MUCH DISHEARTENED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1943, Page 3

MUCH DISHEARTENED

GERMANS ON SOUTHERN FRONT SOME SEEKING CHANCE TO SURRENDER. SAYING HITLER IS FINISHED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.40 p.m.) LONDON, January 15. The Columbia Broadcasting system’s Moscow correspondent states that the Germans on the Lower Don are fighting to the death. More than 90 German tanks have been destroyed and 10,000 Germans killed, in the past three days. General Maslennikov’s tireless cavalry are within 50 miles of .Stavropol and a threat is developing 'to the Petrovskoe-Divnoie area, which will enable a new thrust against Salsk, which is already threatened from two other directions without a crossing of the Manich River, where the Germans are strongly posted. “The Times” Moscow correspondent says that violent as is the resistance on the Lower Don, the Germans’ spirit appears low when they are driven from positions, that their former bitter determination to hold out when the situation seemed hopeless has gone with the fanatical belief that the

Wehrmacht will come back for those entrapped. Small groups of hungry and cold Germans are wandering on the Don steppes, seeking an opportunity to surrender. Often, when taken, they utter the phrase: “Hitler kaput” (Hitler finished). Some Germans are attempting to pass themselves off as Rumanians, Hungarians or even Poles. The amount of equipment the Germans are abandoning in the Caucasus excludes the theory that they are voluntarily shortening their lines. Five hundred wagon loads of bombs and shells, new air motors and olanes were found in a 1| mile stretch of railway, while on a neighbouring stretch there were 200 more wagons, containing munitions, tanks and planes.