DESPERATE SPRING MOVE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22214, 6 March 1942, Page 5

DESPERATE SPRING MOVE

Feverish Preparations By Nazis By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright (9.5 p.m.) NEW YORK, Mar. 4. The Ankara correspondent of the “New York Times” says that indications from all quarters in Eastern Europe prove that gigantic German preparations are being made for a desperate spring move. Five Bulgarian divisions have been sent to Yugoslavia to relieve the German forces for service in Russia. All rail traffic has been suspended for vast military movements of troops mobilised in Hungary, Slovakia and Rumania to reinforce the Axis armies in Russia. Increased German pressure on Madrid has resulted in the dispatch of new Spanish air force support for the battered Germans. Axis barges are clustering Black Sea ports for an invasion of Russian shores. Germany is exerting inhuman pressure against the occupied countries with the object of increasing war production, for example, forced labour has been decreed for the entire population of Bessarabia between the ages of 12 and 70. Turkish Concern The correspondent says that Turkish public opinion, in spite of the German preparations, does not expect that a crisis against Turkey is imminent because the Nazis are tied up in Russia and Egypt and are unable to open a new front now. But Turkey is seriously concerned by the eventual Japanese menace from the east, since the Japanese military attache at Ankara has openly predicted that the Japanese would occupy Calcutta by the middle of April. It is felt that the Axis could force Turkey into a precarious position if a successful spring offensive against Russia should result in the occupation of ths Caucasus, thereby outflanking Turkey from the north and west, while the Japanese are menacing it from India.