FOUL TACTICS!

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1941, Page 6

FOUL TACTICS!

ALLEGED BY GERMANS RUSSIAN CONCEALMENT OF TANK STRENGTH. ONLY OLD MODELS SHOWN , BEFORE WAR. (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) LONDON. August 4. German propaganda officials are now angrily accusing Stalin of “the greatest tank bluff since the tank was introduced into warfare.” The Germans declare that the Russians displayed only old model tanks at manoeuvres and parades at which foreign military attaches were present. Reporting this, the “Daily Express” Stockholm correspondent says the Germans declare that when the Russians appeared in battle they had types of tanks .the German High Command had never even heard about. At the outbreak of war, the Germans, officially stated that the Russians had nine thousand tanks. The Germans now say they have captured or destroyed nine thousand, but the Russians have many left. ENEMY REPORTS (Received This Day. 11.50 a.m.) LONDON. August 4. A German communique states: “In the course of an enveloping movement in the Ukraine, German and Hungarian mobile troops cut off vital enemy rail communications. The mass of the Soviet forces which were surrounded east of Smolensk are now annihilated and the remainder are faced with disbandment.”

A Finnish communique claims that

all Soviet attacks were repulsed and that the enemy lost 2,000 men on the East front. Many were taken prisoner, it is stated, and a large number of enemy tanks and vehicles were destroyed.