GREAT GERMAN ATTACK

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 160, 6 June 1940, Page 7

GREAT GERMAN ATTACK

PARIS FINAL OBJECTIVE IMMENSE BATTLES RAGING ■ i ■ . ' / • _ , ( t ' „ ‘ ‘ (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received June .6, 8.55 a.m. ' 1 PARIS, June 5. The Germans launched a fresh attack on the Western Front at •early dawn on "a front of over 120 miles, stated the military spokesman today. • The main directions taken and the strongest part of the thrust were on the Middle Somme (the region where the Germans had retained a r bridgehead on the south bank) and east,of the Oise, namely the Ailette Canal below the famous Chemin des Dames/ which was the scene of incessant fighting for possession in the. Great War. (It owes its name to the fact that it was constructed by the royal princesses of- the seventeenth century;) i • , ‘ ■ ' .' f , ~ • The at 4 a.m. opened a very violent artillery fire, while dive-bombers in great numbers attacked the French lines, after whic|i • masses of infantry immediately began to move forward, but no tanks were used. '

ENORMOUS FORCES EMPLOYED. According to another source, tlie spokesman said the Germans had so far used only a few tanks. Unofficial repoi*ts reaching Paris, state that the entire right wing of the German' Army opened the attack, German 'columns near Laon doing their utmost tp force the passage of the Oise Valley and make a thrust to Paris. Nearly a thousand dive-bombers cover the attacks by enormous masses of infantry. * Military experts in Paris estimate that the Germans have massed forty divisions along the Somme, plus the five mechanised divisions remaining out of the ten which ‘started the battle of Flanders. Anothet source gives the German force engaged at over half a million, and says the offensive ■ evidently represents the second _ phase of Hitler’s execution of the Schlieffen plan providing for a sweep by the right flank through the Lowlands in order to envelop Paris.