NAZI COLLAPSE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 238, 5 July 1944, Page 5

NAZI COLLAPSE

Big, Possibilities Seen LONDON, July 3. The Red Anny is chasing the Germans out of Russia so fast that Russian military experts believe the battle may be on German soil within a fortnight. The whole front is being pushed westward at a speed averaging nearly two miles an hour. If this rate of advance is maintained the Russians will cross the border of Germany proper, approximately 450 miles west of the Russian spearhead, in about 10 days. Today the advanced Russian forces.are within 150 miles of East Prussia. The seriousness of the reverse for the Germans can hardly be exaggerated, says Reuter. They must send reinforcements from their re.seryes on other fronts, otherwise the Russians will be able to break down the remaining tbarriers and ‘sweep almost at will across Poland to East Prussia and the Baltic. The Moscow correspondent of the Associated Press says that not by a long stretch of the imagination—even Nazi imagination—can this utter collapse ot the German armies be called a planned retreat or a systematic withdrawal. There are continued signs of German indecision and lack of contact between the German divisions. Graveyard of Equipment. “The German High Command appears to be unable to halt this wholesale rout of its armies in White Russia,” the correspondent says. “The German commanders almost on every sector seem unable to hold back the tide of Russian tanks, cavalry, infantry, and air cover which is growing daily.” "Pravda” says that the fields of White Russia are a vast graveyard of German equipment. The , roads are blocked by thousands of twisted and battered lorries, tanks, mobile guns, and carts. The Exchange Telegraph’s correspondent in Moscow says that after., the terrific mauling which the German Fifth Tank Division suffered in the Borisov area, picked S.S. troops were flung into the battle in a hopeless effort. Hundreds of German officers and men are coming out of the woods from Orsha to Beresina and are surrendering, sometimes to a single Russian soldier, sometimes even to civilians. A “Daily Express” correspondent with the Red Army says that in the Russian break-through' in White Russia prisoners arc coming in all the time, and he estimates the present total to be at least SO,OOO. Front Split In Two. Morley Richards, the “Daily Express” military writer, says the pace of the Red Army’s, advance has forced great masses of Germans into the Pripet Marshes, where they can easily be mopped up. “The German army is now irreparably split in two, with each group facing a separate annihilation,” he says. The Red Army's great sweep through White Russia may have brought the end of the war much nearer.” The Moscow radio commentator, M. Yermashev, says: “It is already clear that the so-called enemy defensive front in White Russia has ceased to exist as a whole. It is being rent to pieces. “The German reports and commentaries give only a few words to the events in White Russia. Hitlerites have lost their gift for words. It is a significant silence.”

Reuter’s Moscow correspondent, cabling a few hours before the fall of Minsk, stated that the Germans were fighting bitterly and showing an obstinacy which is seen only when one of their vital objectives is threatened. The Germans realized that the loss of Minsk would open the way for a double Russian attack across north Boland against Germany itself. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says that the Germans west of Minsk might improvise some sort of new line, but it cannot be anything like as strong as the defences which the Russians obliterated in the past 10 days. . The Germans’ greatest difficulty is tn man and equip such a new line after their tremendous losses of men and material since the Russian offensive began and owing to the calls from other fronts on reserves which are already strained.

Moreover, the battle line is now reaching a region where the organized Bolish underground army and partisans are operating effectively on a large scale, which will increase the Germans’ difficulties. While Russian guerrillas have played a big part in the advance. Moscow radio says that guerrillas had already captured many railway stations before the Red Army arrived, and that wide stretches of territory are under their control.