Battle of Stalingrad

43,000 is for both the German dead and captured in those four days.

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what about the romanians,hungarians and italians that were captured?

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Völkischer Beobachter (November 25, 1942)

Im Kampf bereits hervorragend bewährt –
Neue deutsche Waffen vor Stalingrad

Flammenwerferpanzer mit vernichtender Wirkung Maschinengewehr mit 3000 Schußin der Minute

vb. Wien, 24. November –
In der größten aller Schlachten, die die Welt bisher gesehen hat, in der Schlacht um Stalingrad, sind es immer wieder der deutsche Soldat und die deutsche Führung‚ die die Initiative an sich reißen. So wird nunmehr bekannt, daß bei den Kämpfen um die Straßen- und Häuserruinen der Wolgafestung sich neue deutsche Waffen hervorragend bewährt haben. Es sind dies das neue Maschinengewehr und der neue Flammenwerferpanzer. Beide sind nur Glieder aus der fortlaufenden Kette deutscher Erfindungen und Konstruktionen, die die Schlagkraft der deutschen Wehrmacht ständig vergrößern‚ und ein weiterer Ausdruck des nie versiegenden deutschen Erfindergeistes.

Der neue Flammenwerferpanzer erzielte bereits im Kampf gegen stark befestigte Häusergruppen vernichtende Wirkungen. Die Waffe hat einen Strahlenrohrkopf, der nach allen Seiten schwenkbar ist und seine Flammen über die höchsten fünf- und mehrstöckigen Gebäude hinwegschleudern kann. Die eigene schwere Bewaffnung schützt den Flammenwerferpanzer vor feindlichen Überfällen. Durch Nebelgeschosse, die aus dem Innern des Panzers abgeschossen werden, kann er sich in Sekundenschnelle der feindlichen Sicht entziehen.

Nach einem kurzen Angriff mit diesen Flammenwerferpanzern auf einen großen Gebäudekomplex der Bolschewisten stand das ganze seit Tagen zäh verteidigte Festungswerk mit allen feindlichen Waffen und der ganzen Besatzung in hellen Flammen.

Im Schutz unserer Flammenwerferpanzer drangen die Grenadiere in den Gebäudekomplex ein und erledigten den Widerstand.

Das neue Maschinengewehr zeichnet sich durch ungeheure Feuergeschwindigkeit aus. In einer Minute können 3000 Schuß den Lauf verlassen. Das ist eine Feuerdichte von unvorstellbarer Kraft. Jede feindliche Angriffswelle, die versuchen würde, gegen dieses Maschinengewehrfeuer anzurennen, bräche schon nach wenigen Feuerstößen zusammen.

Das Explosionsgeräusch dieses Maschinengewehrs ist den Bolschewisten wohlbekannt. Sie haben inzwischen unterscheiden gelernt zwischen dem bekannten Tackern und dem neuen Dauergeräusch. Wenn ein derartiger Feuerstoß in rasender Folge den Lauf verläßt, hört man nur noch einen längeren gleichbleibenden Explosionston. Gefangene Bolschewisten erklärten, daß sie dort, wo das „elektrische“ Maschinengewehr‚ wie diese gefährliche Waffe von ihnen genannt wird‚ eingesetzt ist, den Angriff abbrechen und sich schnellstens in Sicherheit zu bringen versuchen.

The Pittsburgh Press (November 25, 1942)

GERMANS FLEE IN RUSSIA
Reds shatter 3-month siege of Stalingrad

Terrified Nazis falling back in disorder northwest of key Volga city
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Screenshot 2021-11-25 124739
Turning the tide, Russian troops were advancing today on four sections of the Stalingrad Front. Inside the bend of the Don River, the Red Army pushed southward from Chernyshevskaya (1), 110 miles west of Stalingrad; pushed 30 miles from Kalach to Surovikino (2), across the Don; captured Sadovsk (3), 56 miles from the Volga city, and relieved the siege of Stalingrad with a column driving down from the north (4).

Moscow, USSR –
A strong spearhead of a gigantic Russian offensive today was disclosed to have broken across the Don River directly west of Stalingrad, while to the northwest, terrified Germans and Romanians retreated in disorder, offering only a rear-guard defense.

