TWO GERMAN ARMIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 October 1943, Page 4

TWO GERMAN ARMIES

FATE IN THE BALANCE Following Fall of Zaporozhe BIG POSSIBILITIES OF STRIKING RUSSIAN SUCCESS THREAT TO CRIMEA AND LOWER UKRAINE (By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.) (Received This Day, 11.0 a.m.) LONDON, October 15. The fate of two German armies, in the Crimea and the Southern Ukraine, are in the balance tonight. The fall of Zaporozhe is likely to be their deathknell, says the British United Press Moscow correspondent. The way is now open for the Red Army to turn the Germans’ Melitopol line and sweep into the steppes westward, thereby cutting off the Crimea from the north. The Russians south of Zaporozhe have already twice cut the railway from Sevastopol. This means that the sole remaining route left to the Germans for evacuating troops from the Crimea is the hastily constructed railway from Jankoi to Kherson. The capture of Zaporozhe makes possible a new Red Army drive down the west bank of the Dnieper to Kherson. Another great implication in the capture of Zaporozhe is the added menace it brings to the Germans in the great Dnieper loop, because other Russian forces from Kremenchung are thrusting south-westward, threatening to lop. off twenty thousand square miles of the Dnieper Bend. Reuter’s military writer says the full magnitude of the Russian victory at Zaporozhe may not become apparent for a day or two. It may even be much greater than that at Stalingrad. If the report is correct that the Russians have already crossed the Dnieper it suggests a serious crack in German morale. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that the Russians are massing west of Zaporozhe and adds that the Germans in the Crimea risk a trap of the Stalingrad scale. The fate of Melitopol, at the southern extremity of the German bolt position guarding the Lower Dnieper and the Crimea, may be said to have been sealed, says the same correspondent.