NAZI DISASTER

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

NAZI DISASTER

COMING ACCELERATED

THREAT IN DNIEPER BEND Rec. 1 p.m. RUGBY, January 9. The new Russian break-through on a 75-mile front in the middle of the Dnieper bend threatens to accelerate the disaster which is already beginning to stare the German armies in the face. The sector where that disaster threatens is still in the direction of Kiev, and towards northern Rumania. Here the advance has been broadened to well over 100 miles, from the Dnieper near Kanev to the approaches of Vinnitsa. In the last two days the Russians have made some 15 miles of progress east of Vinnitsa and are within 10 miles of the east of that place. Illyintsi, which they have captured, is 35 miles east and slightly south of Vinnitsa. The vital railway from Germany through southern Poland to southern Russia is therefore less than 25 miles ahead. Directly south of Kiev, the Russians are within 35 miles of the north-west and north of Uman. NEARING SARNY. The westward drive on the northern flank almost reached the Sarny rail junction by the capture of Czudel, eight miles to the south-east. Northwest of Gorodinitsa, the Russians are a dozen miles across the 1939 Polish frontier. Hardly anywhere has there been slackening in the pace of the offensive. All this carefully-shored-up Dnieper front, with its dangerous salients and unmilitary-looking angles, has collapsed in its centre and weakest part. It is scarcely conceivable, in these circumstances, that we do. not stand on the eve of great events. To bolster up their prestige and keep the enemy from the Balkans the German High Command took very big risks in south Russia. There is no indication that the German armies there are anything like trapped, but at any rate something greater than another defeat seems to be in store for them. One well-informed London commentator considers that the German decision to stand in the Dnieper bend, regardless of consequences, will compel Mannstein to choose between defending southern Poland and defending Rumania, and that the Russians intend to compel him to choose the Rumanian alternative, leaving a gap of 200 miles between the Pripet Marshes and the Carpathians. TOWARDS RUMANIA. I Assuming the Germans retreat from the lower Dnieper, they presumably now have no alternative but to do so towards Rumania, relying chiefly on the mediocre railway across the Dniester where the front would be deviously supplied through Hungary. The most immediate and crucial question is whether the Germans, while holding on at Vinnitsa, are able soon to amass sufficient reserves to deliver another counter-offensive from Rovno and Tarnopol along the main railways eastwards. —8.0. W.