DRASTIC ACTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 5

DRASTIC ACTION

DYNAMITING OF MIGHTY BARRAGE RUIN OF UKRAINIAN INDUSTRIES. • IMMENSE STRATEGICAL EFFECT. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. August 20. Operating under cover of darkness Marsha! Budenny’s engineers, according to unconfirmed reports, have dynamited and utterly destroyed the gigantic Dnieprostroy Dam at Zaporozhe, on which depends the whole industrial district of the central Ukraine. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent says that Marshal Budenny, after a personal telephone call from M. Stalin, took this desperate step, which will have an immense strategical effect on the southern battlefields. Allied circles in Stockholm attach very great importance to the news that the Russians have deliberately wrecked the mighty barrage. The Russians, in the event of a possible retreat, have thus ensured that not a particle of the Ukraine’s previous industries will fall into German hands in working or workable order. Zaporozhe means “beyond the rapids,” and the whole of the upper Dnieper, as far as Kiev, will now be converted into a swirling flood unnavigable by boats. The German forces are thus in deadly peril of being swept away.

Reuter’s Moscow correspondent emphasises that the Soviet airmen are performing wonders and have not lost control of the air at the vital spots, but that the dispatch of hundreds of planes from America and Britain is an urgent necessity. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says it is reported that the Russians have already succeeded in evacuating 100,000 men from encircled Odessa, which, according to the Wilhelmstrasse, the Germans are now attacking. The Stockholm correspondent ;of “The Times” declares that though Marshal Voroshilov has good prospects of repelling the determined German attacks, it is futile to deny that Leningrad is seriously threatened, but the position is more critical for the Germans here as a further check would be tantamount to a stalemate which would mean a Russian victory, because the Germans could scarcely hope to make another adequate offensive this year.

The Germans’ progress toward Leningrad, the correspondent says, has not been impressive if it is measured in miles, specially when the excellency of the roads in the Baltic States is considered. thanks to which the Germans can rapidly accumulate a strong force for striking against selected points just across the Russian frontier. The Germans expected to press much near-: er to Leningrad from the KingiscnnNovgorod line. The last 50 miles round Leningrad is among the most strongly fortified parts’of Russia and it is bound to trouble the Germans seriously even if they ever succeed in traversing it. Swedish reports tonight says that the Germans have penetrated the outer defences of Odessa.

A special German High Command communique states that the Russian forces were heavily defeated around Gomel (190 miles south of Smolensk), and also to the north of Gomel, and 78,000 prisoners were taken.