TACTICS CHANGED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 238, 8 October 1942, Page 5

TACTICS CHANGED

fHBWS AT STALINGRAD

'Using Tanks In Small Groups After Massed Failures Rec. 1 p.m. LONDON. Oct. 7. An official Soviet report says the Germans are bringing up reserves for battle in Stalingrad. One Soviet position was attacked six times during one day, but all the attacks were repelled. Five German tanks were crippled and an infantry company was wiped out. Artillery wiped out-.an infantry battalion on another sector and also destroyed three tanks ■and two mortar batteries.

A Moscow message reports Soviet progress north-west of Stalingrad in the face of heavy opposition. The Russians are infiltrating and breaking the enemy lines. The Germans have dug in their tanks to use them as pillboxes and are ijeported to have changed their tactics. Instead of using tanks in large numbers they are using only small groups and are busy erecting a great number of strongholds and digging trenches.

The defenders of Stalingrad are still holding their positions after closing the breach driven by the Germans into the vital factory area in the north-west of the city. The Russian counter-attacks threw the enemy right back to his starting point. The enemy regrouped and launched six more attacks in quick succession, but these were also beaten back.

The Germans are receiving local setbacks in different parts of the city. There was one critical moment yesterday when the enemy managed to get some of their tanks through the Soviet lines into the vital factory area, but 11 of the tanks were destroyed and the Soviet lines were reformed. Rumanian Force Cut Off Outside the city Marshal Timoshenko's forces are still attacking the German flank to the north-west and have taken another populated point and cut off a large force of Rumanians.

That the Red Army's continuing resistance at. Stalingrad must not obscure the far-reaching gravity of the Russian situation is emphasised by correspondents in Russia in reporting the lively discussion which M. Stalin's latest second front pronouncement has aroused.

The Stalingrad battle, says Reuter's correspondent at Kuibyshev, has long ceased to be a struggle for a limited, though a vital, territorial objective. It is a large-scale grapple between important parts of the German and Russian armies for the destruction of one or the other, with the chances of victory or survival about equal and the issue hanging precariously in the balance. It is emphasised' in the discussions by the diplomats of M. Stalin's second front statement that the Russian view is that an emergency has arisen demanding immediate Allied action regardless of what was previously agreed upon. Reliable information in Kuibyshev reveals that even the Dieppe raid resulted in the immediate dispatch to France of a number of new German divisions, and the feeling in Kuibyshev undoubtedly is that it is the Allies' duty to find means of drawing off another 30 to 40 divisions. Will Hold Until Winter Opinion is hardening in London that Stalingrad will hold out until the winter, when the freezing of the Volga mav open a new phase of the battle. The freezing of the river would facilitate Russian military traffic across the Volga, but it might enable the Germans to develop an encircling movement. German prisoners confirm that Hitler sent a message to his troops telling them to storm the centre of Stalingrad if they did not wish to spend the winter on the frozen steppes. The Germans had never attacked so desperately, so incessantly, or in such force as they did on Monday, and the}' had never failed so completely. "The Russians are gaining time of inestimable value for Stalingrad, for Moscow, for Baku, for Russia, and for general victory." says the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph. "They are keeping up one of the world's most decisive battles until help shall come." The Tass news agency says the Russians at Stalingrad have captured a secret report by the chief surgeon of the German 15th Division, drawing attention to ihe sharp increase in self-inflicted wounds among the German troops.