinking entirely in terms of commercial advantare, not mill- dary honour, would have present- ed no difficulties.

Made Mess Of

Pre-War Plan

It is not too much to say that the world wor became in econbinle war, a war of starvation, and lust the herole character of earlier wars, because the Germans failed to grasp the strategic dimificance of the coast of Holland, Beglum and northern France, and made a mess We can of the Schlieffen plan. only hope that more comprehensive thinking will some day lead to wiace decisioned

With Hindenburg and Luden-. dorf at the head, of affairs, post- tional warfare would never have startede jacket

The establishment of the western ...front-meant the probability of u

slow and, Ingering defeat for us," while dangled visions of n gradually approaching victory be-y fore the eyes of the enemy,

v. Trench warfare seans "- the abandonment or recunciation of the war of motion, and therewith of the hope of a ripid, fighting knight;" anch - the, deision becamSE a matter of gradual sitrition.

Trench warfare has a very

· different affect from. warture

орея on the mind of the midior; it gives bim Ume to collect his thoughts wonder about and reflect, make him won

all sorts of thinge and ralses doubts

·i·his mind whicht 'would" nover. have time to grow up in opori ware- «fare with its constant rush of new

events.

For us the worst thing about the entrenched war was that a well- fortißed and well defended front like the French and the English practically impregnable with Was tho offensive weapons then avall.. abic,

no

From this point of view it made difference whether it consisted of strong trenches hastily construct- ed for each occasion or, as we dis- covered to our great surprise at Arras, merely a deep network of craters and machine-gun posis,

Massed Tanks

Best Weapon

A small number of highly trained, resolute and strong nerved men, machine guns and gun emplacements, well hidden from the observation of bal- loons and aeroplanes, could hold up whole armies,

the

Massed tanks were the only things for which this form of defence, was, apparently. Inadequate, as English break through near Com- brai in November 1917 lowed.

The oldest and most elementary

the procedure for dislodging

enemy was prolonged artillery bombard

this did destroy the enemy's ment; position, but it gave him warning and enabled him to bring up sum- clent reserve with which to meet the onslaught and counter attack himself; the most obvious examples are the Somme in 1010.ond Finn- ders in 1017.

It was the results of warfare prolongation of the struggle, moral disintegration, in- feriorily In material, resources,

· hunger, decreas of man power, the growth of revolutióary" meniä- ~ ment--combined with the lack of enterprise which, ostati us to, sli ́tight from, the autumn of 1914 to the spring of 1918 without « ̃kt« tempting an offensive li the west, that finally fost us the War on the western front.

Mistakes An

Sea Warfare

was a grave mistake that Ourselves immediately

“ruined a safe position in-the- Kattegat, from which we could have threatened the left flank of the English battle flect, by strewing mines all over the Belts.

THIS -photograph (Just ra- ceived by air mail from Lon- don) of J hospital in Elverum, Norway, showi what total warfaro, ex- pounded by Professor Banso as Germany's only hope of victory, really means.

exceeded the estimate), for }! completely overlooked national psychology

system

England saw that she was on the brink of the abyss and at once acted in the most energetic man- ner; she ruthlessly requisitioned neutral shipping, and

and even German shipping in neutral harbours, do- effective veloped an increasingly

of defence against the U-boats and had the unique plea- sure, which was at the same time a long deferred victory for hor

of seeing diplomacy,

America Abandon her reserve and declare War on the German Empire, which at once put many tons of German of the shipping at the disposal Ailles.

Even though U-boat warfare con- sidered in Itself was in no sense a fallure, the building of new fon- nage, together with the requlsi-- tioned neutral and German ships, kept pace with the losses, which in 1017 amounted to 9,000,000 tons by mines and submarines.

Our whole conduct of the War on sea once more, alos, proves tho

-to-point-bo-the-similar-be-truth-of-Tirpitz's old contention

haviour of the English naval authorities as an excuse.

England also kept her high seas fleet back; but in the first place, us her entire political and economie existence depended on her navy,

on the always doubtful Issue of a big naval battle: and secondly, the security of her trade did not de- mand that she should use her fleet but merely that the German fleet should be shut up.

Our backwardness thus sulted England's book and was really. playing her game.

The English principle of the "feel In being" was as completely sound for England as it was wrong for

Ua,

The advantageousness of the Eng-there was no point in her risking it Hah coast extends to the smallest detalls: thus its straightness makes it much easier to determine the whereabouts of a wirelessing Ger- man ship by listening in from it than it is to several points on listen in to English ships from the

German const. re-entinut

The English Admiralty was thus always excellently informed regard- ing the position and directions of our warships, quite apart from the fact that the great god Chance, in the guise of a dead signaller from the sunk Magdeburg washed up on the Baltic coast of Russia in Sep- tember 1914, put the secret code and signalling manuals of the German the way of the English, who henceforth deciphered every wire- less message from German naval headquarters and were able to take steps accordingly a terrible blow which showed that fate woo de- Anitely against us: wherever the German fleet showed itself was immediately confronted with supe- rior British-forces-

navy

Unfortunately Germany took the same sort of line on sea as on land, or even a worse one.

Our Admiralty failed to realise this till at least the spring of 1016 and thus deprived us of the service of one of our most effective arms, When it was finally gingered up, It was too late to try to beat the British navy, for by then the Eng- lish had strewn the whole North Sea with mines, increased and im- proved their fleet and, in short, overhauled their whole naval de-

fences.

