Serious Menace in Mojaisk Sector

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 290, 6 December 1941, Page 7

Serious Menace in Mojaisk Sector

RETREAT FROM ROSTOV CONTINUES Received Friday, 8.20 p.m. LONDON, Dec. 4. German pressure is decreasing on the flanks of the Moscow front, says Pravda. The Germans around Klin are now on the defensive and are digging in while around Volokalamsk the Russians at some points have pushed back the Germans. Although the invaders here and there have advanced the most serious menace exists in the Mojaisk region where the enemy has achieved a considerable advance since the movement to outflank the Russian defenders. The Times’ Stockholm correspondent declares that the Russian territorial gains eastwards and westward of Tula this week, also on the Kalinin wing, are much greater than the German gains in the middle of the Moscow front, but the German advances being nearer Moscow count more than the Russians on the more distant flanks. The Germans are believed to bo preparing a new onslaught against the flanks on this front. The correspondent adds that the German withdrawal along tlie Sea of Azov continues at about 10 miles daily. The Germans will probably make a stand at the River Kalmius. A Stockholm message reports that by means of nightly evacuation for the past week the Russians got away 35.000 members of the Hanko garrison, including two crack divisions, also the survivors from the islands of Dago and Oesel. Tho Russians lost only one big ship—a 10,000-tonner, the Josef Stalin—and a few small transports. The enemy singled out the Josef Stalin for attack and damaged by Stukas she ran into five coastal batteries which crippled her. With her propellors smashed she drifted helplessly towards the shore with her guns blazing against the attackers. Near the Esthonian coast the Josef Stalin struck three mines in quick succession, but even these failed to finish her. She finallv grounded on a sand bar, enabling the enemy to capture the crew and 800 soldiers.

The Times’ Stockholm correspondent says the German authorities in October invited an impressive number of Danish journalists to undertake a conducted tour to Moscow at the cost of the German Exchequer. Provincial press representatives assembled at Copenhagen, but their departure for Moscow was postponed for a further fortnight and at the end of November the Germans postponed the project indefinitely. This abortive enterprise, which is never mentioned now except privately, shows how unsatisfactory and contrary to plan are the German operations against Moscow. The German “strength through joy” movement has perhaps inadvertently thrown some light for the German people on the great number of German casualties by announcing that it alone had cared for 1,500,000 wounded soldiers since 1939.