GERMAN CLAIMS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20861, 13 August 1942, Page 4

GERMAN CLAIMS

VICTORY IN EAST END OF DON BATTLE OVER 1,000,000 PRISONERS (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (2 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 12. A special German communique states: “The encirclement battle west of Kalach has ended. We took prisoner 35,00 Russians and inflicted very heavy casualties. We took prisoner 57,000 on the Don bend since July 23. The Don bend battles resulted in the annihilation of the bulk of the 62nd Russian Army and the major parts of the First Russian Tank Army. A total of 1,044,000 Russians have been captured since the beginning of the spring to the conclusion of the Don bend battle. We captured or destroyed 6271 tanks and IQ, OOO guns, shot down 5600 planes, and destroyed 432 on the ground.” <A German High Command communique reports that the Germans are advancing further into the Caucasus. The Rumanians took the town of Slavianskaya, GO miles from Novorossisk, and inland from the Taman : peninsula. The communique claims that strong Russian attacks on the Voronej, Rjey, Lake-Ilmen, and Volkhov fronts, were driven off. 1 There is no evidence to confirm , the German c laims in regard to Kalach or to suggest that fierce fighting has ceased on the right bank of the Don ben. | A Tass News Agency despatch from I the front line says_ that the Russians have improved their positions in the Kletskaya area. The agency adds that violent fighting broke Out on another sector south of Kletskaya, where the Russians threw back the Germans and captured an important height. A Stockholm message says that every seventh obituary notice in the German newspapers concerning deaths o.rt the Russian front now records the second death, in the family. The German authorities are renewing their eoffrts to restrain the insertion of obituaries, which, are limited to 25 a day for each newspaper.