STALIN CONSULTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 5

STALIN CONSULTED

ACCORDING TO SWEDISH REPORT SOME RUSSIANS ENGULFED. i AS WELL AS GERMANS. . (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, August 21. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily ,Mail" reports that before blowing up the Dnieprostroy Dam, Marshal Budenny told M. Stalin by telephone from his headquarters at Kiev that he had got ■ nearly half a jmillion men across the Dneiper. VGood, then blow up the dam,” ordered M. Stalin. * The dam took four years to build. It was the greatest piece of Soviet construction, and was justly considered one of the world's most impressive engineering masterpieces. Engineers first wrecked the machinery operating the barrage, and then the dynamiters laid charges at the dam’s base. A series of dull explosions followed; then, with a mighty swish, millions of tons of pent-up water burst through, carrying off masses of masonry in a spray hundreds of feet high. German troops, fleeing Russian peasants and straggling Soviet soldiery are believed to have been engulfed. From now on the Soviet must largely depend on new industries established in the Urals.