MOSCOW CALM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24697, 28 August 1941, Page 7

MOSCOW CALM

NO TRACE OF EXCITEMENT •i | _ , £ i THE PEOPLE CONFIDENT ■ ■■ f “ VICTORY INEVITABLE” - I ' \ i (Rec. 8 p.ml) LONDON, Aug. 26, ‘ “ Ultimate victory for Russia appears to, t)e absolutely inevitable,” said Mr Rajlph Ingersoll in a radio talk from Moscow to America. “It is significant that there a complete absence of stampede from the fighting areas, and also significant are the inability of the Germans to raid Moscow by day and the public admission of unfavourable news such as the neatness of the Germans to Leningrad | and the loss of Gomel. The Soviet morale is not merely good, it ;jis spectacular, and the people aqe confident without either under-estimating or over-estimating the enemy’s strength. Moscow is the calmest war capital I have visited. Factories are working 24 hours a there are many soldiers in the sheets and the city is sandbagged:, jiand camouflaged to the utmost bfit there is no excitement.” After claiming the fall of Dnepropetrovskjthe Berlin radio stated that German / and Rumanian forces are

now mopping up the last Soviet bridgeheads across the southern Dnieper. “ German dive-bombers and i Hungarian batteries on August 24 ami 25 pounded the remaining bridgehead and all attempts to stem the attack were frustrated. Thouof Russian dead were strewn along the river banks. The Rumanians i are pouring fresh reinforcements into the battle raging for Odessa.” t i Rumanian Losses . According to reports to Moscow the [Third Rumanian Infantry Division! was wiped out, while the losses of |the Fifteenth Division, were so enormous that it now practically exists in name only. It is claimed that the losses of German troops in the] Ukraine are no less* severe. The Ninths Panzer Division has participated in only one major engagement in August and it lost half of its effectives, either killed or wounded. ; fThe Stockholm correspondent of tThe Times says nothing to suggest that General Konev’s operations are part of the major operation on the Smolensk front. The exact locality of the operations is still undisclosed tmit apparently the positions between Jjmolensk and Viazma show no noteworthy changes. General Konev’s jcounter-offensive may be responsible for the German hesitation to press forward from Gomel owing to the danger of a flank attack. - . The German News Agency admits that Russia is putting up a fierce resistance before Tallinn, but it is claimed that German infantry and i tank units deeply penetrated the Russian lines.