LOSS OF BALTIC STATES

Evening Star, Issue 25226, 13 July 1944, Page 5

LOSS OF BALTIC STATES

PREPARING GERMANS FOR JEWS

BIGGEST DEFEAT OF THE WAR IN THE MAKING

(Rec. 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, July 12. The Lithuanian toAvn of Alytus is only 52 miles from the original East Prussian iborder. (not the_ foorder of SuAvalki Province, which Hitler, under the decree of 1939, incorporated into East Prussia). The British United Press military correspondent says that the German admissions are among the

most staggeringof the war, and,

following on General Dietmar's broadcast yesterday, be considers 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 Moscow correspondent reports that 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, flown in in transport planes at the last moment, are installed in belfries in Vilna's medieval churches. They are firing on Red army troops in the streets. A crack storm trooper regiment defended Vilna airfield and fought back until wiped out in a final ■bayonet charge. The railway station was defended with equal ferocity. Prisoners said that they were not only threatened with court martial, but with reprisals against their families in Germany unless they held out to the end. The Lithuanian quisling Governor, Kulibiuhns, -is reported to have fled to Germany. . The (Russians are moving well beyond the main German bastions which guarded the approaches to East Prussia and Central Poland, says Reuter's Moscow correspondent. Dvinsk is out'flanked from the south-east, Vilna. with its isolated garrison, toeing left far in the rear of the main front, while Baranovichi- is becoming an increasingly effective base for the Russians' intensified onslaught toward Brest-Litovsk. Pinsk is still in German hands, but the main forces originally earmarked for its defence are half-paralysed in the Pnpet Marshes to the east and will probably never reach the city. General Bagramyan's nret Baltic armv, 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 Agency's commentator, von Hammer, admitted _ that German troops in the Baranovichi and Lida areas were compelled to retreat to new lines farther west to avoid encirclement by strong Russian tank and mobile formations.