TWO MILLION MEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1942, Page 3

TWO MILLION MEN

MOVING AGAINST RUSSIA ACCORDING TO BERNE REPORT. STRONG ENEMY ARMOURED & AIR FORCES. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) NEW YORK, May 11. The “New York Times” Berne correspondent states that shortly after sundown on Monday a German army of 2,000,000 men moved against the Russians on the vast Donetz front. This is believed to be the initial phase of Hitler’s expected spring offensive. Semi-official Moscow reports indicated that the Germans were employing 24 armoured divisions, between 1000 and 2000 planes and also immense infantry forces along a 250-mile front between Dnepropetrovsk and the Kerch peninsula. The military spokesman at Kuibyshev acknowledged Soviet reverses at certain points, but asserted that the Russian lines were still held. Last night’s Moscow communique reported no important fighting on the Eastern front. Marshal Timoshenko’s forces were fighting valiantly to stem the German offensive on Kursk, gate- _ way to a great oilfields region. There were tank attacks proceeding on the southern front, but elsewhere fighting was still of a local character. One reason for this was a continuance of bad weather in localities where normally conditions would be favourable for fighting. A Finnish communique reports livelier artillery activity on the Karelian Isthmus. According to the Stockholm correspondent of .“The Times” there are no large-scale operations on the . Svir front, but movements farther north are becoming interesting and interpretable as preliminaries to a serious new German-Finnish drive to the White Sea to cut railway communications between Murmansk and Archangel and establish a submarine base to range Archangel’s approaches. Berlin war specialists appear to believe that Archangel can be effectively blockaded by submarines. Thus the supply route to Russia would be made impracticable if the enemy captured a stretch of the western shore of the White Sea. The Russians appear fully alive to this menace. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent reports that the German Press in announcing the first outcome of the Salzburg meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, states that Mussolini has agreed to. send several more divisions, totalling 100,000 men, to the Russian front. The German Press, continues this correspondent, mentions the presence of representatives of the Ukrainian

peoples’ volunteer army at the ceremony at Mariupol, which suggests that the Nazis have newly-formed Ukrainian units, besides Rumanians, Hungarians and quislings from France and Norway for the coming drive to the Caucasus, but, he states, it is doubtful whether the Ukrainians merit the description of an army. The Germans admit that the Russians have driven wedges into the German positions in the Donetz Basin. Heavy reconnaissance fighting is occurring along the Kharkov-Kursk railway.