The offensive, in its sixth day, was pounding on from three directions – north, northwest and south of Stalingrad.

One spearhead of the gigantic Russian offensive, front dispatches said, broke across the Don at Kalach, and advancing some 30 miles due west, took the town and railway station of Surovikino yesterday.

Another Soviet column, driving down from the northwest, had taken Chernyshevskaya, 110 miles west of Stalingrad.

These two Soviet forces now only had to close a gap 30 miles to trap the German Army on the Stalingrad Front.

The Soviet Army smashing forward south of Stalingrad, securing the Soviet left flank, reached the town of Sadovsk and two other inhabited points, all approximately 56 miles from Stalingrad.

The defenders of a northern industrial section of Stalingrad joined hands with a column that drove down the west flank of the Volga from the north yesterday to relieve the 93-day siege.

Front dispatches said they had captured 60 blockhouses in the past 24 hours and were continuing their gains.

A German High Command communiqué, broadcast by Radio Berlin, said today that Russian forces southwest of Stalingrad and in the bend of the Don River were continuing their “strong infantry and tank attacks.”

The communiqué asserted that in the area south of Stalingrad:

German mechanized troops penetrated enemy positions and threw back the enemy toward the east.

Front dispatches and the latest communiqué indicated that the total of German casualties since last Thursday was now higher than 160,000. Up to last midnight, Axis killed, wounded and captured were reckoned at a total of 156,000.

The total of enemy dead was 40,000; prisoners, 36,000, and the estimated total of wounded was 80,000.

Advanced Soviet units had already cut off the Germans and Romanians from escape at many points northwest of Stalingrad, the army organ Red Star said, reporting that Axis forces were retreating in disorder south of Stalingrad too.

Red Star said the objective of the attack was “complete extermination” of the German forces which have invested South Russia. It also appeared likely that further progress of the Red Army drive would sever the German communications by land with their spearheads in the Caucasus.

Pravda, organ of the Communist Party, said that “complete liberation of Stalingrad is due soon,” adding that “the enemy’s encircling ring is broken.”

The Russians were on the heels of the enemy, wiping out the rear-guard detachments trying to protect retreating main forces.

Red Star said the Russians were moving so swiftly northwest of Stalingrad that the enemy could not entrench and frequently didn’t have time to destroy his equipment and supplies. The Russians drove into one village so quickly that the Germans fled without destroying one of the largest gasoline dumps on the front. Russian tanks drove up, filled up with German gasoline and resumed the pursuit.

South of Stalingrad, the Germans ordered cavalry and infantry attacks on the Soviet flanks. But Soviet tanks struck before the attacks were launched, dispersed the Germans on the steppes and crushed many as they fled. Several units were completely wiped out, and two infantry regimental commanders and one artillery regimental commander captured.

After such fiascos as this, Red Star said, the Germans were in disorderly retreat in several directions.

Thousands of German corpses were sprawled on the snow northwest of Stalingrad, where the Russians had captured 30 or 40 villages, including some big regional centers.

Red Star described long columns of shabby, hungry, half-frozen Germans and Romanians plodding north to prison camps, some without any kind of escort.

German prisoners were particularly depressed by their sudden, crushing defeat. Three divisions which surrendered in the Don Bend yesterday were all Germans.

A German prisoner, identified as a Maj. Evart, told his captors:

Your artillery completely demoralized and disorganized our defenses. It was a nightmare. I never imagined artillery fire could be so intense.

The Germans tried to entrench themselves at Surovikino, but the Russians rooted them out and drove on westward. Northwest of Stalingrad, three infantry-tank counterattacks failed to halt the advance. The Germans lost three tanks and retreated in haste, abandoning three important hills.

South of Stalingrad, the Germans threw many planes and the 29th Motorized Rifle Division against the Russians. The rifle division was wiped out or taken prisoner and most of the planes were destroyed.

Only local fighting was reported in the Caucasus. On the Leningrad Front, the latest communiqué said, snipers killed 1,600 Germans in two days. Soviet planes and anti-aircraft gunners have destroyed eight German planes on Leningrad’s approaches.

