THREE BIG BATTLES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 64, 18 March 1943, Page 5

THREE BIG BATTLES

DEVELOPING IN RUSSIA NAZIS CONCENTRATE ON DONETZ (By Telegraph—Prese Association—Copyright) Recd. 6 p.m. London, March 16. Three great battles are now developing in Russia, each likely to be as bloody as any the Red Army has yet fought. They are battles, firstly for the Staraya Russa bastion, the guardian of the gates to the Baltic; secondly, for Smolensk, still one of the biggest German bases in Russia; and thirdly, for crossings of the middle Donetz, where the Germans are attempting to exploit the recapture of Kharkov. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says that Marshal Timoshenko’s troops in the northern sectors, where the frost holds, have over-run the Germans south of Lake Ilmen. They are continuing to advance toward Staraya Kussa and the important hedgehog fortress and buttress of Pskov, which is a junction on the Staraya Russa-Riga-Leningrad-Vilna railways. The Russians so far are silent regarding this threat to German communications in the vicinity of Leningrad.

A German High Command spokesman asserted that the Russians have strongly attacked in the Novgorod area, using heavy artillery barrages and many tighter planes, besides advancing over the ice on Lake Ilmen in motor sledges, but claimed that the attacks had been frustrated. Advancing in some sectors kneedeep in melting snow, the Russians are still driving towards Smolensk from three directions, and each column has made a considerable advance in the past 24 hours. The Russians on the northern wing, after a surprise attack across half-frozen marshes, captured the town of Batulino, 30 miles north-east of Smolensk, and outflnaking Nikitinka. In the centre the advance along the ViazmaSmolensk railway is nearing Yartsevo, which is a strong German position. The southern column moving southwestward from Viazma was last reported to have reached Miliatinskyzavod, a few miles north of the Suk-hinichi-Smolensk railway and to be driving towards Durovo. Three hundred miles to the south, the Germans are lighting their hardest to develop their advantages against Kharkov. They have apparently switched the main weight of their counter-stroke to the middle reaches of the Donetz River. Strong panzer and infantry forces, which are numerically superior to the Russians. are fiercely attacking between Isyum and Voroshilovgrad. The Russians so far have stemmed at.empts to force passages of the Donetz Basin, but a bitter struggle continues in the Isyum area. A German military ■pokesman said that the Russians are employing reserves from Orel and are now counter-attacking German spearheads west of Byelgorod, but claimed that the attacks had been repelled. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians are forcing the pace on the Smolensk front and have now driven eight miles beyond Kholm Zhirkovsky. The same correspondent says that the Germans in the south Donetz area are exerting pressure towards Rostov. Heavy artillery pounded the Russian positions all yesterday. It is now apparent that the fall of Kharkov was a heavy blow, the possible effect of which on the whole Russian front to Rostov cannot be lightly dismissed. Stating tha. the fan of Kharkov had robbed the Russians *of part of the fruits of their winter offensive, Reuter says the real tragedy of its loss is that the 250.000 inhabitants of Kharkov will again be under the German yoke and will again be subjected to the horrors which the Germans, for the purpose of salving their mortified pride, inflict on the unhappy people falling into their power.

Ilya Ehrenburg, writing in Red Star, says: “Kharkov is a success for Hitler, but not a victory. The battle continues and dozens of Hitler’s best divisions are being destroyed. Dead men's ghosts cannot again take the offensive against the Caucasus. What will happen when France ceases to be a home for battered Germans from Russia and instead becomes a battlefield?”

Moscow radio reports that a partisan group operating in the Minsk area of White Russia in one montn derailed 15 military trains. Nine railway engines and 212 railway wagons were wrecked and many German officers and soldiers perished. The Moscow correspondent of The Times describes the capture of Kholm Zhirkovsky as important. The Germans there had concentrated two divisions for a powerful counter-attack, but a swift, double-headed Russian blow imperilled the positions and forced the enemy to retreat southward, where they are being pursued to the River Vop. Berlin radio announced: “The Germans in the Kuban have shortened their front following Russian attacks and heavy fighting.”

SCENE OF DESOLATION

GREAT REBUILDING TASK IN RUSSIA London. March 15 Mr. Paul Winterton, who recently visited some of the recaptured country, says in a despatch to the 8.8. C.: “Hundreds of villages are now just geographical expressions. I have walked over the sites of some villages without even knowing that they existed.” The reconstruction of western Russia, he says, will be one of the most difficult and enormous of all tasks after the war. Millions of acres of agricultural land are now given over to weeds. All livestock and all agricultural machinery has been taken away or destroyed. He adds: “When the war ends all of western Russia will be just an untidy building site. There will be a great shortage of labour, and an even greater shortage of material. The Germans have made a wilderness and called it a new order.”