WaybackWire

MOSCOW.—Every available man, woman and child in Stalingrad has been mobilized, the Izvestia special correspondent reports, as carried by Domei in the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun. Aged men, women and children are digging trenches and building barricades.

The fires burn so fiercely that defenders rush to fountains to douse themselves. Wrecked factories become repair shops for tanks and guns; a battered power plant still gives electricity, and a newspaper still appears.

“Stalingrad must hold, no matter what the cost.” So the party leaders at the front have proclaimed.

Supplies are believed to be trickling across the Volga in small boats, Domei said from Lisbon in the same paper, while German long-range guns shell the river and German planes sow it with floating mines. Soviet reports admit the position is most critical.

The Germans eat their way further into the bleeding town each day, the Transocean war reporter Willy Beer wrote in a dispatch read on the Berlin radio. “But the enemy has never refused us rapid success so definitely as here.”

Sub-Lieutenant Oswald Zenkler of the German Army Press Section wrote in B.Z. Mittag, as Domei reported in the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun: “The Soviet defenders are showering rifle and machinegun bullets upon the German troops from holes through building walls and crevices of chimneys.”

MOSCOW.—Premier Stalin says that “the aid of the Allies to the Soviet Union has so far been little effective.” Pravda printed his letter in full on its front page on 5 October, without comment.

The letter answered three written questions from Henry C. Cassidy, Moscow chief of the Associated Press. Of a second front he wrote: “A very important place — one might say a place of first rate importance.” What is needed, he said, is “That the Allies fulfill their obligations fully and on time.”

Nikolai Palgunov of the Foreign Office press department handed it over, signed J. Stalin, 24 hours after the questions were left at the Kremlin gate. The Moscow radio broadcast it at least eight times overnight; the Berlin radio left out the second-front passages.

In the Commons on 6 October Mr Churchill said no new Government statement was called for, and warned: “I would strongly advise the House not to press these matters unduly at a period which is certainly significant.”

On 14 October Mr Richard Law, for the Foreign Office, told the House that the agreed supplies had been maintained and a new supply agreement signed in Washington.

MOSCOW, Monday.—The main German strength in the Caucasus is now gathering at Nalchik, where Soviet troops are fighting heavy defensive engagements, today’s communique said.

The Germans are gaining ground in a large-scale offensive across the Nalchik plateau, a new sector of the Central Caucasus. More than 100 German tanks have been thrown in, and numerically superior forces have forced a second successive Russian retreat.

Red Star says the German 52nd Bombing Squadron, which had been operating against Stalingrad, is now in the Nalchik battle; Izvestia says a new Rumanian division first meant for Stalingrad has been diverted there to replace a defeated unit.

The Berlin radio claims the capture of Alagir, cutting the northern approach to the Ossetic military highway. Pravda says the German timetable has failed: Grozny was to fall by 24 August and Baku by 15 September.

MOSCOW.—With the first snow, the Germans at Stalingrad have begun preparing for a winter campaign, says a Moscow report carried by Domei from Lisbon in the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun in occupied Singapore. As the Russians fight stubbornly to hold the city, the skeletons of ruined buildings are fast being turned into fortifications.

Colder nights came early in October; by mid-month they were bitter in the north, the chill reaching down to Voronezh, Stalingrad and the Caucasus. Photographs showed German prisoners already in winter uniform.

Prisoners told Red Army commanders their officers feared to delay further their overdue plans to take the city. Pravda said they no longer talked of the war’s end, only of fear that the winter will be fatal to Germany.