ON CENTRAL PART OF EASTERN FRONT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 October 1941, Page 6

ON CENTRAL PART OF EASTERN FRONT

Germans Attempting Direct Drive on Moscow USING EVERY DEVICE OF MODERN WARFARE RUSSIANS SHOWING UNBROKEN CONFIDENCE (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, October 8. If any region in the world can be described more aptly than another as an inferno, it is surely the area of some hundreds of square miles in which the Germans are making their onslaught against Marshal Timoshenko’s forces in the cential sector of the Eastern front. The Germans are using every device of modern ’warfare, including wave after wave of divebombers, artillery of all calibres, tanks, machine-guns and flame-throwers, to which the undismayed Russians oppose more massed artillery than ever before and also tanks, anti-tank guns, machine-guns and grenades, but apparently no flame-throwers. An official Russian announcement of fierce fighting in the Viazma area caused some surprise in Moscow, but it revealed, despite much previous emphasis on the German pincer movement, that the invaders are attempting to reach the capital by a direct thrust along the route where their July offensive was " held up, or just to the right of that route. The Germans are desperately striking with a tremendous weight of metal, in the hope that the central part of Marshal Timoshenko’s front is more weakly held than the rest and that the Russians have not had time to consolidate after their successes in the Elnia region. The situation is unquestionably serious, but so far there is no reason to believe that the Gennans have achieved a major break-through, and Moscow is fully confident that Marshal Timoshenko has prepared a counterstroke.