BLUNTED & BENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1941, Page 5

BLUNTED & BENT

SECOND NAZI OFFENSIVE

SERIES OF INDIVIDUAL

BATTLES.

IN DEPTH ON ENORMOUS

FRONT.

LONDON, July 27.

Commentators outside Berlin do not appear to think that the Germans at present have much cause for satisfaction.

The Moscow radio says that the German army is losing 38,000 men daily in killed, wounded, and missing.

With their second offensive blunted and bent, the Germans, after five weeks of terrible fighting are still further from Moscow than they were from Paris when last year’s western blitzkrieg- began. Despite the enormous losses in men and precious materials, the Germans are continuing pressure on the 1800-mile front, but have nowhere gained any decisive result. Confirmation of the tremendous confusion with which the Germans must cope is given by the “Volkischer Eecbachter” military correspondent, who says the gigantic battle on the Eastern Front seems to be splitting up into a series of individual battles with German and Soviet units fighting at great depth and separated from one another by enormous distances. He refers to the incredibly vast battle area between the Dnieper and Smolensk. “The front is here, there everywhere, like a chessboard.”

MATTER. OF ROUTINE

GERMANS’ GAS WARFARE

PLANS.

LONDON, July 25

It is officially admitted in Berlin that plans for gas warfare have been issued to German commanders and are being studied “merely as a matter of routine, but if Russia is seeking to find an excuse for launching gas warfare Germany will give the right answer.”

A Moscow communique on July 23 stated: “In fighting near Pskov we captured parcels of secret documents, including instructions for. use of poison gas distributed by mines. The document proves that the Germans, realising the unavoidable failure of the blitzkrieg, are preparing largescale gas attacks.”