SLOWING DOWN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1941, Page 5

SLOWING DOWN

IN PACE OF FIGHTING

INDICATIONS OF ENEMY' DIFFICULTIES. IN MOVING UP SUPPLIES. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, November 7. After the announcements yesterday of powerful Russian attacks which had driven wedges into enemy positions and pushed back a number of forces, today’s reports state that the defenders of Moscow are still counter-attacking in various sectors.

The heaviest thrust by the Germans

remains in the Tula sector, but the Russians are holding their positions. German reports stress the growing severity of. the weather. The Berlin radio referred to the bad state of the reads, and stated that horse-drawn transport has become necessary. The overnight Russian communique, after reporting fighting along the whole front, says that on the southern front during October, according to incomplete data, the Red Air Force destroyed 300 enemy tanks and killed 12,000 of the enemy. A large number of lorries and guns were put out of action. “The latest news confirms the impression of the last few days that the whole Russian front between Kurk, 300 miles south of Moscow, and the Baltic Sea is in a 'sort of deadlock, while below Kurk to the Black Sea, including the Crimea, the mobility has greatly slowed down since the end of October,” says “The Times” Stockholm correspondent. “This is partly due to the winter and the insufficient adaptation of the German offensive vehicles to the new conditions, but much more to the lengthening of the Germans’ communications and also to their inability to develop sufficiently their reorganised supply lines.

“For this reason the recent attempts against Moscow have been more like short, heavy strokes than the general offensive which formerly had surged ahead with apparently limitless supplies in the immediate rear. The Russians have not experienced a similar communication problem, and therefore in spite of their losses they are able to resist as stubbornly as previously. The Germans have recently shown a tendency to represent each new frantic hammering as a new offensive, whereas it appears really to be a resumption, as supplies arrive, of the offensive, the initial satges of which coincided with Hitler’s speech and the announcement by the Nazi Press chief, Dr. Dietrich, last month that the war in Russia was virtually over.”