MORE THAN LOCAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 September 1941, Page 5

MORE THAN LOCAL

SUCCESS ON THE CENTRAL FRONT ENEMY PIVOT SMASHED. 3 ~ POSSIBILITY OF IMPORTANT RESULTS. LONDON, September 10. The Soviet Information Bureau spokesman, M. Lozovsky, said that the smashing of eight German divisions in this area was much more than a local success, and it would have important repercussions on other parts of the front. Since time was of vital importance to the enemy, any setback to the Germans in one of the pivots of the front might have significant results. The battlefield was not stabilised anywhere, and fighting was continuing , everywhere on a scale never known f in the history of war, M. Lozovsky said. The German losses were daily mounting heavily. M. Lozovsky said he had no information that the Germans had reached Schlusseburg, east of Leningrad. When pressmen asked if a report was true, that Smolensk has been retaken he replied: “An answer will be given in due course.” He added that the actions in the Smolensk and Odessa regions indicated increasing resistance by the Red Army. Sixteen Rumanian divisions had been involved in the fighting round Odessa and half of them were already shattered. There is no news of any change on the Leningrad front. Official German reports say, as they have said before, that the final phase of the battle for Leningrad has now begun. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says that air superiority has been the chief factor in the German progress in the Leningrad area, as elsewhere. The Germans have never had exclusive use of the air in the Leningrad region, but in spite of their losses they massed such numbers of bombers that they were able literally to blast their way forward. In the approaches to Kiev, Moscow reports, a battle of sustained intensity is raging. Elsewhere in the Ukraine, Russian gunboats operating in an unnamed river (probably the Dnieper) prevented an attempt by six German divisions and an armoured column, under cover of attacks by dive-bomb-ers, to cross the river.