BRILLIANT VICTORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1941, Page 6

BRILLIANT VICTORY

GAINED BY RUSSIANS IN SOUTH • TRIBUTES IN THE BRITISH PRESS. SNOW AS WINDING SHEET z FOR GERMANS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.45 a.m.) RUGBY, December 7. The magnificent Russian successes on the southern sector of the Eastern front are widely praised in the Sunday Press. Mr J. L. Garvin, in the “Observer” characterises the Russian achievement in the south as nothing less than a great and brilliant victory. Like other writers, Mr Garvin stresses that the Rostov victories are the first signal defeats inflicted on the German armies anywhere since the war began. “German plans are completely deranged and indefinitely delayed, perhaps for a few months, perhaps until the late spring,” Mr Garvin adds. “Our Allies, on their side, gain priceless time to enable them to equip and train new armies beyond the Volga and develop their own productive and defensive systems.” Of the central (Moscow) sector, Mr Garvin says that though the position is grave, the Russians are fighting magnificently. In any case, snow will be the winding sheet of more Germans than it ever covered before.

SOVIET REPORT

DESTRUCTION OF ENEMY PLANES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.40 a.m.) RUGBY, December 7. A Soviet overnight communique states: “During December 6, our troops fought the enemy on all fronts. On December 5 we brought down fourteen German planes. Our losses totalled four. On December 6, we brought down three planes on the approaches to Moscow.”

FIRMLY HELD

NAZI DRIVE ON MOSCOW. SUCCESSFUL RUSSIAN COUNTERSTROKES. (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) LONDON, December 7. Russian troops completely surrounded the Germans in Tikhvin, cutting off the highway along which they received supplies. The garrison is thus in p. serious position. Bitter fighting is proceeding, states a Kuibyshev message . Soviet troops are holding the German drive east of Orel, causing heavy losses. The first day of a new Soviet offensive in the Kalinin sector resulted in an expansion of the area the Russians hold on the southern bank of the Volga. The Russians have also forced their way, from the north-west, into the northern quarter of the city, while Red Army troops, with bayonets, seized ai) important village south-west-wards of Kalinin. General Guderian threw in a new tank division north of Stalinogorsk, in an effort to rescue the Seventeenth Tank Division, which has already been severely punished, but the Russians held the attacks and forced the Germans to retreat.

The “Izvestia” mentions, a point on the Moscow’ front where peasants found wounded Germans fatally shot in the back (presumably by their own comrades), lying abandoned in field dressing stations.

BUSY ACTIVITY

IN RECOVERED ROSTOV. ALL SIGNS OF OCCUPATION BEING WIPED OUT. (Received This Day. 11.0 a.m.) LONDON, December 7. For six days, said the Moscow radio, the Soviet banner has again been flying over Rostov. Many shops have reopened and men and women are working day and night to restore transport communication lines. Goods and equipment hidden during the German occupation are being restored to factories, whither workers are returning. Women are organising hospitals and cooking meals for the soldiers of the Red Army who were wounded or had been taken prisoner. In a few days the inhabitapts will have wiped out the last vestige of Fascist occupation. •