FURIOUS FIGHTING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 63, 15 March 1945, Page 7

FURIOUS FIGHTING

STRUGGLE WEST OF ODER

LONDON, March 14,

As vast Russian armies mass on the Oder east of Berlin, LieutenantGeneral Otto yon Hauenshildt, the German commander in the capital, has announced that he will fight a "Stalingrad battle" in Berlin when the time comes.

This commander in 1941 was in charge of a tank division which got as far as a tram terminus on the outskirts of Moscow. Now his own capital is at stake, and he has given instructions for it to be defended to the last.

He has ordered an "offensive-defen-sive above ground and under ground by means, of . every deception and trick."

POMERANIA ABANDONED

The German news agency's military commentator reports that the German High Command, in preparation for the stupendous battles in the offing, has decided to liquidate .the extended Pomeranian flank and concentrate its forces more effectively along a new northern sector. Large enemy forces will continue to be engaged in the German bastions of Danzig, Guben, and Forst, and for bridgeheads between these cities, he said. The battles are being waged with rising fury. The newly-announced Commander-in-Chief of the Berlin defence sector, Lieutenant-General yon Hauenshildt, has under him other seasoned officers from the Eastern Front, says the German radio.

The enemy, the radio says, is to be worn down as he drives forward on a broad front, and finished dff in the maze of fortified blocks if the Battle for Berlin becomes a battle in Berlin. Bomb craters and heaps of rubble can be developed into classic terrain for close-range fighting. The British United Press says that yon Hauenshildt, who is 50, is an outstanding member of the General Staff. He was wounded in Normandy soon after D Day. German reports say that as well as leading a tank column to Moscow he was flown out wounded from Stalingrad.

As the -Russians fight fierce # battles both on the northern and southern flanks of the Eastern Front an uneasy lull is reported in Moscow to have settled down on the central Oder sector opposite Berlin. Eokossovsky's army on the northern flank have driven forward to within sight of the sea at a number of new points, and spearheads at massed

tanks have smashed their way through the German defence arc to the coast behind the artillery barrage. In the Danzig-Gdynia pocket the Germans are making a last-ditch stand against a Russian drive to split up the grouping into smaller pockets as a preliminary to annihilation. The enemy js fighting under increasingly chaotic conditions and has lost all power of manoeuvre.

The Germans on the southern flank are pushing more men and armour into the battle on the approaches to the Danube. They are striving to force* a decision, but are meeting with powerful counter-blows and heavy fire.

The struggle has gone so far that it is expected the Germans will throw in still more forces in an effort to gain a partial success to repay them for their heavy losses.

"Pravda,': in a front-line dispatch, says that Zhukov's men, looking westward on the night Kustrin fell, had visual evidence of the Allied air forces' close support in the first stages of the battle for Berlin. Over the forest-covered hills the Russians saw the. pale rays of searchlights, and then the sky turned red; it was Allied aircraft bombing Berlin. SOVIET CAPTURES. A Soviet communique reports that the Russians south-east of Danzig advancing on the west bank of the Vistula, occupied a number of places, including Langenau, nine miles south of Danzig. North-west of Gdynia they captured several places, including Bohlscrow, 14 miles north-west of Gdynia, and Gnesdau, on the coast 17 miles north of Gdynia. The Russians m the Gdynia area took prisoner 1000! Germans. In the course of the battles for the Kustrin town fortress the Russians took 3000 prisoners, including Colonel yon Kreuger, commander of the fortress. The Russians north-east and east of Lake Balaton continued to repel tank and infantry attacks, and in this area the Germans lost another 95 tanks yesterday. The German news agency commentator, yon Olberg, said that seven Russian divisions had been thrown into a renewed offensive against Ostrava and had breached the first German defence line. He added that the offensive to-1 wards the Morava gap was in the fourth day. The Russians were determined to force a break-through here at any cost. Major yon Hammer admitted that as a result of Rokossovsky's thrust south of Danzig the German troops had withdrawn "a few more kilometres" and taken up positions on the outer defence belt of the DanzigGdynia area. A German war correspondent, Gerhard Emskoetter, declared that the German garrison of Kilberg had not slept for 200 hours. The town was under a barrage of 250 guns, and the garrison was holding out without any heavy weapons.