MOST CRITICAL BATTLE OF WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 October 1941, Page 5

MOST CRITICAL BATTLE OF WAR

Being Fought on Approaches to Moscow PANZER DIVISIONS GAINING GROUND AT A PRICE IMMENSE ENEMY LOSSES REPORTED LONDON, October 8. In Russia the most critical battle of the war is raging on the road to Moscow. Russian troops have evacuated Orel, 68 miles east of Bryansk. German tanks which penetrated the Russian defences are reported to have suffered immense losses. Three hundred were destroyed. Two German battalions in one area were completely wiped out. Viazma, 150 miles from Moscow, on the Smolensk railway, is the centre of the most violent fighting. Moscow reports particularly fierce fightingin this area, all through yesterday and last night, and similar heavy battle near Bryansk, 230 miles south-west of Moscow. The Germans announced this afternoon that a breach in Marshal Timoshenko’s defences was first made last Thursday. This had now led to what was described as a new and vast series of battles of annihilation of large Russian forces which had been surrounded. There is no fresh news of the German thrust towards Kharkov. The Germans claim that in the Southern Ukraine six or seven Russian divisions have been cut off from the coast of the Sea of Azov. News from the three beleaguered garrisons, in the Crimea, and at Odessa and Leningrad, shows that the Russians are holding their own and hitting back.