RED ARMY'S PROGRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 20, 25 January 1943, Page 5

RED ARMY'S PROGRESS

Serious Predicament For

Hitler

-^ LONDON, January 24, The Germans continue to fall back in the Caucasus, and Berlin has spoken about the plight of the Germans trapped at Stalingrad. Hitler's divisions are still in full retreat over the Kuban plains, leaving behind them thousands of dead, immense quantities of war supplies, and the vast Caucasian territory which they overran at so much cost during the summer. Following the capture of Armavir, the strategic junction in the German communication lines in the Caucasus, which was captured yesterday hy the Russians after a determined assault, Soviet troops are pressing forward at tremendous speed, carrying out great sweeping movements first at one point and then at another, finding isolated groups of the enemy, wiping them out, and then driving on again.

It is not yet known how far the ! Russians have advanced beyond Armavir, but it is clear that the capture of this town will make the.German hold on the nearby Maikop oiU fields almost untenable, and one correspondent says it is not unlikely that the Germans are already getting out oi Maikop. Hitler's predicament is equally serious as a result of the growing Soviet pressure on the Voronezh front, north of Rostov. In today's fighting ,the Russians continued liquidating isolated groups of troops and routing German units. In one case 100 Germans and Italians were taken prisoner in a wood. On the Donets front, nearer still to Rostov, the Russians are making steady progress, though not so spectacularly as in the Voronezh and Caucasus sectors. ' Dispatches indicate that the Soviet

ring is growing tighter every day around the great German base of Voroshilovgrad, in the Don bend. The Russians are driving towards the city from three sides. From the east, they were last reported to be less than 10 'miles away s. The Germans are now beginning to admit the facts about the doomed Axis army outside "Stalingrad. Today's communique says that the Germans are left in no doubt, that the garrison is almost at the end of its tether. It said that the situation had deteriorated "because- of further breaches from the west by powerful Russian forces. It is just a fortnight since the Russian commander called on the German garrison to surrender or be destroyed.