SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1941, Page 5

SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT

REPORTED IN POSITION AT MOSCOW SWEEPING CLAIMS MADE BY ENEMY. ’■ SPOKESMAN’S OPTIMISTIC ASSERTIONS. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) LONDON, October 28. Dispatches from the Moscow front to Kuibyshev report a slight improvement in the Soviet position. Despite relentless German pressure in the Mojaisk and Malo Yaroslavets area, General Zhukov is repulsing incessant German attacks. These were held at all points except one, where the Germans have driven a small wedge into the Soviet defence line. The Russians, under General Rokossovsky, launched a counter-attack in the Mojaisk sector. While the Berlin radio continues to deny that either a big Russian army or reserves remain in existence, the Tiflis radio reaffirmed that the Soviet will continue the war for years and said: “Our great allies, England and America, are replacing our losses. The loss of many Russian factories will not affect the war’s progress.” The Moscow radio said the Germans had occupied lai’ge and important industrial areas, but had not succeeded in capturing factory machinery, which had been evacuated far inland. The Swedish newspaper “Svenskadagbladet’s” Berlin correspondent asked a German spokesman for an explanation of Hitler’s promise that the war in Russia would be won before winter. The spokesman said: “The last Russian resistance will be broken when the roads freeze. Germany has wiped out 260 Russian divisions, leaving not more than a hundred to defend the whole front.” New Russian armies, he said, were being mobilised, but would be poorly trained and equipped. A German communique states: “Our pursuit of the enemy continues in the Donetz basin. We penetrated Kramatorskay (apparently an industrial town near Kharkov). The Soviet thereby lost one of its largest tank factories. The Hungarians took other important industrial towns.”