GERMAN DIVISION REPORTED ROUTED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 238, 8 October 1941, Page 7

GERMAN DIVISION REPORTED ROUTED

FIVE-DAY BATTLE

Russian Efforts To Hold Mighty New Offensive

United Press Association.—Copy r I girt. Rec. 1 p.jn. LONDON, Oct. 7. Neither side in the mighty new Russian-German battle has yet reported progress, but the Moscow newspaper Pravda to-day mentions a success, which, judging from the details given, appears to be connected with the battle, though the location is tantalisingly withheld. Pravda is quoted by the Moscow radio as having reported the rout of a German tank division, an anti-tank brigade and an anti-aircraft regiment, with the loss of 5500 killed, and 100 tanks, 250 motor cycles, 20 trench mortars and 15 light tanks and lorries destroyed or captured. It adds that the defeat was inflicted after five days heavy fighting.

Pravda does not mention wounded or prisoners, but the large number of those killed suggests a heavy total of German losses.

Pravda's war correspondent on the south-western front states that Soviet cavalry in one sector, working with tanks and bombers, killed many hundreds of officers and men near a certain village, and adds that the enemy's 25th Motorised and 9th Tank Divisions have suffered heavy losses and the Russians have captured about 400 lorries and 100 guns and destroyed 15 tanks and 51 antitank guns.

The Helsinki radio claims that the German forces, which are already at Peterhof, defeated a Russian attempt to land there from the Gulf of Finland.

Germans Claim Towns Captnred

The German spokesman claimed that the Germans have captured Mariupol and Berdyansk, on the north-west coast of the Sea of Azov. According to the latest information received in London, the Germans have suffered severe losses on the Perekop Isthmus, and one division is definitely held up at Genichesk. The Soviet Fleet has been in action against this division, and is to a considerable extent responsible for holding it up.

The latest German communique says: "In the course of new operations a big battle has occurred in the area north of the Sea of Azov, where, side by side with their allies, German troops are pursuing the beaten enemy. The staff of the Soviet 9th Army has been taken prisoner. The commander-in-chief escaped by air. Operations on other sectors of the front are progressing according to plan.

The Berlin radio declared that Soviet troops encircled in the Leningrad area again attempted to break through on Monday, using infantry, tanks, artillery and planes. The attacks, which were launched repeatedly with great obstinacy, were repulsed.

The Moscow bi-monthly organ of the Militant Atheist League, Antireligious, has suspended publication. The same society nas published a weekly paper Godless, which previously ceased to appear. The reason given in both cases is a paper shortage.

While M. Lozovsky, Soviet Minister of Information, is laconically observing that "Hitler has several hundred thousand extra men he wants buried," a commentator on the Berlin radio claimed that the German victory northward of the Sea of Azov, to which to-day's High Command communique referred, meant nothing less than the collapse of the entire southern wing of the Russian Army, and added that the German Army now immediately menaced the industrial areas of the Donetz Basin.

An earlier statement that the Germans had captured Mariupol and Berdyansk, if true, gives superficial support to the declaration of Berlin military circles, who state: "The task of the German Army is not to march to Moscow and hold a swastika party in the Red Square, but rather to engage and destroy the Soviet Army. Whether this happens north, south, east or west, is a matter of complete indifference."

The Russians are nowhere showing the slightest reluctance to meet this challenge, and, even according to the Germans themselves, are fiercely counter-attacking in areas where they are stated to have "completely collapsed."