LIGHTNING SOVIET DRIVES

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 237, 4 July 1944, Page 5

LIGHTNING SOVIET DRIVES

Up To 52 Miles In A Day CLOSING TRAP Nazis Admit Fall Of Polotsk

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyrlght.l (Received July 3, 11.25 p.m.) LONDON, July 3. Two Russian armies yesterday cut the railway communications between the fortress of Minsk and the German rear, trapping huge forces—-in some quarters estimated at 200,000 men-without a reliable line of retreat. The Russians captured the towns o Wilejka and Krasnoye and cut the railway to Vilna after advancing 70 miles from Borisov, and took stations on the other railway after a 50-mile advance to the west and north-west from Slutsk. The Red Army’s latest captures represent huge advances m the last 24 hours. The capture of Wilejka meant an advance of 52 miles in a single day, while in the advance to Krasnoye, to th south-east, the Russians covered 43 miles in the day. - Having by-passed Minsk in the swiftest advance of the whole war, troops of the Third and First White Russian fronts are within 70 miles of one another, representing the gap t jL r , ou^ n W .J enemy in the Minsk area must try to escape. . The Daily telegraph’s” Moscow correspondent says the Russian strategy of annihilation appears to be on the eve of its biggest success. In the frontal advance against Minsk the Russians yesterday reached Sloboda, 12 miles north-east of the city. On this mam road to Minsk the Russians advanced 22 miles in 24 hours. The two Russian armies which are racing to join up and com plete the encirclement of the German army in the Minsk area have now closed the gap between them to 55 miles, says the British United Press correspondent in Moscow. There is little hope of the Germans pulling out from the trap as the Russians have cut all the main escape routes and communications. The spearhead of the other big Russian drive, west of Polotsk, is now at least 35 miles beyond the old Polish frontier. Nothing he Germans have been able to do since they-were swept across the Beresina, where Napoleon’s army collapsed, has held up the

advance.

’ The German radio today admits that Polotsk has fallen. A correspondent says that from the air the roads just behind the Russian advance seem thgmselves to be flowing westward, so dense is the moving mass of Russian war traffic along them. The Germans are surrendering in thousands.' Moscow reports that a group of -100 officers and men encircled southwest of Polotsk surrendered without firing a shot.

Moscow officially states: “The enemy is flinging in fresh reserves of infantry and tanks, but Is nowhere able to stem our advance.”

LOOMING CLOUD

Germans’ Spectre Of Encirclement OFFENSIVE HALF-WAY TO EAST PRUSSIA LONDON, July 2. Von Bosch’s German armies on the White. Russian front, after losing 195,930 men in the first week of the Red Army’s summer offensive, are still falling, back to Minsk without a sign so far of a German counter-attack of the dimensions necessary to check the Russians’ headlong progress. Reuter's Moscow correspondent says the Germans in Russia have one fear greater than their dread of the Red Army’s Katusha, the multi-barrelled, electrically-operated " rocket gun. It is the over-riding fear of encirclement which had grown since Stalingrad. Rokossovsky’s tanks and shock troops, sweeping on south of Minsk, are already less than 180 miles from the border of the Reich (East Prussia). The Rer Army’s mobile artillery tonight was shelling the approaches to Minsk, the capital of White Russia and the last first-class military centre still left to the Germans in Russia proper. Rokossovsky, Chernyakhov, Zakharov, and Bagramyan, the four men controlling the tremendous Russian assault, have given all the field commanders the widest initiative in carrying out local encirclements as part of the total plan to strip the Germans’ north-eastern border naked not only for fortifications but also of manpower. One week’s fighting has cut in hall’ the Germans’ shield protecting the road to Konigsberg, Warsaw, .and Berlin, and only further withdrawals from the enemy’s pool of strategic reserves, which have already been heavily tapped, can hope even to delay the Red Army’s advance. Bloody Pursuit. Correspondents 'say that now the Minsk railways are cut there is no real way out for the Nazis, for the district behind them is served only by third-class roads and tracks. In their direct drive on Minsk the Russians, striking from Borisov, have reached a point 121 miles from the city. The German infantry is now becoming afraid of its own tanks. Fleeing panzers, after the rout at Bobruisk, overran retreating Nazis on the crowded roads. Between the Beresina and the Drill Rivers many scattered Germans are biding in forests trying to slip through the tightening Russian cordon disguised as peasant women with embroidered blouses and homespun skirts. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says that 1000 Germans ■who lost touch with their units and were hidden in the forest met their fate at the hands of partisans, who had been waiting for three years for just such a situation to mop them up in hundreds. The whole spirit of Russia’s intention is summed up by “Pravda,” which says: “To kill or capture —that is our aim. The Red Army’s task is to use its extreme mobility as one of the most decisive factors for military success.” The British United Press correspondent describes a terrible massacre when the Russians forced the Beresina River. After Rokossovsky smashed the German lines at Bobruisk there was an inextricable mass of men in tanks and on lorries, even on guns, fighting to get back across tlie Beresina. Attacked by Cavalry.

J n the melee the lorries collided and rolled into ditches; Cliernyakhov's cavalry, with specially-weighted sabres, rose up in their stirrups and slashed their way through the fear-maddened Germans.

■'Another sign of demoralization was the discovery of a. large number of epaulettes and decorations which tin: Germans had torn from themselves in an attempt to hide their identities.” In an order of the daw. Marshal Stalin announced that troops of the Third White Russian Front yesterday captured Wilejku (Vileika), thereby cutting the communications of Minsk with Vilna and Riga. The Russians also captured Stolpce (Stolbtsi), thereby cutting the German communications between Minsk and Luninets.

Tonight’s Soviet communique slates that the Russians between Lakes Onega and Ladoga captured a district centre in the Petrozavodsk . region. The communique repeats the order of the day on \ elcika and adds that over 250 other inhabited places were taken, imditditig Smolevichi, 2-1 miles north-east of Minsk and Krasnoye, 30 miles north-west of Minsk on the main line to Vilnu. The

Red Army in the Bnranowicze direction captured Cherven, 37 miles south of Slutsk, besides 300 other inhabited places, including a railway town SO miles southwest of Minsk. , In the fighting round Polotsk more than 250 places have fallen to the Soviet forces, including one 50 miles from Dvinsk. The Germans yesterday lost 103 tanks destroyed or disabled and also 35 planes.