Two-way assault asked by Stalin
Calls for Allied push to tie with Red drive
By Harrison Salisbury, United Press staff writer
Moscow, USSR –
Premier Marshal Joseph Stalin, in a May Day order of the day, called today for joint blows from the east and west to crush Germany “in its own lair” as Soviet planes softened the enemy’s Central Front for what may be the next Red Army offensive.
He said:
To rid our country and the countries allied with us from the danger of enslavement the wounded, German beast must be pursued close on its heels and finished off in its own lair…
This task… can be accomplished only on the basis of joint efforts of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States of North America – by joint blows from the east dealt by our troops and from the west dealt by the troops of our allies.
Underlying Stalin’s words, the third major Russian air attack on a German base on the Central Front within 72 hours indicated that the Red Army shortly may break the stalemate on the approaches to the Baltic States, perhaps coincidentally with the Allies’ opening of a Western Front.
Long-range Russian bombers smashed at Idritsa, gateway to central Latvia, Saturday night, concentrating on railway targets and nearby airfields. Several military trains and a number of aircraft were destroyed. Large fires were observed.
Earlier, Soviet planes hit the big German airfield at Orsha in White Russia and another field in the same area, where 21 planes were destroyed.
Front dispatches reported the weather was steadily improving on the Central Front, drying out passes traversing the great marshlands barring the approaches to Latvia, Lithuania, and East Prussia.
In old Poland, the Soviet midnight communiqué announced, the Russians seized two villages southeast of Stanisławów in a flanking attack. Some 150 Hungarians were captured. Three hundred Germans were killed in futile attempts to dent the Soviet line in an adjoining sector.
Enemy attacks were also repulsed north of Iasi on the Romanian front, where 33 German planes were shot down.
Ships of the Black Sea Fleet sank two of three transports in an attack on an enemy convoy west of besieged Sevastopol, Crimean naval base, the communiqué said.
Appeals to people
Stalin, in his order of the day, said the Red Army, in cooperation with the Allies, “must deliver from German bondage our brothers, Poles, Czechoslovaks and other Allied peoples of Western Europe which are under the heel of Hitlerite people.”
He called on the people of Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Finland “to take the cause of their liberation from the German yoke into their own hands,” overthrow their governments and make peace with the Allies.
He said:
Under the blows of the Red Army, the bloc of Fascist states is cracking and falling into pieces. Fear and confusion now reign among Hitler’s Romanian, Hungarian, Finnish and Bulgarian “allies…”
These Hitler’s underlings cannot fail to see that Germany has lost the war. Romania, Hungary, Finland and Bulgaria have only one possibility for escaping disaster – to break with the Germans and withdraw from the war.
Praises U.S., Britain
Stalin said the United States and Britain had made a “considerable contribution” to the Red Army’s success in liberating more than three-quarters of its territory overrun by Germany.
The two Western Allies, he said:
…hold a front in Italy against the Germans and divert a considerable part of German troops from us, supply us with very valuable strategical raw materials and armaments, subject to systematic bombardments of military objectives in Germany ad this undermine the latter’s military might.
Stalin ordered a May Day salute of 20-gun salvoes in Moscow and others of the principal cities in Russia.