BATTLE FOR SMOLENSK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1941, Page 6

BATTLE FOR SMOLENSK

TREMENDOUS MECHANISED CLASH GERMANS ONLY ON OUTSKIRTS OF CITY. LENINGRAD SITUATION MORE OBSCURE. (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON, July 23. Smolensk, which is the focal point of probably the biggest and bloodiest battle ever waged by mechanised forces, is and always has been in the Red Army’s hands, says a Reuter correspondent, in a special message tonight from Moscow. “It is true that German advance units reached the outskirts of this key city some days ago, but its defenders drove them off. Soviet communiques have rightly continued to speak of •fighting in the direction of Smo■lensk.’ The Russians have placed many obstacles on the roads between Smolensk and Moscow and these obstacles are hampering the present Russian communications with the battlefront, but they can be regarded as one reason why the Germans are beginning to realise that a frontal attack against Moscow is a hopeless task and why the Nazis now are trying to explain to the German people that the High Command’s immediate objective is not Moscow, but the destruction of tha Soviet army. The situation in the Leningrad region is more obscure. The Russians do not believe that the Germans can thrust either across the high-ly-fortified Karelian Isthmus, across which stands the old Mannerheim Line, or around Lake Ladoga, with its difficult terrain, cut by lakes and waterways. The danger to Leningrad is possibly only from the south-west, but the main Russian forces in that region are grimly holding on around Pskov. The Germans there find themselves in a position not unlike that at Smolensk. Furthermore, the whole region between Pskov and Leningrad and between Tallinn and Leningrad is along a -coast largely made up of forests and marshes, with few roads.’