STRONGER THAN EVER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 June 1943, Page 3

STRONGER THAN EVER

POSITION OF THE SOVIET UNION

AT OPENING OF THIRD YEAR OF WAR COMPARATIVE STATEMENT OF LOSSES. GERMAN ARMY DEFINITELY CRIPPLED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, June 22. Renter’s Moscow correspondent says that Russia is swinging into her third year of war with a hill on the front and a big push behind the lines. In addition to a huge massing of our troops and munitions, there is a farming drive to keep the - Red Army and civilians ‘’lighting fed,” and also a fuel plan to keep the factories turning out munitions.

There is a big drive for more food and for peat for fuel in homes and factories, while hundreds of thousands of citizens have been drafted into the wood-cutting service. The harvest has already been gathered in the south, and harvesting is in full swing in the central provinces. Marshal Stalin and the Russian people face today’s anniversary of the German attack with a full sense of the heavy struggle which is still ahead.

The Soviet Information Bureau gives the following figures of losses in the two years of the war in Russia: — German Russian

Killed, prisoners or missing 6,400,000 4,200,000 Guns lost 56.500 35.000 Tanks lost 42,400 30.000 Aircraft lost 43,000 23,000 It is also announced that the Soviet guerillas operating throughout the enemy-occupied territory have killed 300,000 Germans, derailed 3000 trains, set fire to 895 fuel ammunition dumps, wrecked 3263 railway bridges, and destroyed hundreds of tanks, planes and guns.

The announcement claims that the losses which have been inflicted on the Germans have fundamentally shattered the German army's might and definitely crippled the German capacity for waging war.

It adds: “The Soviet Union’s political and military position is stronger than ever, whereas the enemy’s has deteriorated. Anglo-Soviet relations have improved, and the Hitlerite attempts to split the British-American-Russian coalition have failed. Nevertheless, the Soviet people and army do not underestimate the seriousness of the struggle ahead. The balance of forces has changed in favour of Russia and her allies, but this is not enough for victory. ' CONCERTED ACTION VITAL. “Everything now depends on how the Allies use the present favourable situation for a second front in Europe, without which victory is impossible. The absence of a second front in Europe saved Nazi Germany from defeat in 1942, and the Hitlerites used this breathing-space for a new, large-scale offensive against the Soviet Union in the summer and autumn of 1942. “To let the existing favourable conditions for the opening of a second front in Europe this year slip by, to be late in this matter, would seriously harm our common cause, entailing a prolongation of the war and a colossal increase of sacrifice. On the other hand, the opening of a second front in Europe this year will speed the victory and save many victims.” DAWN SEEN BREAKING. Ilya Ehrenburg, in an article in the “Pravda,” says: “After two long years of battle we see the dawn of victory breaking. Our hatred of the Germans has ripened into determination tempered in the furnace of our sufferings. We do not hate the Germans just because they were born Germans, but because they have arrogantly presumed themselves to be the leading people of the world and have drenched the world in blood. The question of winning the war was decided in our hearts when we first saw the gallows and the mangled bodies of children and young girls whose virtue had been dishonoured.

“We are yearning for justice. We do not want the Germans to suffer because we are suffering now, but because we believe that punishment should follow crime.”