SOVIET TACTICS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 170, 21 July 1941, Page 7

SOVIET TACTICS

Ruthless Employment Of Scorched Earth Strategy

(United Press Association.—Copyright.—Rec. 1 p.m.)

LONDON, July 20

The Russians are organising and applying sabotage and guerilla warfare behind the German lines on an enormous scale Their activities are concentrated not only against the communications of the advancing German armies, but extend back to the veiy sources of Hitler s supplies. Stalin's call for scorching the arth wherever the Germans appear has been effected with devastating results. Never before has an aggressor met such ruthless fanaticism. Immediately the Germans enter a new town or village they post up notices threatening to shoot anyone hiding or failing to report the presence of guerillas, but according to Ae Moscow radio not a sincle man has yet been betrayed The inhabitants of a town on the right bank of the River Dvina formed themselves into guerilla bands when the Russian regular troops left to conform to the broader strategy. The townspeople filled thousand's of bottles from a local brewery with petrol and hurled them at the German tanks, scores of which were put out of action The town's resistance was so strong that the German entry was delayed for two days and was accomplished only after intensive artillery preparation. It was a city of dead when eventually the German infantry marched in. Every living soul had been evacuated, but seven men were hiding under a bridge across the Dvina waiting for the first enemy column to cross. men blew up the bridge and perished with the column as it rumbled on to the bridge. Vast Forests In Flames The Germans themselves reveal the extent of the Russian scorched earth policy. The Berlin radio stated that vast expanses of forest country northwards of Lake Ladoga, near the Finnish border, are aflame. The Russians are laying' waste to everything as they retreat. The Finnish troops find only deserted and ruined villages. The Berlin news agency says hundreds of villages have been reduced to ashes eastwards of Smolensk. The Russians have practised wholesale destruction. Retreating tanks pour incendiary bullets on thatched roofs and buildings, starting enormous fires. The Berlin correspondent of the Spanish newspaper "ABC" says that by torch and dynamite the Russians have razed Smolensk to the ground. Mr. John Gordon, writing in the "Sunday Express," says such casualties as the Germans are suffering in Russia cannot be concealed. If it is true that there is one German dead for every two wounded then Germany has never previously endured' such i blood bath. There is a point at which the most clever propaganda fails. The German people may soon reach that point Hitler needs a dramatic success. All his conquests will go for nought unless he can place them on a solid foundation. For a nition that, according to Hitler, had its air force obliterated in the first week x>f the war, its armies disintegrated in the second, wd its reserves consumed in the fourth, the Russians seem to be doing rather well.