TERRORS & HARDSHIPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 January 1944, Page 3

TERRORS & HARDSHIPS

— OF THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN MORE NAZI ADMISSIONS. WINTER LINE SPLIT BY RED ARMY (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. January 5. Nazi officials are admitting frankly for the first time that Germany faces a critical situation. Gloomy reports reaching neutral countries every day from Germany suggest that the Nazis can see defeat ahead. The “Berliner Boersen Zeitung’’ says: “Germany last year suffered political and military setbacks whicn v/ould. have brought collapse to any nation in the Allied camp. The New Year will bring still greate*- tests to be overcome net merely for fortifications, but for fanatical zeal.”

German officers on the Russi.v.i front apparently fear that the terrible experiences their troops are suffering may turn the retreat into a rout. A panzer division officer, in an astonishingly frank broadcast to Berlin, said: “Our comrades are becoming very disquieted. We shoot like madmen, but the Russians have so many guns a.id 'are such brilliant marksmen that we i.re unable to achieve anything. The communication line between our retreating troops is constantly interrupted by guerillas." A Gorman war correspondent on the Russian front says: "It is almost impossible to live, 10l alone fight, on the Eastern front. Our clothing is useless in the mud, rain, snow and icy winds. Hot food never reaches our lines. We never get cigarettes. It’s so terrible you cannot think. Many soldiers are ill, specially with gastric trouble. Life on the Eastern front cannot be compared with anything." - A German Foreign Office spokesman told Swedish correspondents in Berlin: “The German winter line in Russia has been split by deep penetration by the Russian Army." The spokesman said the two fronts left in Russia wore 360 and 480 miles long. Ho did not expect German counter-attacks to regain the lost positions, but claimed that the Russians would be unable to roll up the German flanks, because the two long fronts were still holding.