German Anxiety About Continued Setbacks

Manawatu Times, Volume 67, Issue 22, 27 January 1942, Page 5

German Anxiety About Continued Setbacks

(British Official Wireless) Received Monday, 7 p.m. RUGBY, Jan. 26. The German attempts to minimise the Russian successes are regarded in London as evidence of anxiety about the continued setbacks on that front. The Russian gains of the past two months are now officially dismissed in Berlin as “several minor offensive moves which either get stuck at once or cease after insignificant gains.” The latest 70-mile drive north of Smolensk is reduced to 40 or 50 miles and described as a “ big propaganda action.” Berlin, however, finds it necessary to state, “counter operations in this area have not been concluded so far.” “Military circles” even think it necessary to explain that nothing the Russians so far have accomplished can be called a “major attack,” by which they mean an “attack which involves the employment of several armies with a break-through threat and attempt thereafter to roll up the flank of one’s opponent to the right and left.” The conclusion evidently to be drawn is that the Russians have not yet succeeded in inflicting on the Germans a series of defeats on the scale of those they suffered during the first months of the sudden German attack. It is significant that official Germany should be reduced to comparing the present Russian successes with their own previous successes, which they frequently stated had reduced the Russian army to impotence. The Germans also try to divert attention from the main front by emphasising air interference with the Murmansk railway, which they admit after eix months’ attack by the German and Finnish armies, is still “extremely important for the supply of the Russian northern flank.”