BIG NAZI BLOWS

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 277, 19 August 1944, Page 7

BIG NAZI BLOWS

Russians On Border

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, August 17. Russian troops have reached the East Prussian frontier. Tonight’s Soviet communique says that they have reached the border at a river which in tlus area separates East Prussia from Lithuania. Further north in Lithuania, Moscow reports, the Red Army is battling with large German forces which had gone over to the offensive on the front wdst, north-west and south-west of Shavli (Siauliai). Other German attacks east of Warsaw have been repelled For the third successive day a mammoth armoured struggle is raging east of Warsaw as the Germans maintain the most powerful and most sustained effort they have put in since the opening of the Red Army’s summer offensive, say Moscow correspondents. Reuter believes that the line <of Russian anti-tank guns and field-guns has so far stemmed repeated German onslaughts with the exception of the wedge which the enemy has driven into the Ossow sector, nine miles from Warsaw. Front-line reports leave no doubt ot the bitterness of the armoured grapple which the Germans appear to have planned with a more far-reaching aim than just pushing the Red Army from the immediate approaches to Warsaw. Danger For Poles. V

The British United Press correspondent says that crack S.S. Grenadiers are still streaming eastward across the Vistula from the centre of Warsaw, .but the Russians on the east bank of the river have the situation well under control. The Red Army is exerting pressure against the flanks of the wedge at Ossow. Meanwhile (says British Official Wireless), the situation of the Poles fighting in Warsaw is extremely difficult. The Germans have three elite panzer divisions here—the S.S. Death’s-Head, the S.S. Viking, and the Hermann Goering—and an early Russian assault on the city cannot be expected. Some help is, however, ■being sent to the Polish garrison. Fighting is almost equally heavy on the Baltic front where the Germans have demonstrated their determination to cling to their last positions in Estonia and Latvia by bringing in reinforcements by sea. Another report says the encircled armies are being-reinforced from the air. The Russians today captured 150 more places in Latvia, across the upper Vistula they captured 20 places and continued fighting in Sandomierz, which is reported to be now almost encircled.

POLISH RISING

Offensive In Provinces

(British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 17. The chief of the Polish home army announces that his men have risen in the Polish provinces as well as in Warsaw. There has been fierce street fighting m the capital. , , _ Thirty miles north-west of Cracow, Polish home army units have seized the area of Miechow, taking prisoners and supplies. . _ T A Moscow message says that the National Council of Poland, now in session at Lublin, is discussing far-reaching reforms. , T>- t This body is headed by one Bierut, who had a'stormy career of revolutionary activity, and in consequence has spent much time outside Poland.