HARDER BATTLES AHEAD

Southland Times, Issue 25641, 7 April 1945, Page 5

HARDER BATTLES AHEAD

GERMANS MAY STAND ON ELBE (Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, April 6. The equivalent of two German divisions has been wiped out each day during the past fortnight but there are signs of stiff fighting ahead, says Reuter’s correspondent at Supreme Headquarters. The Germans obviously cannot go on at this rate, but they are trying to make the Allied drive into central Germany as costly as possible. Things seem to be shaping for a German stand, almost suicidal in its nature, somewhere along a line—possibly the Elbe river—running through the geographical heart of the country, now that the industrial heart of the Ruhr has ceased to beat.

The apparently somewhat confused individual operations of the Allied armies in the great offensive to crush Germany into unconditional surrender are beginning to shape themselves into a vast line pressing ever northward and eastward. The front runs roughly through Zutphen, Almelo, Lingen,

Rheine, Osnabruck, Minden, Hamelin, Kassel, Eisenach, Gotha, Meiningen, Wurzburg and Karlsruhe. The Germans are evidently not placing much faith in the Weser as a river barrier and may be planning to make a greater effort along the Elbe, which practically bisects Germany. Lieutenant-General Patton, who is operating along the Eisenach-Gotha-Meiningen line, is now shaping up for another drive which may take him over the flat country in the vital heart of Germany around Magdeburg. Men of the 11th Army Forces and French troops are making good progress in spite of the roughest type of delaying action which, in some cases, is reaching fanatical heights. A great battle is possible before the final liquidation of the Ruhr. The action of the German commander of Duisberg in spurning a demand for surrender with the Americans virtually on his doorstep, and the 10 formidable counter-attacks which the Ist Army had to handle near Siegen yesterday certainly do not indicate any German intention to quit.

Heinrich Himmler’s paper, Das Schwarze Korps, for the first time, openly admits that Germany is facing military defeat, says the Berlin correspondent of tire Stockholm newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. “The war is now in a phase where it seems that only days or weeks separate the German people from total collapse,” says the paper in the gloomiest editorial yet to come from Germany. “We give a warning to the world that we are now in the remarkable position of being forced to admit that it is possible to defeat us militarily.” ART TREASURES FOUND A battle is being fought on the edge of the Ruhr pocket within a few hundred yards of a cavern containing millions of pounds worth of art treasures. They consist of the most valuable contents of most of the cathedrals and museums in the Rhineland, plus loot from occupied countries. The treasures include paintings by Rubens, Rembrandt, Holbein, van Dyck, van Gogh and Renoir. There are music manuscripts in Beethoven’s own hand and eleventh century carved church doors. The bones of Emperor Charlemagne, who died in 814, are there, together with his crown, sceptre and golden cups. This collection was'rushed into an old copper mine in a hillside near Siegen when Germans realised they could not defend the Ruhr.