FRONT LINE REPORTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 92, 19 April 1945, Page 5

FRONT LINE REPORTS

Germans Admit Advance " Half Way From The Oder" N.Z.P.A.—Copyright—Eec. 12.30 p.m. f - ku LONDON, April 18.-, While the Supreme Soviet Command maintains a security.:.:, silence, Army dispatches from the Oder front state that the Russiansare close enough to Berlin to see the burning city. Berlin radio tonight said: "The Russians advanced more than half-way from the. , Oder to Berlin in the Kustrin area." The German military commentator declared that the Russians::: are using nine armies. • -eThe German High Command has summed up the battle for' Berlin in these words: "A defensive battle is raging with great•fury on the Oder. Our gallant divisions, effectively supported by artillery and anti-aircraft guns used as ground artillery, repulsed the Russians, who. are far superior in men and materials. Reports so far to hand state that 257 tanks were destroyed in this sector , yesterday.",!.. Later the German High Command declared that so fierce werethe armoured clashes that the Red Army in the past 24 hours had lost 510 tanks. Reuters comments that should this figure be correct it is equal to the record day's panzer losses inflicted against the Germans in the historic battle of the Kursk-Byelgorod bulge in the: summer of 1943, when the Soviet Command maintained large-scale armoured attritional warfare for some weeks. •< ? 1 A German war correspondent broadcasting from Berlin said: "The .Russian barrage is beyond all imagination. They fired more than, 10,000 tons of shells in the first three days of their offensive between Frankfurt and north-west of Kustrin." 'I:/; The German news agency stated that the Russians were attacking under "a permanent air umbrella with fresh troops coming forward as though on a conveyer belt." , The German, overseas news agency says that Marshal Koniev's tanks, have broken through the main German defensive system west" of Neisse and reached the area of Finsterwalde, 45 miles west of the river. This means, if the German report is confirmed, that the-* Russians are now only about 45 miles from General Hodges' First ■ Army. . .... • :<•••