RAPID RED ADVANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 10, 12 July 1944, Page 5

RAPID RED ADVANCE

Invasion Of Reich Nearer

MORE NAZI DISASTERS

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) Eec. 10.30 a.m. LONDON, July 11. The Red Army is rapidly reducing the distance to the East Prussian border and is developing a war of manoeuvre in place of the slogging battles on the roads to the Baltic and Warsaw, says Reuters Moscow correspondent. According to the latest reports the Russians beyond Lida have reached a point within 60 miles of East Prussia. This is an advance of about 10 miles from the previously reported position. The Germans have begun to, remove the factories from East Prussia as the Russian spearheads approach the border. Telephone communication between East Prussia and Berlin has been stopped. A' German military command has replaced the civil authority in a deep area along the border. New disasters confront the Germans everywhere, adds the correspondent. Heavily-armed Cossacks and powerful armoured columns are operating in what the Germans considered only a few weeks ago was their deep rear. The front line tonight is mile after mile of swirling confusion in which Cossacks and tanks are, operating in deadly combination.

About 250,000 Germans are retreating on the main front where the German High Command is moving up divisions from its reserve pool to support its battered units, in a grim bid to hold the Vilna-Grodno-Bialystok-Brest LitoA'sk line. To the north Bagramyan's artillery is moving- within range of Dvinsk, which is the last great fortress commanding the road to Eiga. A big thrust past Vilna has been made in the past 24 hours though a battle is still, raging in the centre of the city. German airborne troops were flown up in the effort to save Vilna.

forces have bombed the principal refineries in Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Yugoslavia.

Another third of the enemy's total supplies came from synthetic plants, and 13 of these have now been damaged. The enemy is making strenuous efforts to repair the destruction, but the damage is on such a scale that some of the work certainly will have to wait.

Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht has to face major offensives on three fronts with an inadequate supply of oil for its aircraft, tanks, and mechanised transport.

had a secret arms dump and even a small arms factory hidden on an island in the middle of the marsh. They had a number of light tanks which ' they had captured from the Germans. The guerrilla leader, Lieut-General Koslov, said that in the Minsk area 10,000 of the 75,000 partisans .were women

Russian mobile forces are fanning out across the. Latvian and Lithuanian borders at a rate which has not been equalled in the whole campaign. The cutting by the Red Army of the Dvinsk-Kaunas road, far to the northwest of Vilna, represented an advance of 35 miles in 24 hours. The whole northern front is moving rapidly towards Kaunas. The, main battle for Dvinsk is at hand. Siauliai railway junction, west of Dvinsk, controlling the network between Riga and Tilsit and Prussia, is the key to the entire northern sector. The number of Germans killed or made prisoner in the Minsk trap, which early reports said was over 41,000, is mounting in thousands each day. The final figure is expected to exceed those of the Vitebsk and Bobruisk traps. BIG NEW ADVANCES. The Moscow communique says that inside Vilna the Russians are continuing to wipe out the German garrison, which is now completely surrounded. Big new advances have been made at the northern end of the front and have carried the Red Army nearer Dvinsk. Another German general fell into Russian hands today. He is the commander of the German Twenty-seventh Corps and was captured east of Minsk. More than 2000 prisoners were taken, which completes the mopping up of the German forces encircled here. A Russian guerrilla army of 170,000 men has been incorporated in the Red Army, says Moscow reports. Many of the guerrillas are helping to mop up the trapped German forces near Minsk and Vilna. The guerrilla army is a complete replica.of the regular Soviet army and has its own newspaper and: radio equipment. Guerrillas operating in the Minsk forests before the Red Army's advance