BLITZ METHODS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 February 1943, Page 4

BLITZ METHODS

TURNED HEAVILY AGAINST GERMANS. FAILURE OF HEDGEHOG SYSTEM. (Received This Day, 12.55 p.m.) LONDON, February 9. The Red Armies are still hammering'wedges into many strategic points of the German defences. Their spearheads always thrust at joints in the German communica* tions, some of the most important of which are freshly threatened daily as a result of the Russians causing havoc in the enemy’s winter lines by the incessant capture of strongpoints. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the weakness of the German hedgehog system, which last winter was so successful in preventing a Russian exploitation of advances, is now becoming apparent. All these fortified points depended upon an elaborate network of bases and communications, established with the usual German thoroughness of organisation, but the Russian tactics of infiltration, carried out by mobile units, disrupted the German machinery. Russian tanks, heavily armed motor-cycle detachments and ski troops, trained in Siberia in the summer, are piercing the German lines between strongpoints, attacking them from the rear and flanks, straddling supply lines and ambushing reinforcements. Front line reports show how these tactics disconcert the Germans, who are tenacious enough behind concrete but apt to become demoralised when tanks and mobile units approach from their rear and flanks. This method, on which the Germans built up their blitzkreig, is being crushingly turned against them.