NAZI ATTACK ON RUSSIA

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21994, 20 June 1941, Page 5

NAZI ATTACK ON RUSSIA

REPORT BY TURKISH RADIO No Confirmation In London By Telegraph— Press Association—Copyright (Rec. 1.15) LONDON, June 19. It is reported from New York that the Columbia broadcasting system states that it heard Turkish radio statements that Germany actually had launched an attack on Russia, but no confirmation of these reports is available in London. The correspondent of the Associated Press at Helsinki began telephoning a dispatch, saying that “the streets of Helsinki are crowded with uniformed men and women. Soldiers are fully armed.” The Finnish censor then broke the. telephone connection. Conflicting tales of German Intentions regarding Russia are being received here with reserve, and the reports of German troops concentrating on the Russian frontiers, which are not specifically denied by official Moscow statements, may be accounted for in various ways, says a British Official Wireless message. Hitler may be following his wellknown technique of trying to enforce economic concessions by a show of armed might without the need of fighting at all. Alternatively he may be carrying to a logical conclusion the plan laid down in "Mein Kampf” for the shattering of the Russian military power. There may be other equally valid reasons in the Nazi mind. One of them might conceivably be an effort to confuse not only British and American leaders, but also their peoples, by a gigantic diversion, In the East, and thus weaken their resolution in the battle in the West. Such a manoeuvre is doomed to failure, as it is well understood by the democracies that their ttak Is the destruction of Nazism — nothing less. The Imposing efforts by Hitler In other telds, even if followed by spectacular results, leave that task unchanged and unimpaired. Relentlessly—ln the Prime Minister's words—Britain will fight the Germans wherever she finds them.

Whatever the result of the present situation in Ger ...an and Russian relations. Britain, while Interested to see whether Hitler succeeds in his fresh “double-crocs,” 111 not permit her war effort to be affected in the slightest degree.