“VERY PAINFUL”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1943, Page 3

“VERY PAINFUL”

LOSS OF GROUND IN RUSSIA NAZI COMMENTATOR’S ADMISSIONS “SITUATION NOT YET LOST” (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, October 27. Germany had been forced to send substantial reinforcements from the Russian front to meet the dangerous situation in Italy, declared the German High Command spokesman, General in a broadcast to the German people. He added that an Italian front had been established at the cost of weakening Germany’s position in Russia. “We must not forget we have to wage the war on several fronts,” he said. “After the treachery of Badoglio we were compelled to send reinforcements to Italy to prevent the' country from becoming the notorious ‘soft underbelly’ and to prevent the Allies from establishing a real second front there. “That gave the Russians a chance to gain comparatively big successes. The loss of ground in Russia is very painful, and it constitutes a strategical danger which we do not underestimate. But the situation is not yet lost. Everything today depends on the spiritual and moral power of the resistance of the German people.”

The German-controlled Oslo radio said that the Dnieper bend battle is not merely for the Dnieper bend, but also for what Stalin is trying to turn into the “beginning of the end.”