NAZI FAILURE IN RUSSIA

Southland Times, Issue 24650, 23 January 1942, Page 5

NAZI FAILURE IN RUSSIA

SPIRIT OF ARMY BROKEN

RUSSIAN CONFIDENCE IN VICTORY i (Rec. 11 p.m.) LONDON, January 21. “All that the braggart Hitler has achieved is the complete moral and physical exhaustion of his army. The German Army in its plans to capture Moscow is beaten. Its old offensive spirit has gone. It never will be able to gather strength again. We shall win.”

This declaration was made by M. Sherbakov, secretary of the Communist Party in a speech to a meeting in Moscow to mark the 18th anniversary of Lenin’s death. He said the Germans from December 6 to January 15 lost 300,000 killed. German equipment captured in the same period included 4800 guns, 3071 mortars, 8000 machine-guns, 15,000 automatic rifles, 2760 tanks, 300 armoured cars, 336,000 motor vehicles, 6000 motor-cycles, 2,000,000 shells, 200,000 mines, 30,000,000 rifle cartridges and many thousands of cycles, carts, horses and much other material. In the same period 1100 German planes were destroyed.

There was an occasion near Moscow when 20 tanks attacked 29 Russian guardsmen. One guard put up his hands in surrender. His comrades shot him and then fought the tanks. They destroyed 18, but were themselves all killed. There was another occasion when a Russian soldier attacking a machinegun threw himself on to the front of the gun so that his comrades could advance.

“How can anybody gain victory over a nation with men like that? We must never forget that we are dealing with a treacherous and cruel enemy, but it is. more and more apparent that the German Army is worn out and is falling apart,” M. Sherbakov added. ORGY OF DESTRUCTION

The Soviet War News reports that the Soviet of Moscow is organizing the rehabilitation of the liberated areas. The Germans destroyed practically the whole basis of the economic life ’of these areas. Agriculture suffered a tremendous blow through the destruction of thousands of farmsteads, farm stores, cattle-stalls and granaries. ' The same thing has happened to industry. The Germans blew up all factories which were evacuated before their arrival, including the large textile mills at Yakhroma, Naryfominsk and Vysokiei. They damaged the Volga-Mos-cow canal and destroyed many local productive enterprises and innumerable schools.

Wherever the Germans stayed they destroyed libraries and used books for fuel. They burned collective farm nurseries and demolished a number of hospitals.