POLAND OPENS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 11, 13 January 1945, Page 5

POLAND OPENS

Berlin Announcement

DESIGNED TO KNOCK GERMANY OUT OF WAR

N.Z.P.A.—Copyright.—Rec. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, January 12

A Russian offensive over a wide front on the Vistula bridgehead west of Baranov started this morning, according to the German news agency. Berlin radio says German artillery and infantry wiped out the first attacking waves of Russians, and succeeding waves, -which reached the main battlefield, were forced back in extremely violent fighting. Russian losses in the first few hours were heavy.

The new full-scale Russian offensive in South Poland, which the Germans have announced, is probably designed to knock Germany out of the war, as forecast by Moscow two weeks ago, considers the British United Press agency. It points out that there is nothing unusual in the fact that the first news of it emanated from the enemy. Berlin has hitherto often announced previous big Russian drives long before the Moscow statement. The Russians have adopted the policy of keeping silent until certain operational success is gained.

it is recalled that the great Russian summer offensive unleashed last June in the Vitebsk area brought the Red Army to the Vistula 'at Deblin in jus! under a month. It is no secret that the Red armies for months past have been , building up along the Vistula line for one last smashing offensive to end the war. Moscow censors, who are considered the most conservative of 8 ;J f.n-1-i /^"••it.LV all censors, recently released the following dispatch from Moscow: "Observers in Moscow expect the Red armies, in a series of fast, successive operations, will break through to Germany and wipe out the majority of the 200 enemy divisions massed on the Eastern Front before they are able to regain their own territory." The Associated Press military correspondent says the launching of the new large-scale offensive in South Poland is an indication that the battle of Hungary is virtually won and the Red Army is now ready to hit the Germans from a new quarter. The Vistula offensive is described by well-informed persons as the heaviest ever launched by the Russians, says the Berlin correspondent of the Stockholm paper Dagens Nyheter. The correspondent adds that the Russians have broken through the main German defence lines in a number of places. The Dagens Nyheter's Berlin correspondent at the scene of the Vistula offensive says the fire from 500 guns supported the first Russian attacking waves. Two Russian air fleets also participated.