Growing In Intensity

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 96, 24 April 1945, Page 7

Growing In Intensity

REDUCTION ONE STAGE NEARER

(U.P.A, and 8.0. W.) Bee. 11.40 a.m. LONDON, April 23. Although tough fighting for Berlin is to be expected, its reduction comes a stage nearer with the issue by Marshal Stalin of a historic order announcing that the Russians have broken into the capital. Addressed to Marshal Zhukov, the order says, that troops who launched an offensive from bridgeheads on the west bank of the Oder, supported by massed blows by Soviet artillery and aeroplanes, broke through the strongly-fortified and deeply-staggered German defences covering Berlin from the east. The Soviet troops advanced 40 to 63 miles and occupied Frankfurt-on-Oder (45 miles west of Berlin), Wandlitz, -Oranienburg, Birkenwerder, Hennigsdorf, Pankow (all north of Berlin), and Friedrichsfelde, Karlshorst, and Kopenick (east of the capital), and broke into Berlin.

Marshal Koniev's forces broke into Berlin from the south after sweeping more than 50 miles from the south-east and capturing many towns.

Surging forward along a front of more than 60 miles, Marshal Koniev's armies have reached the east bank of the Elbe, bgtween Dresden and Dessau. Dessau was cleared today by the American Ist Army, Marshal Stalin has not yet made it clear at which, points the Russians have reached the Elbe, but along a 60-mile stretch they are nowhere more than seven miles from the river. There is nothing so far to suggest that American troops have linked with the Russians. Tonight's Soviet announcement makes it clear that when the link-up comes, it will be wide and solid. The British 2nd Army and the American 9th and Ist Armies are massing on the Elbe on a 140-mile front, waiting for the great link-up in strength with the Russians.

News of the Berlin bailie from foreign sources indicates that the struggle continues with growing intensity, and Moscow reports have stated that Berlin is crumbling before the Red Army's assault at the rate of several blocks an hour. The Germans in Berlin are lighting behind every kind of barricade the city can throw up, says the correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain in Moscow. Long-pre-pared concrete pill-boxes, piles of sandbags, overturned trams, buses, and trucks, and in some places even furniture dragged from buildings are .tiled up in the streets. Reports from Paris state that German workers in Berlin have revolted and that foreign slaves have risen against their captors. It is estimated that there are 100,000 troops in Berlin, mostly SS men who are fiehting stubbornly in the inner defence zones, and there may be delay before the city passes completely into Russian hands. , , . , _/ . The picture of the Elbe tonight is ■something like this: On the upper

reaches the Russians are on the east bank, or close to it. Then there is a 20-mile stretch, where the Germans hold both banks. Then, on the middle Elbe for 100 miles downstream from Dessau, the American Ist and 9th Armies are, solidly established on the west bank. There is another small gap .swiftly diminishing, and for the remaining 50 miles downstream to opposite Hamburg the British 2nd Army n in firm control.