NIKOPOL ROUT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 116, 11 February 1944, Page 5

NIKOPOL ROUT

Among Bloodiest In

History BASIC CHANGE IN UKRAINE * LONDON, February 9. The Russians’ victory at Nikopol has completed the disorganization of the German positions in the Ukraine and has introduced a fundamental change in the situation on the whole southern front, declares the noted Russian military comnientator Colonel Ankhnov. Nineteen German divisions have been either destroyed or defeated with heavy losses m the past 10 days. Seven divisions, three of which are tank units, were routed in the initial break-through toward Nikopol; five were cut off and wiped out m the next phase; and seven were smashed up in the Nikopol bridgehead.

Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says that Malinovsky’s and Tolbukhin’s men are now clearing up the Nikopol battlefield after one of the most cosily defeats, compared with the scale of the action, ever inflicted against the Germans in Russia. Thousands of German bodies are drifting down the lower Dnieper toward the Black Sea or lying caught up in the rough edges of the river banks. Hundreds of wrecked boats float with them. The southern approaches of Nikopol are strewn with the aftermath of battle — silent guns, driverless lorries, trackless tanks, wheel-less carts, dead horsea. Russian soldiers since yesterday afternoon have been removing the German dead from Nikopol, and the same Scenes are being enacted in the villages and along the roads leading to the southern Dnieper crossings. After Tolbukhin’s break-through on February 5 the Russians had the greatest difficulty in following the enemy to the banks of the Dnieper because the retreat roads were jammed with abandoned lorries, and German dead piled three feet high had to be removed from several crossroads. Enemy’s Mad Rush. The German defence line guarding the Dnieper bridgehead opposite Nikopol was a powerful one, with 50 3in. guns or dugin tanks to every mile, states Reuter’s Moscow correspondent, This defence was broken up. mainly by Russian mortars. Tank spearheads, protected by motorized units, then pushed through a deep ravine,; and smashed a gap in the German defences.- Infantry followed up where, owing to. the state of the terrain, the use of lorries and horses was impossible. The Russians dragged guns through the thick mud and anti-tank men held the ground where guns could not be placed. The Germans’ utter panic when the Nikopol bridgehead collapsed was also partly,due to the efficient Russian air support, says a United Press correspond* ent at Moscow. Stormoviks sprayed the fleeing Germans with machine-guns and, flying a few feet above them, swept .over the Germans who, in a mad rush, succeeded in gaining the river. Germang in the boats and even those clinging to logs were flung into the water with a whiff from the fighters’ machine-guns. Those who reached the west bank of the Dnieper faced Russian guns from Nikopol. The correspondent describes the destruction of the German bridgehead as ranking as one of the bloodiest massacres in history.