PRESENT BATTLES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 13, 11 October 1943, Page 5

PRESENT BATTLES

All Western Russia May

Be At Stake (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, October 8. If the Germans, who for the past 2-J months have been compelled to retreat on the whole southern and central parts of the Russian front, thought the Dnieper would give them respite they hav'e been speedily undeceived. Yesterday the German Press suddenly began congratulating the High Command on having successfully escaped disaster and having brought its troops back to a firm line of defence, thereby increasing their strength for the next phase. The enemy publicists may have been unaware that at that moment the Russians were throwing three armies simultaneously across the Dnieper. Doubtless the Germans were makjjig the best of a bad job. . The very real importance of this line to Germany necessitated the most strenuous efforts to .prevent the Russians from reaching it before the autumn imposed a certain restriction on movement. By now, however, it is not only, the Dnieper line and the Ukraine which are at stake. The Russians have extended the scope of their offensive yet further north, and the whole territory between the Gulf of Riga and Deningrad is menaced by a double movement. . The Germans are now fighting on their last favourable line of defence with their rear on the Russian frontiers, and if this fails they will probably find themselves compelled to execute another rapid retreat to the borderland of the Baltic republics, Poland and Rumania. The latest Russian offensive trill have made it even more painfully evident to them that they cannot find enough troops to cope with the Russian situation with the western Allies advancing in force in the Mediterranean and awaiting the moment to advance in even greater force in western Europe. Quite apart from what may he brewing in the west, it is clear that the Mediterranean threat has now assumed a twofold form—a menace to northern Italy and to the Balkan coast 50 miles away, where hundreds of thousands of patriots are awaiting liberation.