BIG STORY OF NAZI DISASTER AND DEFEAT

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 153, 30 June 1944, Page 5

BIG STORY OF NAZI DISASTER AND DEFEAT

LEADERS ASTOUNDED Wholesale Destruction Of Enemy Divisions N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 1 p.m. LONDON, June 29. All reports from the Russian front tell a tremendous story of German disaster and defeat, of countless casualties, of units beaten and destroyed, says the British United Press correspondent in Moscow. The Red Army generals who planned the campaign were astounded when they saw some of the results at points of the worst German defeats. In one sector, for example, a.German artillery unit escaping from Orsha took to lanes across peat bogs, where General Chernyakov's tanks and tommy-gunners ambushed them. Observers following up after the tide of war had passed on found an inextricable mass of dead men, carts, horses, rifles, guns and lorries. The train of shattered supply lorries stretched over more than two miles. The correspondent points out that General Bagramyan destroyed five divisions at Vitebsk, General Zakharov broke 12 divisions at Mohilev and destroyed the remnants of them between the Dnieper and Druit Rivers, while Marshal Rokossovsky encircled and destroyed five more divisions in the Bobruisk offensive. Fierce mopping up operations are at present going on south-east- of Bobruisk against the . entrapped Germans. In face of the combined effect of these disasters it is not believed that the Germans will be able to put up full-fledged resistance at Minsk. In their drives on Minsk the Russian armies are being strongly supported by low-level flghteis and fighter-bombers, which flew oJOd sorties yesterday against the retreating Germans, says the Bntish United Press correspondent. Planes in massed flight are also driving a path ahead of ihe Russians pushing down the Minsk highway from Orsha. Russian fighters are already

operating from airfields in the Mohilev area, illustrating the speed of the Russian advance. The correspondent quotes a Russian war reporter, after a flight over the White Russian front, as saying: "I have seen nothing comparable in three years of war. There is smoke as far as the horizon with guns and tanks glittering through the red June dust. Great Red Army columns are moving in all directions, splitting and encircling the enemy's resistance points, then again joining up and continuing the westward advance. Every time we landed to refuel our pilots had to redraw their maps, because the front is changing so rapidly. A Stormovik pilot said: 'We were ordered to attack a target tut were called off because while we were en route our troops had already broken into the town. All we were able to do was to dip our wings to the infantry and fly on to the next tar-