Link-up Believed Accomplished

Evening Star, Issue 25469, 27 April 1945, Page 5

Link-up Believed Accomplished

ELBE AND DANUBE CONTROLLED

Giant Trap Almost I Sprung

Patton Closing on Hitler's Eyrie Pre3s Association—By Telegraph-^Copyright (Eec. 11 a.m.) " LONDON, April 26. A large-scale link-up with the Russians along scores of miles of the central German front appears to have taken place, and it is believed here to-night that the official announcement is imminent, says Renter's correspondent at Shaef. The American Ninth and t'he British Second Army control a 200-mile stretch of the Elbe Biver, from the estuary south of Hamburg to its junction with the Mulde, south of Dessau. The Ninth Army has cleared up the last German pocket west of the Elbe, opposite Rittenberg, to create an enormous springboard along the Elbe for any future operations. The Americans all along the Mulde are evidently preparing for the junction with the Russians. Third Army troops to the south-east are strung out along a 100-mile stretch on the west side of the Czech frontier, and the Third and Seventh armies together control, or are across, the Danube for 180 miles east of Sigmaringen. Elsewhere, pockets are being cleaned up and river barriers neutralised. If, after the link-up, the German army has still got to be shown that it is completely whipped, then the Allied armies will be in a position to prove it to them swiftly.

German Armies Severed

The Associated Press correspondent with the Twelfth Army Group cables that aerial observers have reported that the Germans are massing troops and machines in the .vicinity of Passau, moving eastwards and northwards, seemingly trying to save that gateway to the redoubt.

The Associated Press correspondent at Shaef reports that General Pattern's drive to within seven miles of the Austrian border promises to cut the German forces in Southern Europe in two.

It is a double-barrelled threat to clear out the Alpine stronghold in Southern Bavaria and Western Austria, and simultaneously encircle the Germans in Bohemia and Moravia. When the Allied armies meet north and south of Czecho-Slovakia; the enemy-held portion will represent a trap far larger than the disastrous Ruhr pocket.

Patton's tank columns are now less than 75 miles from Berchtesgaden.