GREAT GRAVEYARD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 3

GREAT GRAVEYARD

OF NAZI MEN & MACHINES DESCRIBED BY CORRESPONDENT. MAY BE MOST DECISIVE BATTLE OF WAR. LONDON, December 22. Describing a visit to the Stalingrad front, a correspondent of the British United Press says, “The moment I crossed the Don and entered the territory which has been wrested from .the Germans the immensity of the rout of the' Axis forces became evident. I entered an area which is a mammoth graveyard of Nazi men, machines and horses, extending for hundreds of square miles and surpassing anything that was seen last winter in the wake of the Red Army’s previous offensive. “The Russian offensive was so unexpected and''so crushing that it 1 shattered all the plans of the German and Rumanian commands. A Rumanian general who was captured on the Stalingrad front said, ‘We did not think the Red Army could mount a counteroffensive on anything like such a scale.’ Bewildered hordes of Human-

ian prisoners, practically unescorted, trudged north-eastward on their way to the prison camps. “I met with supreme confidence when I listened to discussions between high-ly-placed field officers, who all confirmed the general opinion that the Germans probably will .not be able .to extricate themselves from the DonVolga trap, and that they face inevitable surrender or extermination. Ma-jor-General Christiankov told me that the conclusion of what m-w prove to be the most decisive oaule of the war was merely a question of time.”