Download translation of g.4, ostfront

TRANSLATION OF G.4, OSTFRONT
(OBVERSE)
[Four maps giving the position of the Southern Russian front
between November 1942 to 1st February 1943]
Captions:
1. 30th November 1942. The 6th Army has been surrounded at Stalingrad. The 4th Panzer Army
in vain attempts to break the Russian ring. On the upper and middle Don and in the central
Caucasus Russian armies are being held in readiness for an offensive.
2. 10th January 1943. The ring around the 6th Army has been tightened. The beaten 4th Panzer
Army is flooding back towards Rostov. The front on the middle Don has been broken. The 17th
Army in the Caucasus is in full retreat hotly pursued by the Russians.
3. 31st January 1943. The entire German Southern front has collapsed. The 6th Army has been
destroyed. The 8th Italian and 2nd Hungarian Armies are being annihilated. The German army
West of Voronesh is encircled and the 17th Army and the 1st Panzer Army are being pushed
towards the Sea of Azov. The lines of retreat for the defenders of Rostov are threatened.
4. Blue shows the German front on the 1st July 1942. Red the Russian front on the 19th
November 1942. Red tint the territory recaptured by the Russians up to 31st January 1943. Inside
this territory the Germans and their allies have lost over 500,000 dead, over 200,000 prisoners,
more than 7,000 tanks and more than 13,000 guns.
EASTERN FRONT
These maps show what no German paper has dared to publish, namely a clear picture of the
operations in Southern Russia between November 1942 to January 1943. They also show the
development of the different phases of the battles. They show:
1) That Hitler committed a crass and elementary military mistake when against the advice of
Halder and Bock he split the German Army in two simultaneous offensives against Stalingrad and
the Caucasus. This “strategy” has led to the destruction of the 6th Army at Stalingrad just as
Samsonov’s army was destroyed at Tannenberg, and the 17th Army in the Caucasus is now
running for its life as did the armies of Rennenkampf at the Masurien Lakes.
2) Hitler made another elementary mistake by leaving the defence of the 6th Army’s flank to
weak allied forces not capable of standing up to a serious Russian attack. Only wild underestimation of the opponent could have led him to do this. “A demagog can afford to underestimate his opponent, a general never.”
3) The sacrifice of the 6th Army at Stalingrad would only have been justified from the military
point of view if it had succeeded in holding up the Russian offensives on the other sectors of the
front. These maps show that this was not the case. The Russian offensives on the other fronts
were carried out by Russian armies which had been held in readiness for these attacks for some
time past. The encirclement of the 6th Army was the result of Hitler’s promise to take Stalingrad
at all costs. The destruction of the 6th Army and the death of 240,000 German soldiers are the
result of Hitler’s reluctance to admit and retrieve a mistake.
4) Stalingrad was not the end but the beginning. A second Stalingrad has already occurred to the
West of Voronesh; a third and larger threatens the Germans in the West Caucasus and at Rostov.
Further Russian offensives on the north and central front, which have already achieved the relief
of Leningrad and the fall of Veliki Luki, are still only in their opening stages.
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TRANSLATION OF G.4, OSTFRONT
Such is the position on 31st January 1943. With the aid of these maps compare what the
Führerhauptquartier and the BBC have to say about future developments.
(REVERSE)
THREE FRONT WAR
The result of Roosevelt’s and Churchill’s last meeting in Washington was the North African
campaign of 1942.
Now at Casablanca Roosevelt and Churchill have met again and have completed their plans for
the offensive campaigns of 1943.
For these offensive campaigns the following forces are available:
1) A British army group in the Near East.
2) The 8th British army in Tripolis which has just chased Field Marshal Rommel 2,400
kilometres – that is as far as from Stalingrad to Breslau.
3) A British-American-French army group in French North Africa.
4) Several British and American army groups in England and Scotland.
All these Anglo-Saxon armies are led, to quote General Hitler, by military idiots and “when one
is faced by military idiots one cannot tell where they will attack”.
(Hitler on the 30th September 1942)
For these offensives are also available:
1) The RAF which is today stronger than the combined air forces of Germany and Italy.
2) The American Air Force to which every month more planes are accruing than to the air forces
of Germany, Italy and Japan together.
3) A greater tonnage of ships to transport the troops and greater navies to escort them than before
the beginning of the U-boat war.
Behind these armies, air forces and fleets stand the entire production potential of America and the
British Empire. Fully engaged on war production in England at the end of 1942: 23 millions. In
America: 59 millions.
Already today Goering admits that he has not enough planes either to beat-off or avenge the RAF
raids. Will Hitler tomorrow have the necessary armies in order to parry the great blows which
England and America are preparing from the west and south?
The German leaders today pretend that Germany needs only to finish with Russia in order to be
out of the wood. This is the policy of the ostrich. What was it Goering said on the 30th January
“It is not for nothing that the strange bird the ostrich is known as the bird of cowardice, for
whenever any danger approaches him he sticks his head in the sand thus hoping that by neither
hearing or seeing it the danger will pass.”
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