VAST RETREATS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 5, 7 January 1944, Page 3

VAST RETREATS

FORECAST IN GERMANY

NAZI PLIGHT IN EAST

Rec. 2.30 p.m. LONDON, Jan. 6. The gradual but inexorable loss of communications has made the Germans J frenziedly cling to .the important railway centre of Berdichev. Right up to the moment of the Russians' final attack, the enemy were building fortifications and bringing up reinforcements. It was only after Red Army forces had fought from street to street that what was left of the once prosperous farming town was reclaimed. The Red Army column which took Byela Tserkov is pushing out southeastwards in the direction of Cherkasi. The Germans entrenched along the west bank of the Dnieper in the Cherkasi region represent a menace to General Vatutin's left flank should he advance to the Dnieper bend. s Reuter's correspondent, cabling from Moscow tonight, said that General Vatutin is forcing the pace as he drives the fleeing Germans south-west of Berdichev, where the enemy's losses in killed, wounded, and taken prisoner are unofficially estimated at 12,000. The Germans apparently are concentrating on the defence of Vinnitsa with the object of holding off the Russians from the Odessa railway. Enemy sources continue to play up the magnitude of the Russian tank attack east of Kirovograd. One Berlin commentator called it the greatest tank battle of the winter campaign. Berlin, through its overseas service, which the German people do not hear, forecast vast new retreats comparable with those of last summer and autumn, when the Germans fell back 350 miles from Kursk. The military commentator Hallensleben sai,d: "Elastic defence and defence everywhere are again the order of the day for the High Command this winter. This probably means that the developments this winter will be similar to those seen during the summer and autumn in Russia. What does it matter if Russian territory is given up in order to preserve our army with a view to the tasks facing the Wehrmacht elsewhere?" Tonight's Russian communique says that the Red Army north of Nevel continued its offensive and captured several inhabited places. Troops of the First Ukrainian Front captured Rokitno, 12 miles west of the 1939 Polish border, and Chudnov, a district centre in the Zhitomir region. They also captured a district centre in the Rovno region besides over eight other inhabited places. The British United Press emphasises ~that the Russian capture of Rokitno is the first official Russian intimation that Vatutin's forces are across the old Polish border.