The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1943. HEAVY AXIS DEFEAT.

Evening Star, Issue 24415, 29 January 1943, Page 2

The Evening Star FRIDAY, JANUARY 29, 1943. HEAVY AXIS DEFEAT.

! Tueke seems to be no doubt now that tiie Soviet ring of steel which was thrown round the German Sixth Army in front of Stalingrad has accomplished its purpose; of liquidating one of the most important groups of Hitler's forces. This was the army the Fuhrer had ordered to take Stalingrad at all costs. When he last spoke to the nation he confidently assured the people that the town, a key point on the Volga, would fall, adding to his remarks by way of emphasis the words, " Xevcr fear." But the German people do fear, and deep down in his heart Hitler must also fear. Ileverse niter reverse has been the lot of the Axis forces, hut none has been more devastating than the defeat before Stalingrad, resulting in the loss in one .way or another of 200,000 men and of material losses estimated as being heavier than those of the British in the evacuations from Dunkirk, Greece, and Norway combined. It is believed in London that the Sixth Army was sacrificed partly for prestige audi partly as the result of miscalculation. Probably neither the survivors of this tremendous debacle nor the civilian masses at home, from whom the news cannot be kept, will find any comfort in this kind of prestige, while troops in other war areas will become increasingly apprehensive lest in the course of time they, too, will he -offered up as a sacrifice to the Nazi gods. Apparently .typical Nazi propaganda has been largely responsible for keeping von Hoth's encircled forces together as Jong as they were. According to a' high Russian officer who interviewed German prisoners taken in the course of the campaign, the Axis troops were continually told that capture by the Russians meant that they would l have to face a firing squad. Theirs must be afight to the death, with no quarter. Whatever the German soldiers themselves thought, of the. vainglorious exhortations to die for the Fatherland .rather than surrender, it is certain that satellite soldiers like the Rumanians would gain little inspiration from the German High Command's recent reminder that they were " fighting shoulder to shoulder with their German comrades to the last man and fully sharing the glory." The Russian j successes on other fronts—the Axis j leaders cannot be sure on which sector the next .storm will break—must be haying a dispiriting effect incapable of being entirely dissipated by any form of propaganda. The Russians report further gains on the Voronezh sector, and their drives on Rostov from the north, north-east, and south-east are threatening one of the most important Axis bases. The capture within the past week of Kameuskaya. to the northeast, may be followed eoon by the occupation of Likhaya. Tf this'town falls to the Russians, the Germans will have lost a vital railway junction linking the Rostov industrial area with the north, and Rostov itself will be gravelv imperilled.