LIST DEFENCE LINE GRAVELY THREATENED

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 66, 18 March 1944, Page 5

LIST DEFENCE LINE GRAVELY THREATENED

ROUTED GERMANS

Main Nazi Forces Retreat Into Bessarabia N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, Mar. 17. Von Mannstein's last defence line in Russia is gravely threatened. Only the width of the great Dniester River now separates the Red Army from Bessarabia, the former Russian province which the Rumanians seized when Hitler marched into Russia, reports Reuters Moscow correspondent. Marshal Koniev's spearheads reached the Dniester at several points between Mohilev and Rybnitsa, 70 miles apart.

The main German forces are retreating across the river into Bessarabia at Mohilev, which lies on the railway from Vinnitsa to Jassy, less than 90 miles away. Von Mannstein recently moved his headquarters to Jassy.

The Red Army elsewhere is inarching all night to maintain the tempo of the advance. One Don Cossack division has been riding ahead for days guided by flares dropped from planes. The Russian assault against Vinnitsa has suddenly broadened into a wide attack over the whole of the Vinnitsa-Jmerinka sector. Fighting is reported on tha-outskirts of both towns. The Red Army is also closing in against the Pervomaisk-Novouk-roinka line, along which the Germans are trying to stave off the Russian sweep across the lowlands north of Odessa. The Russians are swiftly approaching the Bug River between Pervomaisk and Nikolayev, where General Malinovsky's men already hold a 32-mile stretch of the west bank. The Red Air Force is blasting the retreating German transports along the road to Odessa and have established complete air superiority. Damage by Retreating Huns The Russians are heating back the Germans in the battle for Proskurov. The Germans are retreating over the snow-capped Carpathians, doing maximum damage. They have rarely time to burn villages, but they are systematically poisoning all wells. The Russians captured an order signed by Von Mannstein, ordering general destruction. Von Mannstein figures high on the Russians' list of war criminals. One Moscow newspaper declares: "There is no place in the world this criminal in uniform will be able to hide." The Russians have reached the Eastern approaches to Vinnitsa, and are now fighting less than a mile from the city's limits, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. Other units are steadily beating into the German defences north-west and south-west of the town. German supplies to Vinnitsa or withdrawals from it must be made through a steadily narrowing escape corridor. The enemy in the middle Bug sector appears to be dazed and confused by the brilliance and speed of the Russian tactics, says The Times Moscow correspondent, and though efforts were made to close several i Russian gaps, these are. being made

half-heartedly. The Russians, on the other hand, are in exalted spirits, and are pressing the enemy into battle and denying themselves rest.

A front line dispatch says the Russians know neither day nor night, and reckon the passage of time by the names of the towns they have captured. Their cavalry is playing a bigger and more important part as the advance continues, and the much better equipped troops of General Malinovsky are not giving the enemy an opportunity to disengage in the general retreat in Nikolayev direction.

The remnants of the ill fated Sixth Army, which was reformed after the defeat at Stalingrad, has been outpaced, and yesterday a great column, streaming towards Nikolayev, was ambushed and badly mauled.

Russian tanks broke into a Ger-man-held village where an infantry unit was resting after days of slogging through mud. The attack came as a complete surprise. The German regimental staff was destroyed, and tanks, by the light of headlamps, tore into the crowds of exhausted men, light Russian units operating in the German rear and along their lines of communication adding to the confusion.