BALKAN SATELLITES BORDERING ON PANIC

Evening Star, Issue 25069, 10 January 1944, Page 3

BALKAN SATELLITES BORDERING ON PANIC

Germans In Extreme Danger

Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright (Kec 11 a.m.) , RUGBY, January 9. The capture of Kirovograd and the Russian advance beyond the town in the general direction of Nikolayev place the Germans holding the Krivoi Rog and Nikopol positions in extreme danger. It is still pointed out in London that there is no sign yet of the Germans abandoning these positions, despite what the Bussians describe as a break-through and what the Germans call an avalanche. Speculation in London Sunday newspapers is that Hitler is not concerned so much now with the loss of iron or

manganese from Krivoi Bog as with the disastrous effect of wholesale evacuation of southern, Russia on the morale of his Balkan satellites and the possible loss of the Ploesti oilfields. Military* correspondents almost unanimously agree that the loss of Kirovograd means that the German Dnieper Bend defences are collapsing. The 'Sunday Times,' while pointing out that the battle of the Ukraine is not yet over, says: " Von Mannstein must have more troops or he is finished.", The whole scene recalls strongly those moments in the battles of the past when fate hung poised between defeat and disaster. It seems to the onlooker that with little more pressure the fabric of the German defence will fall to pieces. It has happened on the borders of Poland and is not far away, so far as one can judge from a distance,.in the vital area of Vinnitsa-Jmerinka." The 'Observer ' says that in south-east Europe the Russian advance has created political turmoil and conditions bordering on panic and" satellite countries. " The puppet Governments and their followers, "it states, " are now watching the Russian advance towards Bessarabia and Bukovina as a shipwrecked mariner on a reef would watch the rise of the tide which will inevitably sweep him away."