London observers said the capitulation of large bodies of German troops was unprecedented in this war, and unless the Germans were able to hastily retreat from Stalingrad, the Russian bag was likely to swell to tremendous proportions.

The German radio regaled its foreign listeners with more stories of “secret weapons: now being used in Stalingrad. One such was:

…a flamethrower… which can be turned about on a pivot and can throw flames against buildings six stories or more high.

Indications that the Russians might be opening a big offensive in the Rzhev area, 125 miles northwest of Moscow, were seen in a Radio Berlin broadcast to the Reich, recorded by the United Press in London. It said:

A Soviet armed reconnaissance thrust in the Rzhev area yesterday [Tuesday] was repulsed. Anti-tank guns and mine-throwers remained in German hands.

Shortly afterwards, the Soviets attacked again after heavy artillery preparation and were repulsed, in a third attack, the Soviets succeeded in breaking into German positions but were repulsed.

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Enemy broadcast –
Strong Russian assaults admitted by Germans

Berlin, Germany (UP) – (German broadcast recorded in New York)
The German High Command admitted in a communiqué today that the Russians were attacking on several fronts of the Stalingrad salient, including the city itself.

“Strong infantry and tank attacks” were being pressed by the Soviet Army southwest of Stalingrad and in the Don River bend, according to the communiqué. The High Command claimed that Soviet attacks between the Volga and the Don had been repulsed with high Russian casualties, but said the fighting was bitter.

The communiqué said German forces south of Stalingrad, including mechanized troops:

…penetrated enemy positions and threw back the enemy toward the east.

The Berlin radio was heard today broadcasting to listeners within Germany reports that Russian forces has made “small inroads” in German positions on the Stalingrad Front but said that these gains were “soon likely to dissolve in thin air.”

The Vichy radio reported that Russian losses in the Battle of Stalingrad were so heavy that Marshal Semyon Timoshenko had been forced to throw in all available resources.

The communiqué claimed that during the night, Axis bombers operating off Algeria destroyed a 10,000-ton merchant ship, set a large transport afire and damaged two destroyers.

Bomb hits were also claimed on harbor installations of Algiers, Bone and Philippeville, where “big fires” were caused. Air attacks were also carried out against motorized Allied columns and railroad objectives in North Africa, it was asserted.

British forces in Cyrenaica, the communiqué continued, were attacked by “fighters and fast planes from low levels,” and “hangars and parked planes were bombed at an airdrome.”

Offensive dee-lights President Roosevelt

Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt is dee-lighted by the Russian offensive in the Stalingrad area.

He told a press conference he had received an intimation a few days ago about the Red drive and was delighted about it.

Beyond saying the first syllable of “delighted” might be accented, he declined further comment.

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Brooklyn Eagle (November 26, 1942)

REDS SMASH GERMAN COUNTERATTACKS
Cut off foe in northeast elbow of Don

Score new advances on all fronts as drive’s tempo rises

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
Russian columns drove west of Stalingrad today, killing 5,000 more Axis troops and raising the enemy’s casualties above 250,000 in a move to entrap entire German armies in South Russia.

Front reports said the Germans had started what appeared to be extensive counterattacks northwest and south of Stalingrad in an effort to stem the six-day-old resurgent Russian drive, but the Red Army continued its advance in all directions.

These dispatches said columns which had burst across the northern arm of the Don River bend near Serafimovich had completely cut off the northeast elbow of the river bend. They drove to the railroad station at Rychkovsky, approximately 65 miles southwest of Stalingrad and midway between the steel city and Surovikino, which the Red Army captured Tuesday.

Reds gain on other fronts

Today’s midday Soviet communiqué reported fresh Russian successes at Stalingrad, northwest and south of the city, in the Tuapse and Nalchik regions and in a vague northwest sector.

There were indications that the vaguely-defined northwestern sector mentioned in the communiqué might be the Rzhev area, where Axis sources have been reporting heavy Russian activity for several days. The Russian communiqués have not definitely mentioned the Rzhev Front in connection with the growing winter offensive.

The German radio reported last night a new Russian westward thrust between Smolensk and Leningrad. It said the Red Army had driven 120 miles north of Smolensk and was about the same distance from the Latvian border.

