Desperate Nazi Effort To Avoid Being Cut Off

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 39, 16 February 1943, Page 5

Desperate Nazi Effort To Avoid Being Cut Off

LONDON, February 15. Tonight's news from Russia is still dominated by the mighty Russian drives in the Donets Basin and by the headlong* retreat of the Germans to escape a second Stalingrad. After their capture of Rostov and Voroshilovgrad Soviet columns are now rolling back the Germans from the Donets bend on a front of 80 miles.

Berlin admits tonight that the entire area between Rostov and Voroshilovgrad has now been evacuated by the Germans. A German military commentator also makes the admission that what he calls the new German line is only one-third as. long as the former one.

One Moscow message says that the the northern sector from Leningrad to r> .~P i i • ,i ■ Latvia. Germans are now falling back in their i n addition 200,000 Nazis in the most headlong retreat of the war, try- Caucasus are cut off, and the valuable -. \ lcaui" y "- » j Caucasus oil wells have been virtually ing desperately to get through to the secure d for the Russians, who have west before they are cut off com- also recovered the railway line via : pletely by the strong Russian force SS^I&SSSfttJ&SSJTbS! driving southward from the area been cut off from the Sea of Azov, and nnrth of Stalino therefore are unable to supply their norm oi Staiino. Donets forces.

The Russian force moving from Bostov is advancing towards the German base at Taganrog, which is on the opposite side of a ten-mile-wide bay from Rostov, and latest reports say that it is already being shelled by Soviet heavy guns. To the west other Russian forces are biting deeper and deeper into the Ukraine in their efforts to cut off the Germans before they can escape through the overland gap north of the Sea of Azov.

Further north the Russian ring around Kharkov grows tighter and tighter. The German resistance is tough, particularly in the south-east, but the Russians are driving steadily on. aiv3 one dispatch puts them at only fitfe miles from the city at one point. The- last official news of the Russian progress in the Stalino sector says that the escape gap between; the Soviet advances along the coast" of the Sea of Azov is only 70 miles wide. The great steel city of Stalino seems to be one of the immediate Soviet objectives in this area. The Germans now have only one single-track railway line left to get away the whole of their Donets forces, and even t ns line will be snapped if the. Russians take Stalino. , , . • . The "News Chronicle" reporter in Moscow says in his dispatch tonight that the Russian advance in the Donets Basin is very fast, both from the east •and from the north. He confirms reports of enormous German losses m materials. Near Likhaya the Russians captured 16 railway engines and 550 railway trucks packed with war material of all kinds. At another place 600 lorries and nearly a dozen tramloads of military equipment, including tanks, have been seized by the Russians. , . , ► The Russians are hammering at Kharkov with four powerful columns. The Germans are using crack S.S. troops and are still fighting stubbornly, but the Russians are battering tyieir way forward. I Further north the Russians are pushing on and extending their drive from Kursk. Tonight's Moscow communique mentions for the first time a new advance west of the city. This suggests that the Soviet forces which remained in Kursk to mop up and consolidate have now joined in the westward advance.