CHANGING TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 March 1943, Page 4

CHANGING TACTICS

RUSSIA’S GIGANTIC TASK SUCCESS ON VAST SCALE. STRONGLY FORTIFIED TOWN OCCUPIED. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.45 a.m.) LONDON, March 1. A special Soviet communique states that Russian troops have occupied Demyansk, a strongly fortified town in the hills about fifty miles southeast of Lake Ilmen. The great Russian winter offensive, after three months of uninterrupted success, is slowing down in the southern regions, not only owing to the unusually early thaw and the tougher German resistance, but because of the need for the consolidation of the immense reconquered territories. Emphasising the changing character of the Russians’ gigantic task, Reuter's Moscow correspondent says that the Red Army initially aimed to break up the enemy's defences and encircle and wipe out large bodies of troops. This has been achieved on a vast scale with results which cannot yet be fully estimated. The Russians, after a rapid advance, now face less spectacular defensive preparations. The German defence in depth was turned eastwards. The Soviet engineers now have the difficult job of transforming every newly captured stronghold to face the westward. The Russians must modify their lines to suit these tactics, although modern methods of all-round defence suggest that part of the work is already done.

Such work of transforming the captured strongholds is not easy in a thaw, when the trenches are waterlogged. The concrete takes longer to set. Russian and German military experts agree that the thaw is more advantageous to defence, at the expense of attack. The river ice is now broken or treacherously thin, offering greater obstacles to rapid, unobserved infantry and motorised movements. The Russians have lost the benefit of their sleigh transports across the snow, whereon it is believed they largely relied and with waterlogged roads, movement is almost confined to the railways, in which the German front, especially in the Donetz, is better served with a lateral network than the Russians, whose lines mostly run northward and southward. The swaying Donetz Basin battle is still critical, according to the British United Press Moscow correspondent. The Germans continue to pour in infantry, armour and aircraft to retain the seventy miles gap northward of the Sea of Azov and to prevent a repetition of the Stalingrad disaster. The Germans are still vigorously counterattacking in a great tank and infantry battle. They have also hardened their resistance northward of Taganrog.