GERMANS UNEASY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1942, Page 4

GERMANS UNEASY

ON RUSSIAN SOUTHERN FRONTS Difficulty in Maintaining Forward Positions AGAINST PERSISTENT SOVIET PRESSURE BEARING ON SPRING OFFENSIVE PROSPECTS (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, February 18. The Germans are making every effort to stem the Russians’ advance on the southern fronts. They have brought up reserves on the Donetz front, but the Russians have inflicted severe casualties on them. The Germans have also reinforced the Crimean front. The Germans south of Kharkov are finding great difficulty in maintaining their forward positions, which presumably are important in their plans for a spring offensive. The tenacity with which they are defending these positions supports a belief that they have been ordered to hold them at all costs. Russian frontal attacks in this part of the front have not produced any general German withdrawal, but the Germans defending Taganrog failed to take adequate precautions against attack across the ice. The Russians, according to the Germans, came in unexpectedly strong force across the ice on the Sea of Azov and a large part of them were able to infiltrate, with plentiful supplies of various equipment. This has implanted a feeling of insecurity in the Germans manning the frontal zones, especially those around Taganrog, who were already disturbed by Marshal Budenny’s cavalry descending from Losovaga and threatening all the Germans’ rear lines in the Donetz basin. What these well-armed raiders have already accomplished cannot be summarised, owing to paucity of detail, but German headaches appear to be due to a realisation that a junction of these forces with forces from the Sea of Azov, which is highly possible if it has not already been achieved, would virtually encircle large units of Germans. This German anxiety seems to confirm the view that Marshal Timoshenko’s energy and initiative have already greatly complicated and even frustrated German plans for an early push to recover Rostov, before a general offensive is initiated towards the Caucasus. ACTIVITY IN LENINGRAD AREA The Russians, according to the Associated Press of Great Britain, are now threatening Novgorod, after crushing formidable German counter-attacks. The Leningrad radio declared: ■ “Active operations on this front are in full swing. Our units in General Feduninsky’s sectors have killed 700 Germans in the past two days, and destroyed much war material. ’ ’ The Moscow radio stated that the Russians on the Kalinin front routed a concentration of German infantry by a sudden thrust. The remnants ran towards a village to rejoin other German units, but the Russians rushed the village and threw them out. The “Red Star’’ says the Russians operating in the German rear on the Kalinin front had killed 1400 Germans in the past three months. The German radio reports that heavy fighting is going on on the Rzhev-Viazma front, and admits that the German forces have moved there in considerable numbers from the Orel front. A German military spokesman stated: “The East front is now consolidated. We have overcome the December crisis, improved our supply lines, which are quite safe, and brought reserves into action. The present defence lines are strong and well organised, and will be held at any cost until spring, as a starting point for the spring offensive.”