Germans Abandoning Ploesti Oilfields

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 206, 31 August 1944, Page 5

Germans Abandoning Ploesti Oilfields

80-MILE ADVANCE Hff 72 HOURS (By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) Received Wednesday, 11.50 p.m. LONDON, Aug. 30. “The whole of Germany’s Balkan flank is crumbling under the impact ot the Russian blows on three key sectors of the Eastern Front,” says the British United Press’s Moscow correspondent. “The powerful Russian forces sweeping on to Bucharest have broken into Hungary and are pouring south of Constanza. “The Germans have apparently given up all hope of holding the Ploesti oilfields. Dispatches from the battlefrOnt indicate that they have begun to blow up the Ploesti refineries and some of the oilwells are blazing. “The Balkans campaign in the Carpathians entered a new phase after the Russian penetration of the two great passes giving command of the main road to Cluj. These troops are already threatening the main railway lines between Rumania, Hungary and Ruthenia. ‘ * General Tolbukhin in the south is sweeping forward with increased momentum. The Russians in 72 hours in several sectors pressed their advance nearly $0 miles and there is still no sign of a halt.”

The Exchange Telegraph’s Moscow, correspondent reports that the Russians are now in command of almost the whole of the Danube Delta. They forced the Danube west of Ismail and captured the river port of Isaccea, also the coastal town of Babadag. The Russians’ Third Ukrainian Front coupled with the Black Sea Fleet’s combined sea, river and land operations is rapidly enveloping German divisions who have a hasty choice of being wiped out, surrendering or postpofiing their fate by flight across the Lower Danube. The capture of Constanza is a big step connecting up the Russian front with Yugoslavia and incidentally putting the German army of occupation in Greece in an impossible position.