GERMANS FLEE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 196, 21 July 1941, Page 5

GERMANS FLEE

CLAIM BY MOSCOW.

CITY RECAPTURED

(United Press Association-Copyright) (Rec. 11 a.m.) LONDON, July 20 According to the Moscow Red Star, Russian troops, in a coun-ter-offensive, have recaptured a city (the city is not named, but is described as “S”).'

The newspaper adds that superior German forces lied in disorder before attacks frontal and on both tianKs. The Russians' pursued and decimated the Germans with artillery fire and bayonet charges.

The Germans abandoned a considerable quantity of cannon, tanks, and armoured cars.

Although the Berlin propaganda machine is churning out a stream ot extravagant claims and promises, Axis diplomats at Istanbul arc more cautious. They estimate that at least four million of the best-equipped and mechanised Russian troops have not yet been engaged and are being held strategically behind the lines iu preparation for counter-offensives. Tho diplomats also admit that the Russian air force is fighting hard.

NAZI PLANS UPSET

The Russo-German war entered its fifth week with the three prizes for which the blitzkrieg was launched —Leningrad, Moscow, and tho Ukraine—still in Russian hands. The Germans have, however, achieved considerable gains, but the most realistic observers reviewing the course of the war conclude that the Germans have failed to achieve their land objective for the first time dur-

ing the present European war. As Hitler has failed, after four weeks, to gain any of his three objectives it is considered in London that I there are reasonable grounds for opti- | mism regarding the outcome of the • struggle. The latest communiques show (that tho Germans, failing to achieve 'an easy break-through to Leningrad j and the Ukraine, have reverted on the I central front to the policy of throwing !in masses of troops, tanks, and planes to blast a path to Moscow. The immediate battleground is a vast triangle with a 200-mile lino betweou Polotsk and Bobruisk as the base, and the apex east of Smolensk. The afternoon’s German communique states that operations in the Smolensk region are progressing according, to plan; there are further successes on the Finnish front. German and Rumanian forces from Bessarabia have continued | their pursuit of the enemy on tho Dniester after breaking liis resistance. Desperate attempts by the encircled Russian troops to break through at a number of points were frustrated and the enemy suffered heavy losses. Tho Russians are organising and applying sabotage and guerrilla warfare behind the German lines on an enormous scale. Their activities are concentrated not only against the communications of the advancing German armies, but extend back to the very sources of Hitler’s supplies. Stalin’s call lor “scorching the earth” wherever the Germans appear lias been put into effect with devastating results. Never before has an aggressor met

with such ruthless fanaticism. Immediately tlio Germans enter a new town or village they post up notices threatening to shoot anyone hiding or failing to report the presence of guerrillas, but according to the Moscow radio not a single man has yet been betrayed.

The inhabitants of a town on the right bank of the River Dvina formed themselves into guerrilla bands when the Russian regular troops left to conform with the broader strategy. 'The townspeople filled thousands of bottles from the local brewery with petrol and hurled them at the German tanks, scores of which were put ont of action. The town’s resistance was so strong that the German entry was delayed for two days and was accomplished only after intensive artillery preparation. It was a city of the dead when eventually German infantry marched in. Every living soul had been evacuated but seven men hiding under a bridge across the Dvina waiting for the first enemy column to cross, blew up the bridge and perished with the column as it rumbled on to the bridge.