FINAL ATTACK ON BERLIN

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24537, 10 April 1945, Page 5

FINAL ATTACK ON BERLIN

RED ARMY ASSAULT AWAITED

STRONG GERMAN FORCES GUARDING CAPITAL ' (Special Correspondent N.Z.PA.)

(Rec. 9.30' p.m.) LONDON. April 9. The Russian offensive across the Oder on Berlin, which reports from Moscow indicate may start at any moment, and the eventual meeting of British and American armies and the Red Army, is: regarded as by military/correspondents before the final capitulation - of the Germans. “Liberator,” in the "Observer,” says British troops have covered 150 miles since the break-out from the bridgehead, and still have ample reserves of .energy and mileage. - Another 150-mile advance, which Is feasible, will take them beyond Bremen to Hamburg and Kiel, and beyond Hanover to Magdeburg and Berlin, in a due easterly direction. With the decimation of the Gorman army in the west this is a perfectly practicable project. But swift and final success depends on the synchronisation of the Russian main offensive from the east. The south-east-ern offensive has gone well! and brought the Russians to the gates of Vienna, but the full fruits of success will be reaped ih final collaboration between east and wfest. before' Berlin.

Underlining Total Defeat “There can be no doubt." says “Liberator,’- “that what remams. Intact of the German army stands here and that this body is for the moment more important than plans for mountain resistance, This German army can .be overcome by a joint effort. For once it Is met in battle and the total military defeat of Germany thus, under lined it may become possible for a German Government to surrender unconditionally and so - prevent the drawn-out process of hunting down German resistance groups with which the Allies might otherwise be faced.” ' The military correspondent of the "Sunday Times” (Alexander Werth) says the Russians have very heavy forces on, what is now, apart from Vienna, the main and most decisive front—the line of the Oder. He adds: "Here' the attack oh Berlin may start at any moment." Captain Cyril Falls, in the Illustrated London News,” says he hopes to see the main Allied advance from the west go straight across the plain in the direction Of the Elbe. He adds that the Russian armies in the north are likely to be on the move again shortly 4gnd the Elbe may be the rendezvous. Then there may follow a wheel south wards in the highlands. •

Time to Close Nut-Crackcrs

Captain Palls consider? that the moment has come for the closing in. and says one more full-scale , offensive by. Field-Marshal Montgomery, and General Bradley from the west and by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev from the east would bring the jaws of the nutcrackers together. There seems, he says, to be a good prospect that this will be effected In a matter of weeks. After that there will remain onlv mopping up. . ~ The "New Statesman and Nation" thinks it is idle to speculate when large-scale organised resistance by the Germans will be finally overcome, adding that there are still very considerable enemy forces intact in Brandenburg and Saxony, while in Westphalia the Ist Paratroop Army still has to be reckoned with. On both fronts S.S. formations will doubtless make desperate efforts to gain time for _a withdrawal of “last stand” elements into the mountain areas of the south. How far they succeed will depend on how quickly Marshals Zhukov and Koniev can strike westwards and how soon a junction - between the Americans and the Russians can be effected, in the vital triangle of Leipzig-Chem-nitz-Dresden. ... A high-ranking New Zealander who recently returned to England says the Germans and Allies are fairly evenly matched on the Italian front. The Germans would no l doubt like to with- 1 draw their 27 divisions to, Germany, but the plain fact is that they cannot. Passage through the Brenner Pass is severely restricted and it recently took one division which was withdrawn no

less than six weeks to move.' The Germans therefore have no alternative but to stay and fight. PRISONERS KILLED ' BY S.S. , BODIES FOUND AT CAMP (Rec 8 p.m.) • LONDON, April 9. The partly-clad bodies of 31 men, lying huddled where they had been killed by S.S. guards because they were too ill to be moved, have been discovered in a bleak prisoner of war enclosure near the village of Ohrdruf, about 10 miles south of Gotha, atecord-

ing to correspondents* with the American 3rd Army. Their only crime was that they were too weak to march deeper into Germany with other “slaves.” Fifty more bodies stacked up like logs or slaughtered pigs were found in a nearby shed. The whole naked heap had been sprinkled with quicklime. „ The camp had hel<i 2000 Russians, Czechs,' Poles, Frenchmen, and German Jews and political prisoners.

NO ENSLAVEMENT OF GERMANS

ARTICLE BY RUSSIAN WRITER

(R6c. 8.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, April 8. Ilya Ehrenberg, in an article in the Sovuet Embassy information bulletin, describes as a gross lie a statement that Russia wanted to enslave the Germans. Ehrenberg insists that the Red Army can compel the Germans to rebuild what they destroyed and adds that the reason American tanks are not meeting resistance in Germany is that the soldiers who normally would have defended German cities rotted to dust between the Volga and the Vistula.

Primate of Poland freed. —The Primate of Poland. Cardinal August Hlond. who escaped from Poland in 1939, but. was arrested by the Germans in France 21 months ago, has, been released by the Allies’ advarpe into Westphalia.—Paris, April 8.