GERMAN FAILURES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 264, 7 October 1942, Page 2

GERMAN FAILURES

3.45 P.M. EDITION

GREAT ASSAULTS HELD. HUGE ENEMY FORCE. (N.Z. Press Association. —Copyright.) (Rec. 1.10 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 6. The great German assault against the workers’ settlement in North-Western Stalingrad has now raged for more than 60 hours but so far has failed to gain ground. Tile Stockholm correspondent of the Times says that the present crescendo of the German onslaught is apparently the first direct result of Hitler’s emphatic promise last week that Stalingrad would be captured. The intervening days were used to gather the energies for a supreme effort. The Germans opened with a very heavy artillery barrage early on Sunday, after which a concentration of 30,000 men with a spearhead of 100 tanks was set in movement.

The newspaper Izvestia says that no such battle has yet been seen on the Stalingrad front. For a long time waves of German planes bombed the Russian positions and thousands of shells and mines were pumped into the city, but the defenders rose from the ruins and overwhelmed wave after wave of German infantry. The fight continued throughout the night under flares. The battle was unabated on Monday, during the night of which the Russians struck savage counter-blows. The battle continued this morning with the same violence. The Pravda’s correspondent at Stalingrad declared: “The strength of our resistance, plus the Germans’ bloody losses, is creating conditions for another major defeat of

Hitler’s armies.” Marshal Timoshenko’s relief drives from the north-west and south-west are meanwhile making progress cautiously in the face of fierce German counter-attacks. The Germans are parachuting many snipers on the open steppe in an attempt to hold up the drive from the north-west, but the Russians passing forward have occupied a bill from which the German artillery was operating. The Vichy radio declared that the Russians have launched a new offensive south of Stalingrad and that the Russians in Stalingrad have received still more reinforcements A RUSSIAN SUCCESS. Reports from all sources concentrate on the see-sawing Stalingrad battle to the exclusion of the other fronts, but fierce fighting is occurring on other areas. The Russians taking the offensive at Voronezh cleared German blockhouses and increased the depth of the wedge driven into the German defences. The Germans are using paratroops on a considerable scale in the Caucasus, dropping them at widely separated points, but the Russians have held all attacks. The Luftwaffe lias been considerably reinforced southeast of Novorossisk and is heavily bombing the Russian position. The Russians in the Mozdok area drove the Germans back from the outskirts of a village, killed 100, and destroyed seven tanks. The" Berlin radio stated that General Budenny is commanding the Russians in the Western Caucasus. The German News Agency reports a four-day battle south of Lake Ladoga and claims that the Germans annihilated seven Russian divisions. The Germans also claim to have advanced south-east of Rzhcv, where they caused heavy casualties to the Russians