DESPERATE EFFORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 November 1941, Page 5

DESPERATE EFFORTS

BY NAZI PANZER FORCES RIVER FORCED IN KLIN REGION. IMPORTANT SOVIET GAINS IN LENINGRAD ZONE. LONDON, November 27. Fierce fighting continues around Moscow, but it appears that the Germans have made little more headway in their effort to break into the city’s inner defences. The German panzer forces are still trying desperately to smash through, but are facing grim Soviet resistance and counterattacks. The fighting is particularly bloody at Volokolamsk, north-west of the capital, and at Stalinogorsk, 33 miles southeast of Tula, which the Germans are trying to by-pass. In the region of Klin, 40 miles north of Moscow, the Russians admit that the Germans have forced a river at several points. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says that whereas the initiative in the Moscow zone still rests with the invaders, the Russians have wrested it from them in the larger part not only of the Black Sea area but also of the Leningrad front, and that on the last-named front they have recovered important ground from General von Leeb, particularly in the Tikhvin area, 100 miles east of Leningrad, where the Leningrad-Vologda railway appears already to be wholly or almost wholly cleared of the Germans who swooped down on it in the first half of November. Russian coun-ter-aggression has stretched further south, at least to the Bologoiepskov railway, where the Russians are pressing the Germans toward Lake Ilmen. 'The Germans in that area apparently released part of their troops to support operations in the Klin area. According to accounts from Berlin the Germans actually reached the Don at Nakhicheven, just above Rostov, before the Russians launched their successful counter-stroke in the Donetz Basin. GERMAN CLAIMS MOSCOW OUTER DEFENCES PENETRATED. APPROACH TO INNER LINE. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) LONDON, November 27. A German military spokesman declared that the Germans have taken Klin. It is also claimed in Berlin that German forces have penetrated Moscow’s outer defences and are now approaching the inner line, which, it is pointed out, is still some distance from

the centre of the city. The “Izvestia” says the Germans have thrown in six tank and five infantry divisions in the Volakalamsk direction, where the situation has become aggravated during the past 24 hours.