THREAT TO AUSTRIA

Southland Times, Issue 25549, 18 December 1944, Page 5

THREAT TO AUSTRIA

GERMAN FLANK MENACED TWO-WAY THRUST BY RED ARMY (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 16. The Red Army is making a two-way thrust and is menacing the approaches to the Bratislava Gap and the German flank in Czechoslovakia, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The Russian forces under Marshal Malinovsky are driving beyond the Ipol River, north of Budapest. The Ipol crossing, apart from the increasing threat to Austria, has placed the Red Army in an advantageous position from which to break up the German forces in Czechoslovakia. The Russian push, north of Miskolcz, is forcing the Germans to face a flanking threat on a front of nearly 80 miles. Marshal Malinovsky is pushing out powerful infantry and mobile artillery columns in a direct northerly thrust across the German lines of communications. The Russians north of Miskolcz have split the German positions on a 30 miles front, and are rapidly developing an outflanking drive against the key road and fail junction of Kosice. REIGN OF TERROR There is a reign of terror in Budapest, according to Hungarian war prisoners quoted by the Moscow newspaper Izvestia. They state that the city is entirely in the hands of German SS troops who are carrying out endless pogroms. The roads beyond Budapest are jammed with ox-carts, carrying thousands of bewildered refugees. The Hungarian Army is falling to pieces and surrendering whenever it, can. The Germans distrust their Allies and never let the Hungarians hold a sector alone. German machine gunners guard every lane through the minefields.