TERRIFIC LOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 November 1941, Page 5

TERRIFIC LOSSES

SUFFERED BY GERMANS IN RUSSIA DETAILED EVIDENCE. ARMOURED AND INFANTRY DIVISIONS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 9.50 a.m.) RUGBY, November 13. More detailed evidence has reached informed quarters of the terrific German losses, in men and material, in Russia. The total German casualties were recently estimated'by M. Stalin at 4,500,000 and there is reason to believe that sixteen out of a probable nineteen German armoured divisions operating on the Russian front have suffered serious losses and in nine of these divisions the losses are considered to have been very considerable. The Eighth Armoured Division, after two periods of exceptionally heavy fighting, had to be withdrawn from the front early in September and has only reappeared in action during the past few days. There is very good evidence that appreciably casualties have been inflicted on over seventy of the German infantry divisions. In several cases the casualties suffered are believed to have been as high as 50 per cent and there are a number of confirmed instances of infantry regiments being reduced to a third of their proper strength and instances of this type are continuing to be reported. Bitter fighting is continuing in conditions in which frost, snow and mud are additional causes of casualties, and there are no immediate prospects of lessening casualties. No allowance is made in these estimates for the sick, the numbers of which already are high and are likely to increase as the winter becomes more severe. The Soviet midday communique merely states that there was fighting along the whole front on the night of November 12. A supplementary communique states: “On November 11 oui’ Air Force destroyed and put out of action fifty German tanks, 230 lorries, with infantry and army loads, five' heavy guns, mere than ten anti-aircraft points and twenty motor cycles. It also routed or annihilated more than one regiment of enemy infantry.”