The Pittsburgh Press (July 15, 1942)
NAZIS PUSH DEEPER INTO RUSSIAN LINES
Soviets shove enemy back in only one area
Rommel believed trying to get new offensive going in Egypt
By Joe Alex Morris, United Press war editor
BULLETINS
WITH THE BRITISH WEST OF EL ALAMEIN, Egypt – German Field Mashal Erwin Rommel is making his most determined effort to break through the British lines since the Eighth Army stopped him cold west of El Alamein.
NEW YORK – The British Broadcasting Corp. in a broadcast recorded here said that Russian Marshal Semyon Timoshenko was withdrawing to new positions on the lower reaches of the River Don.
Axis offensive thrusts cut deeper into the defenses of Voronezh despite renewed Red Army counterattacks today, and fighting below the Don River bend surged closed to Stalingrad and bomb-battered Rostov.
At the same time enemy forces on the Egyptian Desert Front were again attempting to strike through unyielding British lines toward Alexandria.
The official Soviet press emphasizes that the danger to the Red Army on the southern roadway to the Caucasus was mounting steadily at Voronezh and in heavy fighting on a wide front south of Boguchar.
“The situation is extraordinarily grave,” the newspaper Pravda said in a dispatch telling of fresh German assaults “over mountains of corpses” in an attempt to encircle Voronezh.
Strong counter-blows
Russian counter-attacks at Voronezh were important in slowing the enemy momentum, Red Star and Pravda dispatches said, and in one sector the Germans lost an important inhabited point and were smashed back to the Don River.
German radio reports acknowledged strong Russian counter-blows on the Voronezh front but said Soviet forces had been “encircled and annihilated July 13, with destruction of 125 tanks.” The Germans also claimed that 259 Russian tanks were destroyed in three days of attack on a Nazi bridgehead across the Don near Voronezh.
Although the Russians were fighting from every rock and bush and taking a tremendous toll of fresh enemy divisions, the Moscow press acknowledged that the counter-attacks – still in progress on some sectors – only had slowed the momentum of the enemy assault into the streets of suburban Voronezh.
Rapid progress claimed
The real weight of the German offensive was concentrated south of the Don River bend, and on that front the Berlin communique claimed “rapid” progress that cut behind the Russian lines. No definite positions were given. Moscow merely said that heavy battles continued against enemy offensive operations south of Boguchar, which would cover a long front aimed at Rostov and Stalingrad.
On other fronts:
EGYPT: Axis forces, indicating efforts to start new offensive, pounded at British coastal flank west of Alamein, but failed to break into defense lines. Both sides were reinforced.
BRITAIN: The RAF renewed daylight raids on northern France.
YUGOSLAVIA: Italian reinforcements were sent to oppose Yugoslavia guerrilla outbreaks that killed six Axis officials in five days.
CHINA: The Japanese took the important port of Wengchow, 235 miles south of Shanghai; fighting continued in the city’s outskirts.
AUSTRALIA: Allied planes bombed Salamaua, Japanese base, and sank an enemy ship at Alor Island.
In London, former War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha said in a speech that the war prospects today are “graver than at any time throughout the conflict and certainly are worse than at the time of the Battle of Britain.”
Reds losing in south
The main battlefield still was in Southern Russia, but dispatches said that fighting also had flared up on the Kalinin front and north of Lake Ilmen, in the Leningrad area.
The German High Command continued to send fresh troops into the fighting in the south, including some divisions hurriedly withdrawn from France. Russian dispatches said the enemy was making a great effort to speed up the attack, regardless of cost, to isolate the Caucasus and reach the Volga River before a second front can be opened by the United Nations in Western Europe.
90 miles from Rostov
The Axis columns were less than 90 miles from Rostov on the north and were reported to be using long-range guns in the Taganrog sector on the west to pave the way for an attack from both directions.
On the Egyptian front, the Axis forces of Marshal Erwin Rommel made a third stiff assault on the British lines five miles west of El Alamein, but again were repulsed and severely battered by British artillery and airplanes.
There is increasing belief in Cairo and London that Gen. Rommel was attempting to get a new offensive started.
In the Far East, the All-India Congress (Nationalist) party working committed adopted a resolution, sponsored by Mohandas K. Gandhi, calling for an immediate end to British rule in India.
