WaybackWire

MOSCOW, Saturday.—The German drive from the south-west to break through to the army trapped before Stalingrad has been smashed at Verkhne Kumsky, and the Red Army has made new advances.

Field Marshal von Manstein, captor of Sebastopol, has taken over the German command in south Russia, the Daily Telegraph’s Stockholm correspondent reported on 10 December.

The Germans attacked on 12 December with nearly a hundred tanks and strong infantry against the least strongly held sector of the ring, and pushed the Russians back somewhat to reach Verkhne Kumsky. “The battle of Verkhne Kumsky was the first serious test whether the Germans could get through the Soviet ring and they failed,” the Indian Express of Madras reported from Moscow.

The News Chronicle’s correspondent called it the most resounding victory since the Soviet offensive began. Reuters reported massive German tank blows south-west of the city as late as 23 December. The Daily Express’s Stockholm correspondent puts the German losses at Kotelnikovo at two complete panzer divisions and vast stores gathered for the relief.

MOSCOW, Saturday.—Russian tank columns have crashed through the German defence zone on the middle Don into open spaces favourable for large-scale manoeuvre, Reuters reported on 23 December.

The offensive opened in mid-December. Russian forces breached the line over 60 miles at Novaya Kalitva and Monastirschina and over 12 miles at Bokovskaya, advancing 30 to 37 miles in four days, a special communique said on 19 December. “The offensive of our troops continues,” it added.

The Russians took Boguchar after surrounding it, and an army based on Voronezh crossed the frozen Don to the Voronezh-Rostov railway. The Germans were taken completely by surprise, the Moscow correspondent says; the German High Command speaks of heavy defensive fighting by German and Italian troops.

At many points the Germans were retreating in complete disorder, many throwing away their arms, Reuters said the same day. Morozovka, Kamensk and Tatsinskaya are among the places taken, and Oblivskaya on the Chir. The Germans still hold Millerovo, but the railway to Voroshilovgrad has been cut.

MOSCOW, Saturday.—Many of the Germans trapped in Stalingrad are living in cellars, sewers and water mains on three ounces of bread and a hunk of horse meat a day, United Press reports.

Reports from the front picture them short of water, food and ammunition, and getting water from snow.

Supplied by air alone, they are losing the transport planes: the Russians say they are shooting them down, and Thursday night’s Soviet communique put the German transport planes destroyed on 30 December at 32.

Inside the city the Red Army occupied a large factory after hand-to-hand fighting, the Soviet communique of 26 December said, and Russian shock troops have stormed several fortified houses. Friday’s communique said the Russians had captured two town districts in the factory area and taken 12 German block-houses and pill-boxes.

WITH THE RED ARMY ON THE STALINGRAD FRONT, 22 December (delayed).—Stalingrad has proved that a great city can be defended, Lt. Gen. Vassili Ivanovich Chuikov, commander of the Red Army defenders of Stalingrad, said today.

The general told the story of the defence over the military telegraph, from his headquarters in the city to a front-line base in the Don bend, to Henry Shapiro of United Press, the only American correspondent to visit the Stalingrad front. Shapiro could not get inside the city, where the fight is still raging.

“In a city each building can become a fortress if soldiers do not fear encirclement,” Chuikov said. The main characteristic of the battle, he said, was fighting at close range, with the trenches 20 to 100 metres apart. The Germans usually attacked by day; the Russians counter-attacked by night.

“The German command made one obvious mistake. Large columns and groups of German soldiers made wonderful targets for our artillery and infantry,” he said.

Of his men he said: “Heroism took the form of mass self-sacrifice.”

BERLIN, Saturday.—Hitler has told the German Army that its soldiers, from Norway to the Spanish frontier, are ready to reduce any enemy enterprise to naught.

The year would without doubt be as hard as those before, he said in a New Year order of the day, cabled from Berlin and printed in the Indian Express of Madras, but their sufferings would not be in vain. “Winter may be hard but it will not hit us any harder than last year. After winter we shall resume our march forward.”

The German High Command claims 1,518 Soviet tanks destroyed, captured or disabled in the east from 11 to 20 December, Domei reported from Lisbon in the Japanese-run Syonan Shimbun in occupied Singapore.

The Berlin radio admits that the Russians south of the Don have driven wedges of varying breadth into the steppe, and says some advanced bases were withdrawn according to plan.