RUSSIAN CAMPAIGNS

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 October 1944, Page 5

RUSSIAN CAMPAIGNS

WINTER SNOW STARTING NEW THRUST IN HUNGARY (Rec. 10.50 a.m.) 1 LONDON, October 30. Winter has taken a hand in the ■eastern front fighting, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. A communique, last night, confined itself to Russian activities m Czechoslovakia and Northern Hungary. The arrival of snow at present is somewhat hampering military operations and air action, nevertheless dispatches from the fronts stretching from the Arctic almost to the Adriatic tell of amazing resourcefulness of the Russian peasant soldier who is fighting equally well in the Arctic and Tundra, East Prussian forest, Polish mud and Carpathian mountains. Von Hammer, German military commentator, gave proof of this in an announcement that the Red Army, this morning, started yet another iresh drive —this time between the Danube and Tisa Rivers across the Hungarian plain against Budapest. Von Hammer said: “The assault opened _ at dawn over a broad front. Hungarian troops prevented a breakthrough.” The Berlin radio previously aamitted the Russians have established five bridgeheads across the Tisa north ana south of Szolnok, 55 miles south-east of Budapest. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says that with Malinovsky attacking from the south-east and Petrovs trans-Carpathia armies pmsed on Hungary’s northern border, Budapest faces the threat of encirclement. He adds that although the battle for East Prussia is still raging, the weather at the moment is giving the Germans some respite from the Red Army s heavy blows.

DRIVE FOR KOENTGSBERG.

LONDON, October 31.

Reuter's correspondent expresses the opinion that Chernyakovsky is at present building up strength for the second phase of the East Prussian operation—the drive for Koemgsberg. He adds it would appear that, meantime, the German efforts to stave oft the Russian sweep into East Prussia have not been in vain. The German News Agency stated that the German front had taken back a few miles of the Auts area. The Russians on the northern wing of the Eastern Front had continued their double assault all day, with forces and a powerful array of material. HUNGARIAN-CZECH FRONT LONDON, October 30. Red Army forces on the eastern border of Czechoslovakia and Hungary are now poised for a new drive into Hungary from the north. “Marshal Malinovsky’s forces north-east of Nyiregyhaza (Hungary) have linked up with General Petrov s army which captured Csap,” says Reuter’s correspondent in Moscow. “This link-up gives the Red Army a solid front right across Hungary, and paves the way for the advance against Budapest.” CAPTURE OF PRISONERS. LONDON, October 30. To-night’s Soviet communique again deals only with the fighting in Czechoslovakia and Hungary. It says the Russians in Czechoslovakia, north of Uzhorod have captured a number of places. Troops of the Fourth Ukrainian Front from October 27 to 29 took prisoner 10.160, bringing the total Germans and Hungarians captured from October 20 to 29 to 21,390 officers and men. The Russians m Hungary, north-west of Satumare, captured several places, including Acarei Mari, 20 miles south of Cop. JUGOSLAV ADVANCE. LONDON, October 30. A communique from Marshal Broz's headquarters says: “Jugoslav units have reached the outskirts oi Zagreb. The greater part of Slavonia has been freed and the entire Dalmatian coastline from Zara to Herzegovina is in our hands. GERMAN ATROCITY LONDON, October 30. German resistance in East Prussia is reported by correspondents to have stiffened. The enemy has launched a number of counter-attacks, which have slowed the Russian offensive. “Evidence from East Prussia makes it almost certain that the Gestapo deliberately made the first German Lidice' of the village of Nemmersdori on the Angerapp river,” says the Stockholm correspondent of ine Times ” “They burned all the dwellings and killed all the inhabitants who had not obeyed orders to evacuate. The German propaganda machine in the last few days has been charging the Russians with the outrage, hysterically asserting that Nemmersdori is an example of the policy of extermination of German civilians being carried out by the Russians in tfle east and by the British and Americans in the west, but the story is not cohesive, and there are some serious mistakes. All the available evidence indicates’that the Russians have not yet reached Nemmersdorf, or been less than five miles from the village.