INEXORABLE FLOOD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25503, 5 April 1944, Page 5

INEXORABLE FLOOD

SWEEP TOWARDS ODESSA PANIC AMONG ENEMY TROOPS (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, Apl. 4. “ The Red Army is sweeping on to Odessa, inexorably like a flood, with largely the same troops who defended the city against the German onrush of 1941,” says the Moscow radio. “ The Germans and the Rumanians are unable to halt the Russians, whose cavalry units, racing forward, form the vanguard. German strongpoints are being surrounded and then mopped up. Cavalrymen create panic among the Germans, who either surrender or are shot by the horsemen. The Germans are throwing in infantry reserves and special Luftwaffe squadrons against the Russians advancing on Kishinev, but the Red Army is gaining successes by the usual strategy of surrounding and then destroying enemy garrisons.” Vichy reports that the Russians, in the continued advance in Bukovina and Moldavia, succeeded in establishing a bridgehead over the Jijia. The German Overseas News Agency states that the Russians kept up the pitch of the attack south of Pskov, throwing in a number of fresh rifle divisions and tank formations. “ The enemy attempted a repetition of the recent tactics of softening the German lines with a withering bombardment from massed artillery, but, in spite of the pounding, the German lines held.” The capture of Novo-Selitsa, 19 miles east of Cernauti, has further reduced the German pocket on the Upper Pruth between Marshal Koniev’s and Marshal Zhukov’s troops, says the Moscow correspondent of the British United Press. The Germans are using Hungarians to plug- holes in the Nazi ranks north of the Carpathians, but they do not appear to have been inspired to fight to the death. A Hungarian infanjry regiment, with its commander and staff, was, in its entirety, captured by Marshal Zhukov’s troops. General Malinovsky’s men are now only one day’s march from the outskirts of Odessa. They are moving from three sides against the city, and there still appears to be no strong resistance against any of these thrusts. The Germans are retreating at some points so quickly that they are leaving their wounded behind. Another column is striking southward towards Tyraspol to cut the last railway from Odessa. Moscow was silent to-day on developments elsewhere on the front, but Berlin admits continued attacks against Tarnopol, Stanislawow, and Kowei, the three towns which guard the approaches to Lwow, the gateway to South-eastern Germany itself. Moscow radio to-night called on the Rumanian people to abandon the Germans and to capitulate without delay. “ Unless you do so the whole of your country will become a battlefield, and your towns and villages will become a heap of ruins.”