SOVIET TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 July 1941, Page 5

SOVIET TACTICS

MOBILE DEFENCE METHODS PENETRATION BY ENEMY AT SOME POINTS. MAY BE TURNED TO ACCOUNT ADVANTAGEOUSLY. (Received This Day. 11.25 a.m.) LONDON, July 14. A Russian military spokesman says that although there has not yet been any deep penetration of the Stalin Line, the Red Army’s mobile defence policy will probably allow deep penetration at selected points. These will allow the defenders to deal more effectively with individual Panzer thrusts, as it has done in the early days of the war. Authoritative observers in London are still cautious in assessing the situation. but the general view is that after I three weeks Germany has taken a severe mauling for unsubstantial gains. Today's Russian communique states that no large-scale fighting occurred during the night and that the position of the Russian troops has not substantially altered. The Air Force, throughout the night, bombed airfields and mechanised units. Attacks were also made on Jassy and Ploesti. A brief German communique claims that breaking through operations on the Eastern Front continue according to plan. Finnish forces under Marshal Mannerheim attacked on both sides of Lake Lodoga. The Luftwaffe bombed railways in the neighbourhood of Leningrad and Smolensk and military objectives in Kiev. GOERING & HITLER SERIOUS QUARREL REPORTED. OVER RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN. LONDON. July 13. According to the Moscow radio, wellinformed circles in Stockholm state that Herr Hitler and Field-Marshal Goering violently quarrelled on the eve of the invasion of Russia. Goering argued that the losses in the'west and also in the Balkans and Crete left the Luftwaffe unfit for a new campaign, and he refused to be responsible for a new drive. Hitler became frenzied, called Goering a coward, and declared that he would command the Luftwaffe himself. The radio story adds that the disappearance of Goering’s name from the German Press tends to prove the veracity of this report. It is also rumoured that Himmler. Nazi Chief of Police, insisted on Goering being interned. PROTECTION REFUSED FOR GERMAN HOSPITAL SHIPS. ON ACCOUNT OF NAZI OUTRAGES. LONDON. July 13. The Russian Government has refused any guarantee of protection for several large ships which the Germans say they intend to use as hospital ships in the Baltic and Arctic Seas. The Foreign Commissar, M. Molotov, in reply to a German Note informing him about these ships, said that in view of the Germans’ systematic vio- [’ lation of international treaties and j

agreements, the Soviet Government could not believe that Germany would really observe the rules of The Hague Convention.