CAPTURED GERMANS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 71, 21 September 1943, Page 5

CAPTURED GERMANS

Seeking Hitler's Overthrow Rec. noon. LONDON, Sept. 19. In an appeal published by "Pravda" former German officers urge the German army to overthrow Hitler. The appeal is from the Ex-German Officers' Union formed among prisoners held by the Russians. Most of the men were captured at Stalingrad. These include four generals. The Union has been co-opted by the Free German Committee, which was previously formed in Moscow. Generals Yon Seidlitz and Yon Daniels have become vice-chairmen of the committee.

The Officers' Union's appeal states: "All Germany knows what Stalingrad means. We underwent the tortures of hell. We were buried alive, but we have risen again for a new life."

crack of the rifles of German, firing squads since the summer of 1941. Some of the fiercest battles of the war are being fought east of Kiev and along Napoleon's road of retreat towards Smolensk. Three Russian armies are advancing against Smolensk on an arc of less than 30 miles from the city. • , Thrusts from Duchovschina apd Yartsevo threaten to outflank the Germans from the north-east. Front-line dispatches say that south of Smolensk 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 towards Kiev and makes a final pincer movement against the city possible. Two armies are driving towards 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, leaving the Germans only a hazardous sea route. , The advance continues in the Kuban over a battlefield strewn with German dead and abandoned war material.