ICS THAT HAVE BAFFLED THE GERMANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1941, Page 6

ICS THAT HAVE BAFFLED THE GERMANS

Refeat of attempted lightning thrusts (By Telegraph—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) LONDON, July 31. Reports from most sources declare that the moment fOl which Russia has waited has now come and that preparations for the fust counter-offensive are being rapidly advanced. Despite the apparent stabilisation of the front, the present trench warfare may be merely a springboard for future operations, wu the battle again taking on a mobile character. German military commanders, it is believed, realise that their present strategy is failing and are trying to find a satisfactory answer to the new conditions. Features which have surprised and dismayed the German High Command are the ease and smoothness with which the Russian railways are rushing' up supplies and reinforcements to threatened sectois, the apparently inexhaustible number of fresh reserves which the Soviet Command possesses and the first appearance, in large numbers, of a new type of Russian tank, of specially heavy armour. The “Daily Express’s’’ Moscow correspondent states thau thousands of Red Army troops swarm out of secret underground fortifications to attack the flank of each new German assault on Smolensk. The Russian tactics are forcing the German spearheads to fan out, depriving them of their drivingpower. Whenever the Germans encounter an obstacle which they are unable to force, their Panzer columns try to turn the Russian flanks, but the Russians counter this move by extending their own lines, so that each main battle area is now extending over an ever-widening front, to the disadvantage of the Germans, who rely largely on lightning thrusts to carry them through the enemy lines.