There were no Russian reports on operations in this area and if the German broadcasts were true, it would mean that the Russians were almost as far west in this sector as their farthest point last year.

Kill 51,000 in 6 days

In six days of relentless fighting, the Russians, returning the same type of mercy the Germans had shown, had killed more than 51,000 enemy troops and taken an equal number of prisoners.

Conservative estimates based on communiqués and front reports placed the German casualties in killed, wounded and captured soldiers at more than 250,000 in the past six days.

Equally as impressive as the huge casualty toll was the booty captured by the Russians in their six-day drive. It included 1,300 German guns and 5,068 trucks, greatly reducing the enemy’s defensive firepower and mobility. In addition, the Soviets had captured at least 52 supply dumps and fuel stores which the Germans had been unable to destroy in their retreat.

A dispatch from the French frontier said Axis troops, which had been sent to the Mediterranean last week, were now returning northward, apparently to be shipped again to Russia to meet the Red threat.

Don’t worry, Berlin radio person, your Führer has a brilliant plan to lure Soviet forces all the way to Berlin and then destroy them in a gigantic pincer movement headed by generals Busse and Steiner.

Or so my sources tell me… don’t quote me on it, tho…

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Hitler and his acolytes always define socialism as German nationalism whilst opposing actual socialists, social democrats and communists. I don’t see where the confusion would come from, this has been a thing for the (NS)DAP right from the beginning as stated by its founder Anton Drexler who wanted to organize workers for German nationalism and in order to do so had to ‘lure’ them away from socialism. The main propaganda course for the Nazis was to convince workers that German nationalism was the real socialism and that they shouldn’t listen to actual socialists or communists.

The early membership of the DAP (before it was NSDAP) reads like a who’s who from late 1910s Munich radical right wing underground and the party, all the way through the 1920s would associate itself with just about everything radical right wing under the sun (Thule society, Organization Consul, the Freikorps, General Ludendorff, the Harzburg Front and so on). In 1920 Hitler even tried to join the Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch but the leaders of that enterprise didn’t know who he was.

In order to try and pretend that Nazism was really left wing and a form of socialism, you’d have to pretend it was an economic ideology which it most decidedly was not. German nationalism, racialism and traditionalism were at the core of it. Basically, Hitler believed a woman’s place was in the kitchen and producing babies to become future soldiers for the Reich. This traditionalism is another clue as to ‘why the Nazis were not left wing’ and also why ‘mainstream’ German conservatives eventually warmed somewhat to them.

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Lol, Steiner his counterattacks never fail, I remember his name from some scene with an enraged gefreiter os something.

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Brooklyn Eagle (November 27, 1942)

Reds destroy German flank at Stalingrad

Soviets extend pincer west of Don – 116,500 killed or captured

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
The Russians, smashing resistance and advancing on all sectors in a gigantic Don-Volga offensive, were today reported to have practically wiped out the German left flank northwest of Stalingrad.

Trapped German and Romanian forces were being ruthlessly exterminated, as the prongs of a giant pincer rolled on in the plains west of the Don River.

German killed and captured had mounted to more than 116,500 since the offensive opened on Nov. 19.

Radio Moscow said:

The Stalingrad offensive continues relentlessly and unceasingly over snowfields littered with the wreckage of tanks and guns and corpses.

The German High Command admitted that Soviet forces were continuing their attacks on the central sector, an action which the Soviet communiqué failed to mention.

Russian forces are continuing “unceasing attacks” in the Toropets area, northwest of Moscow, throwing wave after wave of tanks and infantry into the battle, the official DNB News Agency said.

The defenders of Stalingrad steadily drove the Germans back on all sectors in their offensive, but the most profitable operations were reported northwest of the city.

There, in one sector, Soviet tanks and infantry destroyed 66 tanks and 25 planes and, wresting a railway station from the Germans, captured 19 locomotives, 100 coaches, 168 gasoline trucks and several dumps of materiel.

Russian bombers and fighter planes blasted and machine-gunned the fleeing or trapped Germans without repulse.

Soviet forces which had driven down from north of Stalingrad to lift the siege had trapped the German wing. These Germans, dispatches said, were being killed.

