AT A LOSS?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 June 1943, Page 4

AT A LOSS?

GERMANS IN RUSSIA

APPARENT UNWILLINGNESS

TO ACCEPT RISKS OF GREAT

OFFENSIVE

ißy Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day,*ll.so a.m.) LONDON, June 29.

Activity on the Russian front is still chiefly confined to air attacks, with the Russians asserting that the Luftwaffe is chary of venturing out. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Red Air Force is maintaining pressure against' keypoints of the German communications, making at least three major sorties for every German one. This has aroused a belief that the German command is playing a waiting game in the air, as well as on land. The Russians ascribe the lull in land operations to the Germans’ inability to risk a really great offensive move. One military commentator claims that we Russians' military blows of the last two years have so weakened the German Army that "Hitler cannot undertake an offensive this spring. ’ The Reuter correspondent continues that the Germans’ losses in attempting to bomb inhabited localities and communications near Leningrad have been so heavy in June that they are adopting modified tactics—flying with a stronger fighter escort and bombing from higher altitudes, also changing course more suddenly than previously, hoping to confuse the Russian nght> er defence screen. The Paris radio tonight declared that the Russians were massing west of Moscow. This follows on a perman report yesterday that the Russians are massing on # the Orel and Kuban fronts. The Moscow radio said numerous contradictory reports from Axis sources indicate the Nazis’ increasing nervousness over the trend of the war on the Eastern front.