Entire German Front In Balkans Collapsing

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

Entire German Front In Balkans Collapsing

RUSSIANS CAPTURE IMPORTANT NAVAL BASE LONDON, Aug. 29. The entire German Balkan front le collapsing, said the Associated Press’s Moscow correspondent in an earlier message. Powerful Russian concentrations have smashed into the whole of the eastern portion of Rumania and occupied a large part of the eastern border of Hungarian-held Transylvania, after a whirlwind drive over the Carpathians. The Germans remaining along the western borders of Rumania are being encircled and are facing gradual annihilation. They are giving themselves up in increasing numbers. The Germans are making sacrificial efforts in Rumania to stem the Russian break-through, probably with the intention of gaining time to destroy the Ploesti oil installations, says the British United Press’s Moscow correspondent. Marshal Stalin, in an Order of the Day, has announced the capture of the Rumanian Black Sea port of Constanza, 149 miles from Bucharest. This is the greatest prize yet taken by the Russians in Rumania. Russian tanks and cavalry are continuing to pour southward from Ramnlcusarat into the oilfields area. The German News Agency to-day stated that the Russians, after hard fighting, had captured Buzau, a road and rail Junction, 40 miles east of Ploesti. The commentator (von Olberg) tonight admitted a complete Russian break-through. “After many Rumanian units had stopped fighting, the Russians broke through everywhere. They are not only before us hut on our flanks and behind us.” Von Olberg added that fighting had broken out in Ploesti between the Germans and Rumanians. The British United Press points out that the German admission that Buzau has been captured means that the first oil town in the Ploesti group is already under Russian control. Constanza is the capital of the department of the same name in Rumania, and lies 149 miles from Bucharest, with which it is connected hy rail. The town was severely damaged in the World War of 1914-18, hut afterwards recovered very rapidly. There are numerous, mosques, churches and synagogues for the mixed population. Constanza’s principal importance lies on its being Rumania’s chief outlet to the Black Sea, atffl it did a large transit trade before the war. A pipe-line rims to the Rumanian oilfields and Constanza has 37 oil storage tanks, and a special basin for vessels loading petroleum.

RUSSIANS SEIZE HEIGHTS IN MOUNTAIN PASSES LONDON, Aug. 29. The second of the Red Army’s two great Balkan drives is developing through the mountain passes into Transylvania, where, according to the German sources, Russian parachutists have seized the heights dominating the highway down the southern slopes of the Carpathians and the railway from Bucharest to Ruthenia. Reuter's Moscow correspondent reports stiff clashes between German and Hungarian units and Russian mountain troops in a valley leading to the important railway junction of Brasov, 18 miles from the present Hungarian frontier. He adds that from the southeastern spurs of tho Transylvanian Alps to the channels of the Danube Delta BmaU powerful Russian mobile units are crashing the last resistance of German strongpoints. NORTHERN FRONT

The Military situation in the Baltic States and Poland remains obscure, according to a Moscow correspondent, but von Hammer admits that the Germans withdrew in the salient northwest of Madona and 75 miles east of Riga and evacuated Shvanenburg, 20 miles north of Madona.