ON THE EASTERN FRONT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 August 1941, Page 6

ON THE EASTERN FRONT

Hopeful View Taken in London RUSSIAN ARMIES RETAINING COHESION REPORTS OF GERMAN PREPARATIONS FOR WINTER CAMPAIGN (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.10 p.m.) RUGBY, August 21. The present success of the Germans in Russia, although it is serious, is not regarded as presaging an early Russian defeat, since the front seems to retain its cohesion and there is a general impression in London, though it is not confirmed, that Marshal Budenny has extricated a great part of his armies to continue the struggle east of the Dnieper. Russian reports even speak of the rout of a German division in the Western Ukraine, so that evidently the Germans are not having their own way even west of the Dnieper. The report that the Russians have blown u'o the great dam at Dnieprorstroy is still unconfirmed, but if by doing so Marshal Budenny has saved part of his army and facilitated the holding of the Dnieper line, then the economic loss probably will be justified.

Mention of a fighting centre at Gomel seems to indicate a German attempt to outflank the Kiev sector and turn the Dnieper line, and may thus constitute a serious threat to the Russian defence in the north.

Marshal Voroshilov’s summons to the people of Leningrad to defend the city to the last, together with a German claim to have captured Novogrod, shows that the Germans are making a serious attempt to reach this objective also, though they are probably still at least fifty or sixty miles away. From the effort expended by the Germans in this thrust, it is evident that they are now making their third great offensive in the attack on Russia, but it remains to be seen whether it will go further or prove more decisive than the first two, which cost the Germans such enormous losses in men and materials.

Meanwhile “The Times,’’ quoting the report of the correspondent of a Zurich paper, who visited the front, that the Germans are having great difficulties with communications, observes that the use of aeroplanes for transport to the front on a large scale suggests that they are in serious straits. The correspondent goes on to say that the whole German construction organisation is standing by to provide housing for the troops in the approaching winter, and that the country he saw was so completely devastated as to afford no shelter whatever.