KEEPING CLAIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 October 1941, Page 6

KEEPING CLAIMS

* MADE BY THE GERMANS Regarding Operations North of Sea of Azov ALLEGED COLLAPSE OF SOVIET SOUTHERN WING BUT RUSSIANS STILL COUNTER-ATTACKING STRONGLY (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Dav, 12.5 p.m.) LONDON, October 7. While M. Lozovsky (Soviet spokesman) laconically observ ing that: “Hitler has several hundred thousand extra men he wants buried, ’ ’ a commentator on the Berlin radio claimed the German victory northward of the Sea of Azov, to which today’s High Command communique referred, meant nothing less than the collapse of the entire southern wing of the Russian Army. He added that the German Army now immediately menaced the industrial areas of the Donetz basin. An earlier statement that the Germans had captured Mariupol and Berdyansk, if true, gives superficial support to the declaration. Berlin military circles state that: “The task of the German Army is not to march to Moscow and hold a swastika party in Red Square, but rather to engage and destroy the Soviet Army. Whether this happens in north, south, east or west is a matter of complete indifference.” The Russians ate nowhere showing the slightest reluctance to meet this challenge, and even according to the Germans themselves, are fiercely counter-attacking in areas where they have “completely collapsed.”