BATTLE OF ATTRITION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1941, Page 5

BATTLE OF ATTRITION

RED ARMY SAPPING NAZI STRENGTH SOME HOPEFUL FORECASTS. VAST RUSSIAN FORCES TAKING POSITION. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 1. The Russian-German war has

resolved itself into a battle of attrition, with the Red Army’s masses slowly sapping the strength of the Germans, according to observers in Moscow. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Mail” says military circles in Moscow declared: “The Germans have been fought to a standstill and are. wearing themselves out in futile assaults.” The Red Army spokesman, General Chodin, today said: “The Germans lost the war in the first few days. Millions of our soldiers and thousands of our tanks and planes have taken up positions, and the Red Army’s resistance is passing from the defensive to the offensive.” Yesterday’s reports showed no territorial change from the Arctic to the Black Sea. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” said the Germans claimed that they have begun to exterminate the Russians in Estonia, westward of Lake Peipus, but nothing indicated that appreciable German progress has been made there. The swoop against Leningrad has lost its impetus, similarly the attempt to reach Moscow via Smolensk. Neither plan has apparently been abandoned, and the Germans are collecting their strength for new assaults. Experts doubted whether the impending third offensive planned by the Germans—though backed by the desperate conviction that they must now do or die—could have such weight as its predecessors because of the losses of supplies and the battering of German manpower. The Moscow correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain reports that the Germans have launched 42 assaults against Smolensk without success. The Berlin radio’s official commentator yesterday said that any other European army would have collapsed under such heavy losses as the Russians have suffered, but they have so far always been able to throw in new reserves. It is hoped, he added, that their reinforcements will soon diminish. German propagandists are now admitting that the earlier claims that the Red Aii’ Force was annihilated were somewhat premature. ENEMY WOUNDED !»' TERRIBLE FLOW IN UKRAINE. RESOURCES HOPELESSLY OVERTAXED. LONDON, August 1. A German military doctor, talking from Berlin radio, admitted that the German casualties have been so heavy that Ukrainian women and girls are being employed to assist the Nazi medical staff. “There is an incessant flow of wounded to our hospitals,” he said. “All our field hospitals are overcrowded, and the medical staff is totally in-i sufficient. It is impossible for us to deal with all the cases.” SMOLENSK BATTLE POSITION SOMEWHAT INDEFINITE. A TRANSLATION DIFFICULTY. LONDON, August 1. While the Moscow night communique reported that the Germans had been thrown back in the Smolensk direction by Russian counter-attacks, it would be premature to suggest that Smolensk itself has been relieved from the pressure or that the enemy has been thrown back any considerable distance. Moreover, the extent of the Russian success is unknown in the absence of

information regarding the exact point where the Russian thrust was made, since the Germans claim the virtual encirclement of Smolensk. An expert in the Russian language points out that while the word “direction” appears in Moscow’s translated communiques instead of “sector” or “region,” the actual Russian word used is one which is more dynamic and which is lamely Englished into “direction”; it indicates back and forth.