WILL HOLD ON

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 263, 6 October 1942, Page 5

WILL HOLD ON

RUSSIANS DETERMINED

HITLER THWARTED (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright.) (Rec. 9.50 a.m.) MOSCOW, Oct. 5. Stalingrad’s provincial committee of the Communist Party snatched time off from the_ battle for a meeting at which it reaffirmed its determination to hold on at all costs. Farmers and workers from other parts of the province advised that they will keep the city supplied. Officials maintain that the defence of Stalingrad has thwarted Hitler’s plan to throw troops against the Russians all along the front from Moscow to Baku, on the Caspian Sea. The Official Wireless quotes the Soviet morning report which says the Germans, at heavy cost, pushed forward slightly in the workers’ settlement at Stalingrad. Elsewhere the Russians repulsed attacks. An assurance that everything possible was being pressed and urged by Britain in order to give the most speedy relief to the hardpressed Russian army was given by the Minister of Information (Mr

Bracken) in a speech at Kilmar-

nock. STALIN STILL DEFENCE HEAD. A New York cable states that rumours circulated in Switzerland and broadcast by Axis propagandists that M. Stalin has relinquished the Defence Commissariat are explicitly discredited in Moscow.

The following message has been received from the correspondent of the Associated Press in Moscow: “M. Stalin remains leader of the Red Army, although Marshal Sliaposhnikov was praised on his 60th birthday as an eminent leader.” The erroneous report cabled yesterday announcing the appointment of Shaposhnikov as supreme commander was apparently a misunderstanding of Russian broadcasts anent birthday congratulations.