Population In Flight

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 11, 13 July 1944, Page 5

Population In Flight

NEW RED OFFENSIVE

(By Telegraph—Press Assoclatlon-^-Copyrlght.) ~,^ ~ ~,. ~ , _, Rec. 11 a.m. LONDON, July 12. With the Russians driving deeper into Lithuania and nearer to East Prussia it is reported from Stockholm that Nazi Party officials and their families are fleeing from East Prussia. This follows the evacuation of about 300,000 foreign workers from this province.

The Red Army has now advanced 250 miles in 19 days and no amount of assurance from German spokesmen can stem the panic and defeatism among the German populations in the areas attacked or directly threatened. The Lithuanian quisling. Governor Kulibiuhns is reported to have fled to Germany.

A German military spokesman is quoted by the German news agency as saying: "It is obvious that the Eastern Front cannot remain as it is. There are two alternatives—firstly, a large-scale counter-offensive, and secondly, the adaptation of the entire front to new lines. As we are on the defensive, the second alternative is the one to be applied." _^

The Kussians have opened.up a big new offensive on the Second Baltic Front just north of Polotsk. In an Order of the Day Marshal Stalin announces that Soviet troops have broken through the German defences on a front 90 miles wide. They have advanced up to 21 miles in two days of hard fighting, and have captured the important rail junction and town of Idritsa.

This junction is the crossing point of two important lines. One runs from Pskov, in the north, down to Polotsk. The other line drives westward across the frontier of the Latvian Republic and on to Riga.

Idritsa is 26 miles from the frontier. It is one of 1000 places which fell to the Second Baltic Army in the past two days, and tonight the guns of Moscow saluted this victory with more big salvos.

German propaganda is keeping very quiet about this new Russian offensive. One German military commentator gave a good deal of time today to the fighting between Vilna and Dvinsk, and said that the Germans had had to withdraw there and at Baranowicze. Almost as an afterthought he mentioned lively fighting north of Polotsk, in which, he said, a fresh Soviet division was taking part.

The German news agency stated earlier that heavy battles had developed east of Alytus, which is about 2V miles inside the Lithuanian frontier, and is the third point at which the Red Army has crossed the Lithuanian border.

The Ked Army's advance to Alytus on the Memel River south-east of Kaunas may mean that the Russians have achieved a complete breakthrough to East Prussia, because Alytus is 32 miles west of Olkienki, which was the furthest point of advance that the Russians claimed yesterday.

The advance to Alytus suggests a Russian attempt to outflank Kaunas from the south. On the other hand, in conjunction with the Russian advance along the Vilna-Kaunas railway, it may be a pincer movement aimed at surrounding the Lithuanian capital. Alytus is also only 52 miles from the East Prussian border [this refers to the original East Prussian border and not the border of Suwalki Province which Hitler, under a decree of 1939, incorporated into East Prussia.]

STAGGERING ADMISSIONS

The military' correspondent of the British United Press says that the Ger-

man admissions are among the most staggering of the war and following on General Dietmar's broadcast yesterday he thinks the Germans are being prepared for the loss of the Baltic States and a retreat at least as far as the Kaunas-Grodno-Brest Litovsk line which is the last main German defence line in the east.

The British United Press Moscovv correspondent reports that the last "bitter battles are going on in the narrow streets of the old city of Vilna through which only one cart can pass at a time.

German tommy-gunners from picked reserves who were flown in on tranpbrt planes at the last moment and installed in the belfries of Vilna's mediaeval churches are firing on the Eed Army troops in the streets. A crack Storm Troop regiment defended the Vilna airfield and fought back until it was wiped out in a final bayonet charge. The railway station was defended with equal ferocity. Prisoners said they were not only threatened with a court-martial, but with reprisals against their families in Germany unless they held out to the end.

MAIN BASTIONS GONE. The Russians are moving well beyond the main German bastions which guarded the approaches to East Prussia and central Poland, says Reuters Moscow correspondent. Dvinsk is outflanked from the south-east, Vilna, with its isolated garrison, is being left far in the reafc of the main front, and Baranowicze i£ becoming an increasingly effective base for the Russians' intensified onslaught towards Brest Litovsk.

Pinsk is still in German hands, but the main forces originally earmarked for its defence are half paralysed in the Pripet Marshes to the east and probably will never reach the city.

General Bagramyan's First Baltic Army, which is thrusting direct for Kaunas, the last great German hedgehog before the East Prussian frontier, is now astride the Kaunas-Dvinsk road for nearly 15 miles and is beginning to move round Dvinsk itself.

A front line report says: "The biggest defeat of the war is in the making on the northern plains."

The German news ageacy's commentator Majt>r yon Hammer admitted that the German troops in the Baranowicze and Lida areas had been compelled to retreat to new lines further west to avoid encirclement by strong Russian tank and mobile formations.