LOSS OF WHOLE LANDS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 7, 10 January 1944, Page 5

LOSS OF WHOLE LANDS

GERMANS PREPARED FOR IT LONDON, January 8. "The German armies must now be prepared not merely to fight a steady retreat, but to withdraw from and abandon whole countries," a Wilfcelmstrasse. spokesman told neutral correspondents.. "It is now a question of which countries the German forces should give up to carry out essential plans for Germany's defence. "We have to remember that we must keep at least 100 divisions ready for the Allied invasion in the west," he said. The next few days will show whether it is worth while to abandon our positions in the Dnieper altogether to shorten the front. There is no doubt in Berlin that the present battles in Russia are the decisive round and that the European war will unquestionably be decided on the eastern front, not by bombing, nor in Italy, nor by invasion from the west, says the official German news agency. The Societ attacks have now assumed the character of a general offensive which German military circles view as an all-out effort to smash the German eastern front. Reports reaching Berlin in the last 24 hours indicate no slackening in the fury of the Soviet offensive, particularly in tl.e Dnieper bend.