SMOLENSK VICTORY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 September 1943, Page 4

SMOLENSK VICTORY

IMMENSELY FORMIDABLE DEFENCES SMASHED BY RUSSIANS. SIX LINES OF FORTIFIED POSITIONS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 11.10 a.m.) RUGBY, September 20. The Smolensk defence zone, broken by the Russians 30 miles north-east of the city, has been fortified for the past two years and consisted of six lines of positions, protected by vast minefields. According to a Soviet supplementary communique, it was defended by several divisions, who lost 72 tanks and 204 guns in the battle. Six hundred prisoners were taken. Partisans in the Kiev area attacked German sappers erecting a crossing over a river. They killed 56 of the enemy and blew up the crossing. The same group prevented the Germans taking away the harvest to be sent to Germany and killed over 80 soldiers and policemen. RED ARMY POURING THROUGH GAPS. TORN IN THE GERMAN LINES. (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) LONDON, September 20. The Red Army is pouring through gaps torn in the German lines and is battering the outer defences of two of the most formidable German strongholds, Smolensk and Kiev. The swelling flood of the Russian forces is now surging through the Yartsevo and Dukhovschina gaps, but the concentration of men and armour in these main streams has not resulted in a slackening of pressure anywhere along the winding front, from north of Smolensk to the Sea of Azov. The Germans are falling back at all points before the relentless hammering. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Red Army is forcing the Germans nearer and nearer the brink of a catastrophe. Any further retreat will entail the risk of the loss of Smolensk or Kiev or both and with them the major part of the German gains in two years of the bloodiest warfare. The Soviet successes in the present summer offensive represent the greatest blow Hitler has ever sustained. Thy are even more disastrous for Hitler than Stalingrad. The Germans are now faced with a most serious dilemma. If they don’t withdraw, the Red Army threatens them with a series of major and minor Stalingrads. If they , withdraw too quickly, they run the same risk of being completely overwhelmed. Meanwhile massed German reinforcements are being thrown into the land and aiT battle, in a supreme effort to hold firm, but the Russians are steadily advancing in fulfilment of a grand strategic plan, alternatively hammering from the front and levering from the flanks. APPEAL TO ARMY TO OVERTHROW HITLER. MADE BY WAR PRISONERS IN RUSSIA. (Received This Day, 11.40 a.m.) LONDON, September 20. Former German officers, in an appeal published by the “Pravda,” urge the German Army to overthrow Hitler. The appeal is from the ex-German officers’ union formed among prisoners held by the Russians, most of whom were captured at Stalingrad. These include four generals. The union has been co-opted by the Free German Committee which" had previously been formed in Moscow. Generals Seidlitz and von Daniels have become vicechairmen of the committee. The officers’ union’s appeal states: “All Germany knows what Stalingrad means. We underwent the tortures of hell, we were buried alive, but we have arisen again for a new life.” The influential Soviet political review “War and the Working Class” criticised the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territory for the second time within a month. “Amgot's actions,” it states, indicate that it is not intended to bring about a liquidation of the Fascist regime. Amgot is working on foundations which have nothing in common with democratic principles.”