NAZIS’ BIGGEST DEFEAT

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 307, 22 September 1943, Page 7

NAZIS’ BIGGEST DEFEAT

Campaign Of Past Two Months

LONDON, September 20. The He'd Army, pouring through the gaps which have been torn in the German lines, is battering the. outer defences of the two most formidable German strongholds, Smolensk and Kiev. In the north a flood of Russian forces is now surging through the Yartsevo and Dtichovscliina gups, but the concentration of men and armour of these main streams has not resulted in the slackening of pressure anywhere along the front. From north of, Smolensk to the Sea of Azov the Germans are falling back at all points before the relentless hammering. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says: “The Red Army is forcing the Germans nearer and nearer the brink of catastrophe. Any further retreat will entail the risk of the loss of Smolensk or Kiev, or both, and with them a major part of the German gains in two years of the bloodiest warfare.

“The Soviet successes in the present summer offensive represent the greatest blow Hitler has ever sustained. They arc even more disastrous for Hitler than Stalingrad. “Impregnable” Line. “The area recaptured by the Red Army in the two months of its offensive is relatively small compared with the advance made last winter, but the military task performed is many times greater. This summer the Russians attacked a line which the Germans had been preparing for 18 mouths and which, they boasted, was impregnable. “The Red Army has outfought and outwitted the German Army by a conibiuation of high military skill and sheer strength of numbers, armour, and guns applied at the right place. * “The Germans arc now faced with a most serious dilemma. If they <lo not withdraw, the Red Army tlireatens them with a series of major and minor Stalingrads. If they do withdraw too quickly, they run the same risk of being completely overwhelmed. Meanwhile massed German reinforcements are being thrown into the land and air battle in a supreme effort to hold firm, but the Russians are steadily advancing in fulfilment of their grant! strategic plan of alternatively hammering from the front and levering from

the flanks. They are cracking up the most powerful garrisons. . “The strongest fortifications winch Todt’s slave armies could produce are crumbling,” continues Reuter. “The roar of Russian artillery is drawing nearer to towns that have heard only the crack ot the rifles of German firing squads since the summer of 1941.” Some of the fiercest of the war are being fought east of Kiev and along Napoleon’s road of retreat toward Smolensk. Three Russian armies are advancing against Smolensk on an arc ot less than 30 miles from the city. The thrusts from Duehovschina and Yartsevo threaten to outflank the Germans from the north-east. The present battle may decide the fate of Smolensk, says Reuter’s correspondent. Heavy clashes are occurring on the Moscow highway, where the Germans are throwing in infantry reserves behind a screen of tanks in determined counter-attacks. Berlin radio said that violent defensive battles are in progress west of Yelnia and south of Byeloi. The Russians are paying heavily in men and material for every slight gain. In the Velizh area in the last two days the Russians attacked strongly at 20 points. . Moscow radio says that the German Command ordered the defence of Duchov§hchina at all costs. The town was defended by three lines of fortifications, aqti-tank trenches, and barbed-wire. The Germans, using Tiger tanks and Ferdinands, launched as many as 25 counterattacks on a single sector. . The Smolensk defence zone winch was (broken north-east of the city had been fortified during the past two years and consisted of six lines of positions protected by vast minefields, according to a Soviet supplementary communique. It was defeuded by several divisions, which lost 72 tanks and 204 guns in the battle. Six hundred prisoners were taken. Pincer Threat to Kiev. Front-line dispatches say that in the Ukraine the Russians are within easy artillery range of the Kiev-Gomel railway, the only railway north of. Kiev and east of the Dnieper which is still in German hands. The capture of the German strongpoint of Priluki has cleared the left flank of the Russian wedge pointing toward Kiev and makes a. final pincer movement against the city possible. Two armies are driving toward the Dnieper bend. The Russians are within 30 miles of Zaporozhe, on the southern elbow. The Russian drive further’south against Melitopol threatens the last escape railway from the Crimea, tearing the Germans only a hazardous sea route. The advance continues in the Kuban over a battlefield strewn with German dead and abandoned war material. Partisans in the Kiev area attacked the German sappers erecting a crossing over the river. They killed 56 and blew up the crossing. The same group prevented the Germans from taking away tlie harvest to send it to Germany and killed over 80 soldiers and policemen.