VANISHING RAPIDLY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 January 1943, Page 3

VANISHING RAPIDLY

LAST REMNANTS OF AXIS STALINGRAD ARMY Russian Progress in Caucasus and South of Voronezh ENEMY REPORTS NEW SOVIET ATTACKS WEST OF MOSCOW AND SOUTH OF LENINGRAD LONDON, January 27. The battered remnants of the German Sixth Army, which Hitler once said was certain to take Stalingrad, are rapidly vanishing altogether under a non-stop hammering from Soviet artillery. The remainder of only 12,000 men has been bitten into still 'further during the last 24 hours. One German regiment was completely wiped out and another surrendered. The latest messages from Stalingrad state that there is a ndtjceable slackening in the resistance from the last two remaining groups in the central sector and surrenders are increasingly frequent. ' The battle is so near its end that the big Soviet forces engaged there are already preparing to move from Stalingrad to the other main fighting fronts. The loss of nearly a quarter of a million men in Stalingrad, with enormous quantities of war material, represents Hitler’s sharpest single reverse since the . beginning of the war. ’ Mr Paul Winterton, in a despatch to the 8.8. C., says there are signs at the moment that the Russians are busy consolidating their gains rather than malting deeper penetrations into the * enemy positions. In the Caucasus and on the Voronezh front, however, the Russians are still driving on to make more local gains. South-west of Voronezh, large numbers of the enemy are now surrounded. Yesterday, several groups tried to fight their way through the Russian ring to the west, but after a sharp battle 1,500 of the enemy surrendered. 1 Today’s German communique states that the Russian offensive is now spreading out to new areas. The areas are not named tub a " message from Stockholm reports a vidlent new Russian attack in the Velikiye Luki and Rzhev sectors, west of Moscow, and also near Shlusselburg, in the Leningrad sector.