The crippling of the German fleet was

for: (1) the responsible British blockade, which to curtalled our supplies of food and faw materials that we were unable to meet the increased, demands of the

that the German people had not understood the sea-if it is really permissible to attribute the defects of a small minority in power to the whole nation.

A more resolute and better con- sidered use of the feet against the British if possible hand in hand- with the occupation of Holland and the land

landing of troops in the mouth east of England-before they had learnt the lessons of the War and overhauled their naval policy, was calculated, if not to bring England to her kates, at any rate to make the question of supplies on acute one for her and to render the blockade impossible.

In those circumstances the whole War would have taken a different tum in which heroism would have counted for more than eco- nomics.

Germany's Chief`

Military Mistakes

Our chlef military mistakes

were:-

1. Failure to develop our poten- tilities fully before the War, and even during it, with the result that we could not make good our heavy initial losses quickly enough, and were from the beginning unqual to the enormous demands of a war

* on two fronts.

2.The baneful Influence of the Cabinet on the choice of the commander-in-chief of the army and of the lie of the Marme resulting in the loss of the (van Moltke) and subsequently iri the scheme, fatal to us in our isola- tion, of

of slow war attrition which culminated in the blood-both of Verdun, was persisted in for two (von Falkenhayn) and finally years paralysed the flect

(von In ideas

-1915 year especially was largely

wasted; having lost the initiative in the west, we ought at least to have undertaken

big offensive in the east which would crush Russin's war spirit, so that we might have both hands tree in 1010 for the struggle with England and France.

War; (2) in contrast to that, the The reasons were: (1) the desire

undisturbed continuation of Britian of the Chancellor not to annoy

trade, which supplied England and England, which showed his ignor

France with everything they need. ance of national psychology; for

ed: (3) England's undisturbed com- nothing makes any impression on

munications with her

army In the English except the malled fist;

Fronce (4) the almost complete confidence (2) lack of

In our navy

submission of the neutrals to Eng- In certain responsible naval circles,

lish dictation; (5) Amerita's in- where it was considered no match

the for the British; it was the battle of creasingly open support of

Allies, first by economic then by Jutland on May 31, 1910, which first

diplomatic and finally by military and his suppor showed that Tirpitz

Bupport; and (6) the infection of ters who considered it at least equal

the personnel of our navy with the to the British, were right; (3) in-

Red bacillus as a result of their en very cold trigues which led to the

forced inactivity. of the creator and only shouldering of proper commander of the fleet, High Admiral von Tirpitz; (4) the Idea of emerging from the War with the fleet-infact.---

In consequence of these things the high sens fleet was kept in its har- bours and every avenue of approach to us from the North Sea was closed by mines.

U-boat, on the sen But mine warfare means exactly the same as trench warfare on land, namely, the bank ruptcy of all strategy and the ent of all mobility,

The fact that U-boats-front the beginning showed good results in certain cases does not come into. the sccount; it was an unexpecte odly agreeable extra; and even so; itavast possibilitics,, were, not sunderstood, or at any rate not ex- blotted.

Germany Played a England's Game

The great god Chance gave us one more opportunity in the U-boats, which had proved their usefulness, to the great surprise of everyone, at the very beginning of the War. But even of this op portunity full advantage was not taken by our Admiralty. We ought after at once to have built U-boat

not battleships, Then, too the Admirally's fore- cast for the unrestricted submarine warfare which was finally resolved

1017, under.. upon in February pressure from Hindenbrug and Ludendroff at G.HQ., was farcical. This forecast drawn up on De- cember 12, 1916, reckoned that England would give in after a mere five months of unrestricted U-boat warfare, sinking 600,000 tons per month, directed against her mer- would be frightened off coming to England, Conailored from the point of "view of military molence li van mede

gross misolgulation to elle of the fact that the mlaklari grostly)

Medline of neutral

In Judging these appalling. mistakes. It is not permissible

consequence of Faz

-Our fallure to occupy Hol land and Invade the south-east cost of England, at the same time making an aggressive use of the high soaa fleet and building up our U-bost 'flesË,

4The fact that no attempt was made to raise the English blockade and so shorten the War,

5-Allowing Allled troops to re- main at Salonika, when they ought to have been driven off the Bat- kans in 1018-16; they were repón- sible for the defection of Bulgaria in Autumn-Hungary, which,

1018 and to some ex-

Sol·

unrevered.

warfare too late and on a basis- of totally inadequate exlimalis, vind?Leaving too many German"

troops a million) in Russia duri!! Ing the 1918 jottens verin. France?

Tuesday, MAY 21, 1940.

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and not using them, and Austro- Hungarians one too, on the west- ern front (the latter it possible

as labour battalions). 0-Under estimation of tanks, although they have proved thele value at Cambrai in 1917.

only

BANKS

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In the latter part of the War. let us admit this frankly the Pald-up Caply of Proprietors 22,000,000

fear in the minds of many of our soldiers that they would be killed at the last moment and not live dawn of to see the longed-for

meant the peace; this, however, beginning of the break up of tho army, which was completed by the polson of Marxism.

10-The absence of a single supreme-comanand, vested in Ger- tho German, man G.H.Q., over Austro-Hungarian, Turkish and Bulgarian armies, which made it impossible to bring the whole forces, of the Central Powers into simultaneous action, thus reducing their striking power.

achi

The obstacle here, was the Aus trian commander-in-chief, Conrad, and

Austro-Hungarian jealousy Allles finally generally. (The achieved the ideal of a united com mand over all operations against Germany on April 3, 1918; this, by materially increasing the enemy's striking power, was a turning point in the War).

Reserve Liability Reserve Fund .....

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