RED ARMY’S TRIUMPH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 73, 23 February 1945, Page 2

RED ARMY’S TRIUMPH

SOVIET UNION SAVED. ABOLISHING NAZI SLAVERY. (N.Z Press Association. —Copyright.) (Rec. 1.40 0.m.) LONDON, l‘eb. 22. Marshal Stalin in an Order of the Day honouring the Red Arrays 27th anniversary says: “The Keu Army has fulfilled its historical task. It has saved the Soviet Union from Gorman slavery and has helped Europe’s peoples to throw on the German yoke.

“It lias hurled the enemy many hundreds of miles beyond the line irom which the Germans launched their attacks against Russia. Now, with the Allied armies, it is successfully completing the German rout. “The Red Army in January on a front of 750 miles broke up powerful defences which the Germans had been building for a number of years. Soviet troops advanced 160 m.'les from Fast Prussia’s frontiers to the \ istula s lower reaches, 280 miles irom the » istula bridgehead south of Warsaw to the Oder’s lower reaches, 290 miles from the Sandomierz bridgehead to the depths of German Silesia. Within 40 days in January and February the Russians have ejected tiie Germans from 300 towns, captured hundreds of war plants manufacturing tanks; aircraft tmiiqmeets and ammunition, occupied 2400 railway stations, and seized a network of railways totalling JOOO miles.

OVER NEISSE RIVER. The Russians are believed to have crossed the Neisse River at several points, says Reuter’s correspondent. Marshal Koniev’s general pressure against the Neisse line is mainly developing at two points—around Gubcn and above Gorlitz —but Soviet troops are also advancing towards the river in the intervening areas.

Forst, about 15 miles south of Guben, is taking a heavy pounding from Marshal Kornev's guns and its fall seems imminent. The war hereabouts is one of movement. Hie Moscow radio tonight broadcast a report from a war correspondent with the Soviet troops in the Sainland Peninsula, who states that the Germans, making desperate efforts to get the encircled grouping to Pillau, have built up several tracks of ski routes across the ice on the Frisches Haft and in another area have made channels for ships with an icebreaker. Germans taken prisoner state that there is plenty of food and ammunition in Kocnigsberg.