RUSSIAN ADVANCES

Grey River Argus, 20 April 1945, Page 5

RUSSIAN ADVANCES

ON BERLIN & PRAGUE 17 Miles From Former LONDON, April Id German reports stated that the Russians advanced more than halfway from the Oder to Berlin in the Kustrin area. The Russians are using nine armies and attacking under a permanent air umbrella with fresh troops coming forward as though on a conveyor belt. To-night’s .Soviet communique makes no mention of the offensive against Berlin, but Red Army despatches from the Oder front state the Russians are close- enough to Berlin to see the burning ' City. A German war correspondent broadcasting from Berlin said: "The Russian barrage is beyond all imagination. They fired mor-e than 10,ODD tons of shells in the first three days of their offensive between Frankfurt and north-west of Kustrin.” The German High Command has summed up the battle for Berlin in these words: “A defensive battle is raging with great fury on the Oder. Our gallant divisions, effectively supported by artillery, repulsed the Russians, who are far superior in men and material. The reports thus far to hand state that 257 tanks were destroyed in this sector yesterday. ’ Later the German High Command declared that so fierce were the armoured clashes that the Red Army in the past 24 hours lost 510 tanks. (Rec. 12.30) LONDON April 19 The German News Agency announced: Russian forces established a bridgehead across the River Spree twelve miles from Kottbus.

Reuter’s correspondent in Moscow stated: A security silence on a tremendous clash of arms east of Berlin is still unfitted. Front line reports are reaching Moscow of enemy tank and aircraft losses. These indicate the intensity of armoured air battles raging in the eastern front. Berlin radio on Wednesday night admitted that the Russians reached a line from Wulkow to Sieversdorf, which respectively are 24 and 17 miles east-north-east and east of greater Benin. The German News Agency, reporting on Koniev’s break through west of the Neisse River, said: Russians also broke into Forst. Germany’s most powerful radio transmitter at Konigswusterhausen, eighteen miles south-south-east .of the centre of Berlin, has been silent since 7 p.m. on Wednesday. Moscow radio says: The time is at hand when Allied and Russian armies shall unite and once they have linked up, they will unleash a final assault as a single force, smashing Hitler’s Germany to pieces. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent stated: Russian dispatches to-day were almost confined to reports of substantial gains in Czechoslovakia where a Russian pincer drive to squeeze out a huge German salient m the eastern part of the country is going well. Both Ostravia and Brno have already been outflanked, the former from north-west and the latter from the south-west. Malinovsky’s forward troops are only eight miles from Brno. They are shelling the city outskirts, while another column is by-passing the city along secondary roads to Prague. A Russian communique stated:— Troops of the Third White Russian Command continued a battle lot annihilation of German remnants pressed against Port Pillau, 8.73 U prisoners being taken in this area yesterday; also eighty tanks and sellpropelled guns, sixty-nine armoured carriers. 544 field guns, 416 mortars and 4,000 lorries. Colonel Templehot commander of Twenty-eighth Gmman Infantry Division, was captuieci. Troops of the Fourth Front south-west and south of bnr fought a way into and captmea (hh-’ty localities. On Czechoslovakian territory, troops of the Second Ukrainian’Front occupied Ivamce and fought a way into several other places. Troops on this front north of Vienna occupied the town ot Mistelbach, besides a number ot other places. Eight enemy transports, totalling forty-six thousand tons, one trawler; patrocutters, and two torpedo boats weie sunk in Port Pillau and the open sea on April 15 and 16.