The Enemies Agree

An intense submarine war, together with air-and naval-force mass action, will make possible a deathly British Isles blockade. The air war over England will be directed against the armament industry, communications, British field positions. Germany will attempt a radical military solution of the Mediterranean problem at the very moment when German strategy will profit from all chances of direct attack on England. The possibilities of invasion are considered so numerous that it will be impossible for the British immediately to recognize mock actions.

Although this outline of German plans from the official Berlin newsagency Dienst Aus Deutschland was undoubtedly partly a raid in the war of nerves, it dovetailed neatly into passages from recent Hitler speeches, into other German hints as to this spring's strategy, and into last week's news. Even the British agreed with the outline--though not with the outcome.

The preliminary submarine all-out has been threatened several times. The comparative lull of recent weeks tended to confirm the idea that U-boats were being thoroughly tuned up, that new ones were being commissioned, that a greatly intensified counter-blockade would begin soon. In London it was guessed that 600 German submarines, mostly "minnows" of 250-300 tons, would be let loose as a preliminary to invasion.

Another preliminary, expected all along, would be intensified air attacks. Last week there was a tentative intensification, but not quite the real thing. There was a notable revival of daylight raids, in which Nazi planes undertook low-flying attacks on railways and their stations, ports and their installations, on airfields, troop camps, towns and villages. In fire raids on London, the Nazis reversed previous tactics, now dropping explosives before incendiaries, hoping to make fire fighters lie low while fires caught on. For three bad nights in a row, the South Wales port of Swansea took a pasting. On two successive days, the Germans tried daylight attacks on Hell's Corner, much like those of last autumn. The British claimed they failed.

The Germans' "radical military solution" of the Mediterranean problem was apparently in its preliminary stages in the Balkans. Day after it had been announced that Germany's Naval Chief of Staff Grand Admiral Erich Raeder went to the Italian Alps to reassure Italy's Chief of Staff Admiral Arturo Riccardi, Benito Mussolini's paper Il Popolo d'Italia promised that "something very big" was coming up. The British indicated that they were giving the problem some thought.

As for invasion possibilities, the British had done some thinking there, too. They were not asleep on the beaches. London guessers saw three general aims of a direct attack on the islands: 1) disorganization of industrial Britain, 2) disorganization of Government 3) a stroke at national morale by land operations on London's outskirts. Most British were so confident of Britain's naval strength that they disallowed a seaborne blow at Eire, and thought that if there was to be attack on Ireland, it would be a violent airborne diversion. Similar diversions were to be expected at the Orkneys and on the Scottish coasts.

The main attacks, according to this British version, would be four. One would be a landing on the vulnerable Yorkshire coast near the Humber estuary. This would hope to sweep inland to the Midlands. Another might strike at Weymouth in Dorset on the south coast, and cut across to the industrial area around Bristol and in Wales. The other two would call for landings in Suffolk and Sussex, northeast and south of London, and would converge in a giant pincer around the city. All four attacks would be accompanied by multiple landings such as Dienst Aus Deutschland threatened.

Whatever the specific tactics, the British did not expect to be able to stop all the Germans on the water and in the air. They expected some naval landings to be successful--but they also expected to pinch the Nazis' giant pincers. A practice parachute raid on a British factory, which the British themselves undertook both to test defenses and experiment with offense, demonstrated that parachutists cannot be picked off in the air like partridges, as the British used to think, but that, with vigilance, they can be rounded up.

This general guess from both sides--that the Nazis would unbolt everything --looked pretty convincing. The British last week rubbed the salt off their sea glasses and began to scan the waters for the tipoff: the submarine campaign.

This week Adolf Hitler served notice that the intensification would begin April 1. He said: "Our battles at sea can only begin now. The reason was that we wanted to school the new U-boat crews for the battle to come.

"Just a few hours ago, I received a notice from our High Command that in the last two days our U-boats and our air force have destroyed 215,000 tons of enemy shipping. One convoy alone with 125,000 tons was destroyed, and U-boats alone have destroyed 190,000 tons.

[The British] "must be prepared for still bigger events in March and April. Then they will find out whether we slept through the winter."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.