WAR LOSSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 November 1942, Page 3

WAR LOSSES

RUSSIAN REPLY TO NAZI PROPAGANDA GERMANS TRYING TO HIDE FACTS. HITLER’S INEFFECTIVE LIES. A few days ago (“Soviet War News” stated in August last), Hitler decided to reply to the statement issued by the Soviet Information Bureau on German losses during one year of war on the Soviet front. According to him, the German Army lost in all only 271,612 killed and 65,730 missing. It is significant that these figures were only published on July 3—ten days after the anniversary of the Soviet-German war. Evidently Hitler’s G.H.Q. at first intended to pass over German losses in silence, but became alarmed by the profound impression which the Soviet communique had produced on the German people. Goebbels had, after all, to return to the question. He has arrived at his published figure by dividing the real German losses by at least 30. In order’ to make these false figures appear more plausible, the German press, obeying orders from above, began shedding crocodile tears over “the loss of such an unprecedentally high number of officers and men.” The falsity of the German figures becomes obvious when one remembers the well-known fact that there is not a family in Germany which is not mourning a relative or friend killed on the Russian front. On the Sebastopol sector alone during eight months the Germans lost about 300,000 men killed and wounded —a figure almost equal to the one they give for their total losses in one year of war. The real total of German losses is known to the whole world from figures published by the Soviet Information Bureau —three and a half million in killed alone, or 25 per cent of the total male population of Germany fit for active service. In one year of war with the Soviet Union' the German army has lost more than it lost during the whole of the first world war. No amount of fabrication will conceal this irrefutable truth from the Germans. The ridiculous figures given by the Nazi Command only serve to show the German people once again that not a single word or statement uttered by Hitler and his gang can be trusted.