HIGH CONFIDENCE
MAINTAINED IN RUSSIA LEADERS & PEOPLE LOOKING TO CRITICAL MONTH. NAZI THREAT TO ODESSA. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, August 4. After the six weeks of fighting the Russian morale is high, and the leaders and people are confidently looking forward to the coming critical month. The authorities in Moscow realise the importance of the renewed German thrust in the Ukraine and recognise that the Germans are attempting a pincers movement which is aimed at the encirclement of the city, which would result in cutting the railway running parallel with the Dnieper between central Russia and the Ukrainian mining areas as well as the Nikolayev granary. The thrust, if successful, will also cut off the Black Sea port of Odessa. Reuter’s Zurich correspondent quotes a report from Berlin that Germans are- attempting a diversion toward Odessa. A German and Rumanian force, it is stated, has crossed the Dniester at several points near the mouth on the Black Sea, and other troops which crossed the river near _ Kishinev are stated to be wheeling south-eastward to join the thrust. Soviet troops are reported in Berlin to be fiercely counter-attacking west of Kiev in an effort to relieve units which have been encircled. The Germans are flinging in a powerful air force in this sector. The latest news indicates that the Germans are being held in the south and elsewhere on the whole front. This morning’s Moscow communique states: “During the night of August 3 our troops continued fighting against the enemy in the Smolensk, Korosten (Ikorost), and Byelaya-Tserkov directions and in the Estonian sector of the front. On the Rumanian sectors of the front there were no significant changes.” The Germans claim to have gained some ground in Estonia, but there is no evidence of such advances being anything more than local. The Berlin radio says that a great battle of attrition is now raging in a 60-mile radius round Smolensk. GERMAN NAVAL LOSSES. The “Soviet War News,” published by the Embassy in London, states that at least 11 U-boats, nine destroyers, 12
transports, three tankers, three patrol ships, several monitors and barges, and one munition ship have so far been sunk in the Baltic Sea and Black Sea by Soviet warships and planes. The correspondent of “The Times” on the German frontier says that .the Germans, recognising that the completion of Russian mobilisation has made a long war almost a certainty, are confronted with the necessity of modernising the entire Russian transport system within that section of Russia which they have now occupied. The task of driving without pause across wretched frontier roads while being harassed by snipers and saboteurs is imposing a terrific physical and nervous strain, and is resulting in an enormous wastage of drivers and vehicles.
A solution of the transport problem depends substantially on rebuilding the roads, for which hundreds of thousands of pioneers have recently gone eastward. The Germans are also tackling the task of adapting the Russian broad railway gauge to the German rolling-stock.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19410805.2.28.2
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1941, Page 5
Word count
Tapeke kupu
500HIGH CONFIDENCE Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1941, Page 5
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Wairarapa Times-Age. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.