STORM BREAKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 December 1941, Page 5

STORM BREAKS

ON HEADS OF GERMANS BUT DANGERS NOT YET OVERCOME. HORDES THAT MUST BE ANNIHILATED. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, December 14. The Moscow “Pravda” says the storm of which the enemy heard first the thunder at Rostov-on-the-Don and Tikhvin on the Leningrad front, has broken over the heads of the Germans and is driving them from Moscow. “Victory does not turn our head,” the paper says. “On the contrary, the effects of it are only-beginning. The enemy remains on the distant approaches to Moscow and the danger is far from overcome. We must annihilate the German hordes and destroy any further risk to Moscow.” The “Pravda” describes the roads from Moscow as littered with German dead, wrecked lorries and abandoned equipment. The paper says the enemy concentrated 51 divisions for the last general offensive, and has lost during the battle for Leningrad and Moscow about 30 divisions. The Russians, in two days’ fighting on the Leningrad front, pushed the enemy back from several populated places and smashed the headquarters of an infantry division.

The Russian announcement that the Germans have been forced back from the advanced positions they had reached north-west, north and south of Moscow has been received with great satisfaction in Britain, says a British Official Wireless message. It is clear that the Germans are withdrawing a long way along a wide front and that they are being hard pressed by the Russians. The Moscow radio announces that as the news spread through the capital crowds gathered in the main streets and cheered wildly. The German news agency, in reply to the Soviet victory announcement, insists that withdrawal to winter quarters does not mean retreat. The measures taken territorially are insignificant and hardly visible on the map, it says, and it declares that the figures of booty taken are completely inaccurate. The scanty German Press comment, however, is eloquent of the German failure. German newspapers explain that the Reich forces on practically the entire front have entered winter quarters and any operations are designed merely “to facilitate defence, against a possible Russian attack."