The Pittsburgh Press (July 12, 1942)
SIX GERMAN ARMIES SMASH FORWARD
Peril to oil-rich Caucasus grows
Egypt battle is renewed after 9-day lull; Yanks in Guinea
By Joe Alex Morris, United Press war editor
Germany’s developing offensive in South Russia posed a grave menace to the Caucasus and the entire Don Basin Saturday night.
Six Axis armies appeared to be plowing steadily southward and eastward toward Rostov, gateway to the Caucasus, and the longer range objective of Stalingrad on the Volga.
After capturing Rossosh on the Moscow-Rostov Railway the Germans struck east toward the Don, and Moscow acknowledged that the Soviet defenders of that region were fighting desperately with their backs to the river.
Russia’s northern anchor post of the Don River front was holding fast, on the basis of Soviet reports contradicting Berlin claims that the city of Voronezh fell last Tuesday.
Whole division across
But the Red army conceded that at least a division of German infantry and 100 tanks had crossed the Don 10 miles to the west to establish a battlefield across the river.
Marshal Ewald von Kleist, Nazi tank specialist, was reported trying to move the bulk of his army across the river for a full assault on Voronezh, and hostilities on a considerable scale appeared to be raging already in its outlying area.
The most immediate threat to the Caucasus, however, was inherent in a new German offensive in the Lisichansk area, 160 miles southeast of Kharkov, 40 miles from the industrial center of Voroshilovgrad and 120 miles from Rostov.
Rostov is isolated
With the Moscow-Rostov railway cut at Rossosh and threatened at Voronezh, Rostov was isolated from the capital save by the roundabout route by way of Stalingrad.
The battle of Egypt, breaking out after a nine-day lull, meantime shaped up as preliminary feints rather than a determined effort by either side. British forces, in a surprise attack backed by record-breaking air assaults, pushed Gen. Erwin Rommel’s men back five miles to Tel-el-Eisa on the coastal railway, and squeezed them into a bulge southwest of El Alamein.
90-minute victory
The British attack was a 90-minute affair. The small advance was described as “easy,” and in it the British took many Axis prisoners.
At the same time crack units of the Nazo Afrika Korps attempted to push forward near the Qattara Depression on the south flank. They were engaged and repulsed by waiting British mechanized units.
American bombers operating from Egypt ranged for out over the Mediterranean to harass Axis supply lines. They planted two bombs on an Italian destroyer and got two good hits on a 5000-ton merchantman.
The mounting Allied air offensive had become the greatest of the war over North Africa.
Berlin’s version
Berlin’s version of the offensive in South Russia said the Germans and their allies had reached the Don on a 217-mile front south of Voronezh. A special High Command communique claimed they had stamped out virtually all Soviet resistance in a giant rectangle lying west of that line to the Kharkov-Kursk meridian. It said 88,689 prisoners were taken and 1007 tanks and 1688 field guns taken or destroyed in that area between June 28 and July 9.
At sea the sinking of five United Nations merchantmen was announced Saturday – one British, three American and one Greek, all in the Western Atlantic. The total announced sinkings rose to 378.
Prince Eugen hit again
Stockholm dispatches said the Royal Air Force further damaged the German cruiser Prinz Eugen and another of the same class at their repair berths in Bremen during recent raids on that German port.
In the Far East, Allied planes blasted Japanese headquarters at Linchwan with “satisfactory results,” and Chinese forces pursuing the retreating Japanese toward Linchwan and Nanchang occupied four strategic towns in Kiangsi Province.
Erich Guttart, Gestapo chief in the Lublin district of Poland, was killed in a skirmish of his Storm Troopers and Polish guerrillas. Widespread guerrilla fighting was reporting in the area.
U.S. troops in Guinea
The War Department in Washington disclosed that American troops are stationed at Port Moresby, New Guinea stronghold of the Allies north of Australia. The port is one of the most heavily raided United Nations bases in the Southwest Pacific, Japanese planes attacking frequently from their bases on the northeast coast of the island.
From New Delhi came word that U.S. Army air forces based in India had made four raids against Japanese-occupied Myitkyina, in northern Burma, during the past week, centering their raids on the airdrome.
G-Men describe capture of 8 Nazis at spy trial
WASHINGTON, July 11 (UP) – The Military Commission trying eight Nazi would-be saboteurs today heard G-men tell how they captured the Gestapo-trained spies before they could accomplish their destructive ends.
Brief communiques from Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, president of the Commission, revealed that two agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation held the stand today. One, under cross-examination this morning, was the same who testified yesterday. He was succeeded on the stand by a colleague who told his story and then underwent questioning by defense counsel.
Gen. McCoy’s communiques tonight said succinctly:
“The Commission sat until 6:00 p.m. An FBI agent was on the stand throughout the afternoon. The witness was cross-examined at length and such examination will be continued.
“The Commission adjourned until 10 a.m. Monday.”
It was believed the G-men described the circumstances in which they obtained confessions from some of the defendants. At least one of them, 39-year-old George John Dasch, is said to have talked freely about the mission which brought them to this country, laden with clever explosive and incendiary devices and $176,000 for use as bribe money.
Before the trial went into its afternoon session – which Gen. McCoy said would be held “without regard to hours” – 11 newspaper men assigned to it were permitted to enter the barricaded and heavily-guarded courtroom.
It was the first break in the thick veil of secrecy which has surrounded the trial since Gen. McCoy began issuing his curt and meager communiques Thursday.
The visiting reporters were given special temporary credentials, signed by Brig. Gen. Albert L. Cox, provost marshal, and FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover. Before passing through the blocked-off corridor leading to the courtroom, the reporters were subjected to a brief lecture by Gen. Cox.
“The Commission asks that you observe the usual decorum demanded in courtrooms,” he said. “Anything you see you may describe, but anything you hear concerning the trial cannot be used. I shall be glad to assist you in any way possible.”
The reporters then were led into the 100-by-25-foot courtroom, every window shade of which was carefully drawn.
Exhibits are seen
Gen. Cox identified the poker-faced defendants who stared as hard at the visitors as the reporters did at them. Members of the Commission, seated at a low table extending the width of the room, smiled as though amused.
The visit, arranged by Henry Paynter of the Office of War Information, lasted about five minutes. The most interesting objects in the room were five tables at the rear covered with exhibits, which included two leather bags and a lead box in which the saboteurs had brought ashore their devices of destruction.
These mechanisms, cleverly designed to disguise their purpose, included incendiary pens and pencils, dynamite, and bombs which looked like pieces of coal. They were carefully guarded by G-men.
The visit over, the reporters were led out through a different door where an FBI agent took up their passes.
Indications were that the trial would last at least another week.
Ernie Pyle in Ireland
The Roving Reporter sailed across the Atlantic in a U.S. convoy. He will tour Army camps in Ireland – give his impressions of the war-world in this new phase.
His columns from Ireland will start in The Pittsburgh Press soon.