RED ARMY FEATS

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1944, Page 5

RED ARMY FEATS

M. Stalin’s Review

(Rec. 10.10) LONDON, May 1. M. Stalin issued a' May Day order of the day reviewing achievements of the Red Army since Stalingrad. He declared: Tens .of millions of Russians have been liberated and vast territories recovered because the Soviet High Command employed correct tatties and strategy, which troops and commanders carried out with high morale, offensive ardour, and increasing skill. Our great allies, Britain and America, contributed considerably. They are holding a front in Italy against Germans, diverting from us a considerable part of the German troops, and they are supplying us with very valuable strategical raw materials, and armaments, and undermining Germany’s military might by subjecting military objectives in Germany to systematic bombing. However, if the entire Soviet people in the rear had not backed up the Red Army, its success might' have proved unstable, and been reduced to nought by the first serious enemy counterblow. The Red Army in battles against the enemy displayed unexampled heroism. But the Soviet people are not in their debt. Under difficult war-time conditions, the people achieved decisive successes, by mass producing armaments, clothing and provisions and delivering them to fronts on time. M. Stalin reviewed industrial, scientific and agricultural progress, and said hundreds of new ‘factories, power stations, and railways were operating. Fresh millions of Russians went to lathes and mastered most complex trades. After paying a tribute to the peasants for food production, to the intelligentsia for outstandingachievements and discoveries in science and culture and also to Soviet women for courageous self-sacrifical service, M. Stalin continued: “Patriotic war has demonstrated Soviet people to be capable of performing miracles, emerging victorious from the hardest trials.' The Russians are determined to bring nearer the enemy’s rout, completely to restore the national economy which the Fascists destroyed, qnd to make Russia more powerful and wealthier. A bloc of Fascist Powers, under blows from the Red Army, was- falling to pieces. Fear and confusion reign among the Roumanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian’ and Finnish allies of Hitler, who cannot fail to see Germany has lost the war. Their only possibility of avoiding a catastrophe is to break with the Germans, 'and withdraw from the war. It is difficult to see the present Governments of these countries breaking with the Germans. Their people will have to take the cause of liberation into their own hands. The sooner these people realise that ’he Hitlerites have brought them to a dead end, the sooner they will end all support for the Germans, and for Quislings, and the less destruction will war bring to their countries. It also will enable them to count .on more understanding from Democratic countries.” x ' ■M. Stalin said: “Three-quarters of the Russian territories occupied by the Axis have been liberated, and the task now is to clear all of the territories, and to. restore the State frontier of the Soviet Union between the Black t Sea and the Barents Sea. The task cannot be limited to the expulsion of the enemy from the Motherland. The German Army is now like a wounded beast, crawling back to its hiding place, in Germany, in order to lick its wounds. But the wounded beast has not ceased to be dangerous.” . ' Continuing, M. Stalin said: In order to rid Russia' and the Allies of danger of enslavement, we must pursue the wounded German beast, and finish it off in its lair. We must liberate from slavery our brothers, Poles, Zechs and others in Western Europe who at present are under the heel of Germany. This obviously is a more difficult matter than the expulsion of the Germans from Russian territory. It can be solved on a basis of “Co-ordinated efforts of Russia, Britain, and the United States, by means of synchronised blows from the east by Russians, and from the west by the Allies. Only thus can Hitlerite Germany be completely crushed.”

In commemoration of great vic tories of the Russian workers M. Stalin ordered a May Day salvo of twenty salvoes from guns in. Moscow, Leningrad, Gomel, Kiev, Kharkov, Rostov, Tiflis, Simeropol and Odessa. Huge portraits of Soviet leaders were hung in Moscow streets for May Day but there is no report as to whether a parade is being held in Red Square. Key factories are carryinp- on as usual, although May 1 and 2 are official holidays.