SWEEPING CLAIMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 August 1942, Page 4

SWEEPING CLAIMS

MADE BY THE NAZIS

HUGE CAPTURES ALLEGED IN SOUTH RUSSIA.

LACK OF CONFIRMATION.

(By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright* (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) LONDON. August 12.

A German communique states: “The encirclement battle west of Kalach has ended. We took prisoner 35,000 and inflicted very heavy casualties. We have taken 57,000 prisoners in the Don bend since July 23. The Don bend battles have resulted in the annihilation of the bulk of the Sixty-second Russian Army and major parts of the First Russian Tank Army. Since the beginning of spring to the conclusion of the Don bend battle, 1,044,000 Russians have been captured, and we have captured or destroyed 6,271 tanks and 10,000 guns, shot down 5,600 planes and destroyed 432 on the ground.”

A High Command communique reports that the Germans are advancing further into the Caucasus. The Rumanians took the town of Slavianskaya, 60 miles from Novorossisk, inland from the Taman Peninsula. The communique claims that strong Russian attacks on the Voronezh, Rzhev, Lake Ilmen and Volkhov fronts were driven off. There is no evidence to confirm the German Kalach claims or to suggest that fierce fighting has ceased on the right bank of the Don bend. A Tass Agency front line despatch says the Russians have improved their positions in the Kletskaya area. The agency adds that violent fighting broke out in another sector, south of Kletskaya, where the Russians threw back the Germans and captured an important height. A Stockholm message says every seventh obituary notice in the German newspapers concerning deaths on the Russian front now records a second death in a family. The German authorities are renewing their efforts to restrain the insertion of obituaries, which are limited to 25 daily in each newspaper.