MILLIONS OF MEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 207, 2 August 1941, Page 7

MILLIONS OF MEN.

11 ED ARMY UNDAUNTED. NAZI STRENGTH SAPPED. LONDON, Aug. 1. TTie Russian-German war has resolved itself into a battle of attrition, with the Red Army's masses slowly sapping the strength of the Germans, according to observers in Moscow. The Stockholm correspondent of the Dailv Mail says military circles in Moscow declared : "The Germans have been fought to a standstill and are wearing themselves out in futfje assaults." The Red Army spokesman (General Chodi.n) to-dn\- said: "The Germans lost the war in the first few days. Millions of our soldiers arid thousands of our tanks and planes have taken up positions, and the Red Army's resistance is passing from the defensive to the. offensive." Yesterday's reports showed no territorial change from the Arctic to the Black Sea. The Stockholm correspondent of the Times said the Germans claimed that they have hegun to exterminate the Russians in Ksthouia, westward of Lake Peipus, hut nothing indicated that appreciable German progress has been made there.

The swoop against Leningrad bus lost, its impetus, similarly the. attempt to reach Moscow via Smolensk. Neither plan has apparently been abandoned. and the Germans are collecting their strength for new assaults. Experts doubted whether the impending third offensive planned by the Gormans- —though backed by the desperate conviction that they must now do or die—could have such weight as its predecessors because of the losses of supplies and Lhe battering of German man-power. A German military doctor, talking from the Berlin radio, admitted that the German casualties have been so heavy that Ukrainian women and girls are being employed to assist the Nazi medical staff. “There is an incessant flow of wounded to our hospitals,” he said. “All our field hospitals arc overcrowded. and the medical staff is totally insufficient, ft is impossible for us j to deal with all the cases.” The Berlin radio’s official commentator yesterday said that any other I European army would have collapsed | under such heavy losses as the Hus- 1 sians have suffered, but they have so j far always been able to throw in new reserves. It is hoped, lie added, that their reinforcements will soon diminish. German propagandists are now admitting that the earlier claims that the Bed Air Force was annihilated were somewhat premature. PRESSURE MAINTAINED. While the Moscow night communique reports that the ’ Germans have been thrown back in theiSmolen.sk di-I ruction by Russian counter-attacks, ill would be premature to suggest that j Smolensk ltfielf has been relieved from i pressure or that the enemy has been • thrown back any considerable distance. ; Moreover, the extent of the Russian success is not known in the absence of j information regarding the exact point where the Russian thrust was made, since the Germans claim thc virtual encirclement of Smolensk. An expert in the Russian language points out that while the word “direction” appears in Moscow’s translated communiques, instead of “sector” or “region,” the actual Russian word used is one more dynamic, which is lamely “Englished" into “direction,” indicating back and forth. The Moscow radio broadcast a report from Ankara that Count von Schuleiibnrg, the former German Ambassador to Moscow, was placed under house arrest soon after his return to Berlin for, it is reported, his attitude before Germany attacked Russia. 'Hie Lisbon correspondent of the Daily Telegraph says that Dr. Karl Boomer, a high official in the Berlin propaganda department, has been arrested. He was Dr. Gocbbels’s spokesman in communications to the foreign Press. Dr. Boomer had disappeared from the Ministry some time lx'lore correspondents learned of his arrest, for which the reason was given that he was guilty of “indiscretion” at a diplomatic gathering. j The indiscretion is believed to have ] referred to the Russian campaign. .