Spy trial gets ‘statements’
Confessions of saboteurs believed presented
WASHINGTON (UP) – Maj. Gen. Frank R. McCoy, presiding at the military commission trial of eight Nazi saboteurs here, said today that the prosecution had presented certain statements against the defendants, who face possible death on the gallows or before a firing squad.
Gen. McCoy did not identify the statements but it was considered probable that they were the alleged confessions of some of the accused, since the witnesses identifying the statements were cross-examined by the defense.
Yesterday’s communiques from Gen. McCoy had given rise to the belief that the trial would soon be concluded, but today’s announcement said that the prosecution’s case would last during “the next few days.”
That indicated the trial would continue at least another week, if not longer, since the defense must also present its case.
Justice Department officials, meanwhile, studied the problem of prosecuting 14 alleged confederates of the saboteurs. Assistant Attorney General Wendell Berge said no decisions on the type of charges to be preferred or the place where they will be tried had been reached.
It was possible that all 14 might be tried for treason, despite the fact that four of the confederates are aliens. Justice Department officials said that there were cases of record where aliens had been tried for treason.
It also was possible that treason charges would be brought only against the 10 citizens, and espionage charges against the aliens. On either charge, they would face maximum penalties of death.
Gen. McCoy’s communique last night stated that the prosecution had continued its examination of certain ace FBI counterespionage agents during yesterday’s session, the sixth of the trial. He added:
“There has been presented to the commission and accepted in evidence much information of a military nature, the disclosure of which at this time would not be in the interests of the United States. The defense has been permitted fully to cross-examine all government witnesses.”
The communique also disclosed that the government had introduced “a large number” of exhibits, including the cache of explosives, money, tools and clothing brought by the saboteurs when they landed from German submarines on the Long Island and Florida coasts.
Spy, Bundist enter pleas of guilty
By the United Press
The government proceeded swiftly today in cases involving violations of the Espionage Act and Alien Registration Law.
A guilty plea was made at Hartford, Conn., by Dr. Wolfgang Ebell of El Paso, Tex., who simultaneously withdrew his previous plea of innocent. Ebell admitted participation in a plot to furnish Germany and Japan with U.S. military information, and U.S. Judge J. Joseph Smith withheld sentenced pending further investigation. Two of Ebell’s four co-defendants previously had pleaded guilty.
Another guilty plea was made in New York by William Leudtke, 39, former German-American Bund secretary, who admitted in Federal Court that he conspired to violate the Selective Service and Alien Registration Acts. He was the second of 29 Bund members so indicted to plead guilty and will be sentenced after the trials of the others. They face maximum prison sentences of seven years.
Indictments returned
Meanwhile, indictments were returned at New York against two men accused of spying against the British for Italy, and a defense worker was charged with violating espionage laws by stealing plans for the B-24 bomber from a Detroit subcontractor for the Ford Motor Co.
The two indicted are Rudolph G. Keller, 25, and Herman P. Stahlder, 38, Swiss seamen arrested at New York April 18 aboard a freighter, when films and maps of military installations at Gibraltar were discovered in their possession. They were held in $25,000 bail today for trial July 22.
The defense worker, Washington G. Spiegelberg, 35, pleaded innocent when arraigned and was held in $25,000 bail for trial August 4. He was arrested when an alert soldier in a tavern saw him display the plane plans, allegedly taken from the Donnelley Engineering Corp. offices at Detroit.
Held in $5000 bail
John Leonard Musa, 55, was ordered held in $5000 bail after arraignment before U.S. Judge Henry W. Goddard at New York on a complaint that he acted as an agent of a foreign – the Vichy French – government without being registered with the State Department.
Musa, a naturalized American citizen born in Switzerland, was ordered held after U.S. District Attorney Mathias Correa told the court that the defendant had been engaged actively in disseminating Vichy French propaganda.
At the end of the hearing, however, Musa said that he now is registered, and Judge Goddard told him that fact would be taken into consideration at a hearing July 23.
Pyle Column Resumes Soon
The Rambling Reporter is now in Ireland. He will report what he sees in U.S. Army camps there; how the people are taking the war since he was abroad last.
Ernie Pyle’s column from Ireland will start in The Press soon.
Watch For It!