OUTSKIRTS OF RZHEV

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 August 1942, Page 3

OUTSKIRTS OF RZHEV

REACHED BY THE SOVIET FORCES' ATTACK ON HEAVY FORTIFICATIONS MORE DETAILS OF MATERIAL TAKEN OR DESTROYED POSSIBLE EFFECTS IN SOUTH. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 27. The latest official news from Moscow indicates that the offensive on the central front is continuing. New advances have been made and inhabited places recaptured, and hundreds of the enemy killed, it is announced. The “Pravda" reports that the Russians are fighting in the northern outskirts of Rzhev against heavy fortifications. In the Viazma-Gzhatsk sector Russian infantry have broken into the defences, and a tank force has cut off the retreat of a German force and is battering against its rear. Among 610 inhabited localities which were liberated by August 20 were the towns of Substov (12 miles from Rzhev), Karmanovo,’ and Peteronoye. According to incomplete figures the Russian troops captured 250 tanks, 750 guns, 567 mortars, and much other booty, while 324 tanks were destroyed. In aerial combat 252 planes were shot down and 290 destroyed on the ground. This Soviet break-through, the communique adds, was organised by Generals Zhukov and Koniev. The offensive on the Moscow front is interpreted as part ot the Russian general strategy of attrition, rathei than as a plan for the immediate relief of. Stalingrad, but it is likely that it will prevent the Germans overrunning the defences of the Volga cities with reinforcements drawn from these northern fronts. The manner in which the Germans are rushing Stalingrad from three directions indicates their determination to take the city and cut the Volga artery before the Russians rally or a second front is opened. This Russian counter-stroke (says a later report) recalls the perfect timing with which M. Stalin launched the winter offensive last December in order to save Moscow. The Russians then held their blow till danger had swept up to the very ramparts of Moscow: now General Zhukov's armies have moved a week after the Germans broke through to the north-east from the Zymlyanskaya bridgehead on the lower Don and began the fierce drive through Kotelnikovo which today is battering against the outer defences of Stalingrad. It is still too early to forecast the effect of Zhukov’s attack upon the crucial battles within a day’s march of Stalingrad, but the figures contained m the special Moscow communique clearly indicate the weight of the Russian attack. . German official reports in the past fortnight have indicated strong. Russian attacks in the Rzhev and Viazma areas Moscow’s communique indicates that these attacks have, been on a considerably more substantial scale than 'the continuous probing activity that was conducted throughout the earner part of the summer. Rzhev, Gzhatsk, and Viazma-all strongly-defended “hedgehogs" to which the Germans clung when the Russian Wintei oftensive forced them westward compiise a formidable triangle of great strategic importance covering Smolensk, which is the pivot of the German front in Russia. _