GIGINTIC BATTLES ARE STILL RAGING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 168, 18 July 1941, Page 7

GIGINTIC BATTLES ARE STILL RAGING

ALL FRONTS ACTIVE

Fall Of Leningrad May Be Claimed In Week-End

United Tress Association.—t'upyrlght. Rec. 2.30 p.m. LONDON, July 17. While the fact remains that a number of German armies are fighting mightily on Russian soil and that panzer forces are probing dangerously at Leningrad and Moscow, the latest dispatches show that the German claims are asrain exaggerated. The Russians say that Smolensk and Pskov are still in their hands.

A snokesman in Berlin said that gigantic battles were raging. Probably they would decide the fate of the war. He admitted that the Russians were counter-attacking fiercelv in the north, but claimed that the attacks were crushed.

"The Times" correspondent on the German frontier says that the German authorities aooear to be more ootimistic than usual. Neutral observers believe that the Germans will claim a victorious conclusion in at least one of the three main thrusts towards Leningrad, Moscow and Kiev before the week-end. It is considered that Leningrad is the objective most likely to be attained.

The "Svenskadag Bladet" (Sweden) military correspondent, confirming the determined Soviet resistance in the Leningrad sector, says that the defenders are apparently still able to maintain communications between the forces in Estonia and those further east.

Nothing has been heard for some days of the German and Finnish forces in the Arctic sector. Apparently they are still wallowing in the marshes some distance from Murmansk.

Russian sources say there is no change in the position'in Bessarabia, where the Germans claim to have captured Kishinev and to have advanced beyond it. Success of Soviet Counter Drive "The Times" military correspondent states that the Russian counterattack against the southern wing of the German drive towards Moscow, through Bobruisk appears to have had considerable success, and its force has probably not yet been expended. The Germans made a traditional reply by accentuating the pressure elsewhere — the Russian offensive on the northern wing, through Lepel. There is no reason to believe that the last Russian reserves have been thrown in. The German claim to this effect, states the correspondent, is absurd. Russia must still have very large resources available. There are exceptionally few reports of actual fighting.

A German war correspondent describes artificial fog used to protect infantrymen attacking an underground fortress before Kiev, where it was necessary to dynamite Russian earthworks which were three storeys deep.

NAZI GENERAL DEAD KILLED OX EASTERN FRONT Rec. 2 p.m. RUGBY, July 17. A Moscow report states that Ma.iorGeneral Otto Lancelle has been killed on the Eastern front. He was the founder and a member of the Stahlhelm and led the military group at the Munich putsch, but left the Stahlhelm in 1924 when he joined the Nazi party. He soon attained the rank of High Command of the Storm Troopers and was promoted major-general on the outbreak of the war with Poland.