SUBURB LOST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1942, Page 3

SUBURB LOST

NAZI ATTEMPT TO REACH VOLGA SYSTEMATIC BLASTING OF SOVIET LINES. MANY ENEMY TANKS DESTROYED (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, October 17.. Stalingrad's position is more critical than at any other time since September, and the Russian relieying army shows no signs of really breaking through. The city’s garrison has withdrawn four times within 48 hours.

The Germans at dawn last Wednesday started a systematic blitzing of the Russian lines and factory area with groups of 30 or 40 planes, which had completed 1500 sorties by 5 pm. on a mile-wide front. Huge German forces launched attack after attack against northern Stalingrad. The Germans forced the Russians from one of'the workers’ settlements, and they tried to penetrate northward and southward from their new positions, but the Russians held these attacks. German planes and infantry then combined in a ceaseless 72-hour assault against a workers’ settlement before the Russians fell back. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent describes the captured suburb as part of the industrial district which stretches for miles along the bank of the Volga. The Germans launched 25 successive attacks, sometimes using an entire division, supported by 100 tanks. The final assault was made with two regiments of infantry plus 70 tanks. The Russians set 40 tanks ablaze before they withdrew. A front-line dispatch to the Moscow “Izvestia” says that the Germans in north-western Stalingrad appear to be using forces at least equal to those used in the previous offensive, when four infantry divisions and one tank division assaulted the city. The German radio says that German tanks and infantry have penetrated into the Red Barricade factory and captured half of the Red October factory. It adds that mopping-up continues in the Spartakova workers’ settlement, which was captured yesterday. The “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent says: “Hitler must take Stalingrad within three weeks or not at all. Sleet storms and icy winds are already sweeping the steppes between the Don and the Volga, and supplies are becoming more and more a problem for the German High Command. Berlin sources state that LieutenantGeneral von Kotze Has been killed on the Russian front.

The German news agency says that German and Slovak troops have captured the town of Shaumyan, 18 miles from Tuapse, on the Maikop-Tuapse road and railway.

Moscow radio claims that 13 Rumanian divisions totalling more than 200,000 men were killed during the summer on the Russian front.

The Stockholm correspondent of the ‘‘Daily Express” says that the Rumanian chief, General Antonescu, is expected to visit Herr Hitler’s headquarters at the end of this month, when the Fuehrer will appoint him commander-in-chief of one section of 'the southern front.

Forty Rumanian divisions, totalling 750,000 men, are fighting in Russia.