NAZI FAILURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1942, Page 3

NAZI FAILURE

TO ACHIEVE SUMMER AIMS ON SOUTH RUSSIAN FRONT. DECLARED BY SOVIET SPOKESMAN. (British Official Wireless? (Received This Day, 10.30 a.m.) RUGBY, September 27. The Germans have at least a million men fighting in and near Stalingrad, as well as several thousand tanks and aircraft, according to M. Alexandrov, Soviet Propaganda Chief. With this concentration, he said, the Germans planned to establish a front from Stalingrad to the Caspian Sea and along the Volga, after which they would launch a new offensive against Moscow and then against Britain. With (he Black Sea ports of Tuapse, Sochi and Poti still in Soviet hands, M. Alexandrov asserts, the Germans have failed to achieve their summer aims on the southern front.

Enumerating conditions for ultimate victory over the German Army, M. Alexandrov says: “The time is not far distant when our Allies will bring into action their armies against the common enemy.” The growing activity of guerillas is also cited as a factor which will bring victory to the Red Army. Later news from Stalingrad is that Soviet tanks are most active in a new phase in the street battles, in which they are often wresting the initiative from the Germans. Soviet tanks are crashing into German machine-gun nests at first-storey windows. The Germans tanks avoid direct combat, but crawl behind the infantry, who attack the Soviet tanks with explosives.

Russian sources do not substantiate a German claim to have advanced as far as the Volga under the support of dive-bombers.