Further gains in city

In the center of Stalingrad, Maj. Gen. Alex Rodimtsev’s forces advanced in the heaviest fighting. In the southern part of the city, the Russians, in hand-to-hand battle, drove the Germans from one fortified line after another.

The advance in northern Stalingrad had accelerated Soviet successes in the northeastern bend of the Don. There, the German left flank was all but destroyed, dispatches said, and the Russians were swarming over the east bank of the river and mopping up the Germans who remained on the west bank inside the elbow.

Moreover, “substantial success” had been made in carving up the German right flank south of Stalingrad and destroying it piece by piece, dispatches said.

The communiqué did not make clear how far the prongs of a pincer far out beyond the west bank of the Don were from closing.

I can already see the comment section in the end of the European war be like… Steiner… And the entire thing

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OH HOI live Stream Steiner is also counterattacking :slight_smile: He is a busy guy throwing rocks (steiner) in every direction :wink:

LIVESTREAM: WW2 - Hearts of Iron IV: No Step Back [Sponsored] - YouTube

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It is the defector vs Steiner… Now. My bet… No one will win. Steiner will tell his men to go home and defector will defect

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Not sure my only comment is GO CHEWIEKOV (he is my Russian uncle and it not wise to upset a Wookie :teddy_bear:

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These puns…

image

:rofl:

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The Pittsburgh Press (November 28, 1942)

RUSSIANS SLASH GERMAN LINES
300,000 Nazis in Red trap, London hears

Vital town 75 miles from Stalingrad reported in Soviet hands
By M. S. Handler, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
The Red Army newspaper, Red Star, today reported that Soviet forces have cut the most important communications and supply lines of the German siege army at Stalingrad.

Exchange Telegraph quoted Swiss radio reports as saying that the Russians had captured Kletskaya, 75 miles northwest of Stalingrad.

Red Star said the Soviet successes opened the way not only to drive the Germans from Stalingrad but to turn the Nazi retreat into a complete rout.

Fog, snow hamper action

Red Star said:

Our duty is to drive the enemy from every line and destroy the encircled troops.

Fog and snow hampered operations on the Stalingrad Front to some extent, dispatches reported, but the Russian offensive was said to be gaining new ground northwest of the Volga city.

It was announced today that Joseph Stalin had promoted 24 men to major general.

Military observers in London believed that the Russians had closed a pincer somewhere south of Kalach on the Don River and trapped up to 300,000 Germans on the Stalingrad Front.

Those penned in have only two possibilities of escaping capture or death, observers said. Hacking a way out or grimly holding on in anticipation of a relieving counterattack from the southwest.

Resistance increases

The Russians advanced inside, northwest and southwest of Stalingrad, although the two latest Soviet communiqués indicated that German resistance was increasing. But battlefront dispatches pointed out that the Russians are out to kill Germans and the question of advances was secondary, so long as they accomplished their primary objective.

The BBC, as heard by CBS, reported that the Russian pincer lacked only 20 miles of completely encircling the Germans at Stalingrad.

Radio Berlin said Axis forces were outnumbered 10 to 1 at some places on the Stalingrad Front.

The noon Red Army communiqué indicated that the offensive inside Stalingrad was broadening, although it did not indicate the position of pincers somewhere in the plains west of the Don River.

Strong counterattacks were reported northwest and southwest of Stalingrad by German reinforcements, but they did not retard the Russians seriously.

At least four towns of some importance, and vast amounts of booty had been captured by the Russians in the last 24 hours.

Radio Moscow said the one-time defenders of northern Stalingrad had joined forces with Red Army men who began the attack outside Stalingrad to break a defense area which the Germans had boasted was impregnable.

Gap narrowed

The Stalingrad garrison gained on all sectors – in the northern part of the city, in a factory district, and in the center.

Inside Stalingrad, the Russians narrowed a gap behind the Germans with the capture of Marinovka, 20 miles due west of the city, and 10 miles east of the junction from which a spur line branches from the Stalingrad-Kharkov railway and runs 10 miles to the northwest, toward Russian-held Kalach.

A German Transocean dispatch last night said Axis forces had opened several powerful counterattacks against Russian forces which had broken into their positions at Stalingrad.

