RIVERS OF BLOOD SPILLED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLV, Issue 22791, 15 January 1944, Page 5

RIVERS OF BLOOD SPILLED

Yugoslavia’s Fight For Freedom GREAT NEED IS ARMOUR (Rec. 8 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 13. Thirty-six German and satellite divisions are doing their utmost, on seven fronts, to crush the Partisan armies of Yugoslavia, says Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Dedier, who has been attached to Marshal Brog-Tito's staff for two and a half years. Colonel Dedier is now recuperating at Cairo from severe injuries to the head. In a special article distributed by the Associated Press he asserts that more German divisions are engaged in Yugoslavia than on any other front except Russia. “Although the Partisans are fighting without heavy artillery, anti-air-craft guns or tanks, they carried out an offensive against the German main bases,” he said. “This year we broke through the German defences at Banjaluka, headquarters of the Second German Armoured Corps. This German base has been liquidated, 2000 Germans being killed and several hundred captured. When the task was accomplished the Partisans withdrew as the town could not be defended against the new German tank division. This victory was achieved entirely with armaments captured from the enemy. “When the people rose three years ago against Hitler only every tenth man had a shotgun or an out-dated rifle. There were many fighting women in the front line in the assault against Banjaluka, some of them being experts with hand grenades. Women also hold certain commands. Our liberated territory is now more than half Yugoslavia. Our army has increased from 100,000 to 300,000. “Our peoples—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes. Macedonians, Montenegrins—at the finish of our war of independence will form a free democratic federal State in accordance with the Atlantic Charter, allowing all free peoples the right to choose their own form of Government at free elections. For this principle our people have spilled rivers of blood and are still fighting to-day.” The United States Secretary for War (Mr H. L. Stimson) said that the Soviet Army had been aided in its successes in East Europe by the British. French and United States troops fighting in Italy, by the Partisans in occupied territories, and by the air offensive over Germany, as well as by the threat of invasion of Western Europe and the steady flow of supplies to Russia from the Allies. He gave a warning that there were no indications of a general deterioration of the German resistance.

“The Germans seem to be retreating in good order, and the army is relatively intact,” he said. “The Germans have made no attempt to conceal the gravity of their situation. It may even be exaggerated for purposes which are not clear.”