It still spoke of a big Russian offensive on the Central Front, particularly around Toropets, 120 miles from the Latvian border. “New waves of tank and infantry” assaulted German positions Thursday and yesterday “without any successes worth mentioning,” the dispatch said. A Soviet tank division which broke into German positions west of Toropets was “completely annihilated,” it said.

Attack at Leningrad

Northeast of Tuapse Naval Base, in the Western Caucasus, the Russians captured a tactically important height, the Soviet communiqué said. The Germans vainly tried to retake it.

The liveliest activity in some time was reported on the Leningrad Front. There, the communiqué said, Soviet artillery reconnaissance units and snipers have killed more than 1,000 Germans in three days and destroyed 28 pillboxes and earth and timber forts.

The Soviet Information Bureau issued a special communiqué denouncing the Nazis for telling “fairytales of Arabian Nights variety” about the situation on the Stalingrad Front.

For example, the communiqué said, the Germans had announced the rout of 10 Soviet divisions.

Units don’t exist

Some of the divisions the Germans named, the communiqué continued, do not exist and have never existed. Others are not fighting in the offensive; the several which are form part of the Soviet forces which are hurling back the Germans.

The communiqué said:

The Germans do not have any flamethrower tank capable of hurling fire six stories high, or an electric machine gun that fires 3,000 rounds a minute.

What, then, is the purpose of telling those lies? The Hitlerites clearly do this with the purpose of preserving by means of unscrupulous lies, German troops, who find themselves in an extremely tight corner, from utter demoralization and forcing them to fight by any means whatever. The Hitlerites also need these lies in order to reassure in some way the Germans in the rear.

Völkischer Beobachter (November 29, 1942)

In Wenigen Tagen härtester Abwehr –
449 Sowjetpanzer vernichtet

dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 28. November –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Deutsche und rumänische Truppen wiesen im Westkaukasus Angriffe des Feindes im Gegenangriff zurück. Auch ostwärts Alagir brachen stärkere Angriffe der Sowjets unter Verlust von 35 Panzerkampfwagen zusammen. Jagdflieger schossen hier sieben Sowjetflugzeuge ab. Motorisierte deutsche Truppen vernichteten bei einem Vorstoß in der Kalmückensteppe wiederum eine feindliche Kräftegruppe. 600 Gefangene wurden eingebracht.

Zwischen Wolga und Don, im großen Donbogen und in Stalingrad scheiterten wiederum schwere Angriffe des Flakartillerie und Schlachtflieger griffen wirksam in die Erdkämpfe ein und vernichteten 34 Sowjetpanzer. Nach bisherigen Meldungen verlor der Feind in der Zeit vom 20. bis 27. November zwischen Wolga und Don 319 Panzerkampfwagen. Außerdem wurden 26 Geschütze zerstört und über 2000 Gefangene eingebracht. An der Donfront vereitelten italienische Truppen einen Übersetzversuch.

Südwestlich Kalinin und im Raum um Toropez dauern die schweren Abwehrkämpfe an. Eigene Gegenangriffe schlugen den Feind an verschiedenen Abschnitten zurück, wobei erneut 95 Panzer abgeschossen wurden, davon 56 allein durch eine Panzerdivision. Kampffliegerverbände griffen bei Tag und Nacht, zum Teil bei Schneesturm, Marschkolonnen, Truppenbereitstellungen und die Bahnanlagen von Toropez mit guter Wirkung an.

Sturzkampfflieger erzielten im hohen Norden Bombentreffer schweren Kalibers in Bahnhöfen der Murmanstrecke.

In Nordafrika nur örtlich beschränkte Kampftätigkeit. Zeltlager und Kolonnen zwischen Bengasi und Agedabia wurden mit Bomben und Bordwaffen bekämpft. Weitere Luftangriffe richteten sich bei Tag und Nacht gegen Flugstützpunkte und motorisierte feindliche Kräfte in Tunesien. Deutsche und italtenische Jagdflieger schossen im gesamten Kampfraum zwanzig feindliche Flugzeuge ab.

Deutsche Jäger griffen bei einem Tagesvorstoß zur Südküste Englands Eisenbahnziele erfolgreich an.

funny, how it doesn’t mention of the 6th army being completely surrounded

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funny, well humor was never their shtick :wink:

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