Battle of Stalingrad

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 4, 1943)

NAZIS BATTERED IN CAUCASUS
Russians shatter German drive on rich oil fields

Reds close in on major Axis base on Southern Front, gain at other points
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

The Germans are retreating on a half-dozen sectors of the long Eastern Front as the Russian winter offensive rolls ahead.
1. Drive northwest of Stalingrad takes more inhabited places.
2. Reds rout foe from more positions inside Stalingrad.
3. Vast quantities of supplies captured as Nazis retreat.
4. Mozdok captured, Reds threaten to split Axis armies.

Moscow, USSR –
The Red Army, driving the Germans back from the gateway to Russia’s vast store of Caucasian oil, developed an attack from two directions today on the Axis base at Prokhadnaya, 28 miles west of Mozdok.

Front dispatches said the Russians were closing in on Prokhadnaya, a strategic rail center, and the fall of the city appeared imminent. Mozdok, threatened by the Germans for three months, fell to a lightning weekend assault by the Red Army.

Axis sources broadcast reports that the Russians were massing on the Southern Front for what was described as “a general attack.” The Nazi-controlled Radio Paris quoted German reports as saying that Axis planes were carefully watching the Russian preparations.

In taking Mozdok, their fourth major victory in six days on their 1,100-mile matter front, the Russians also took Malgobek, 20 miles to the southeast, and Elkhotovo, 40 miles to the southwest.

Nazis face general retreat

They had cut both arms of the main Rostov-Baku railroad and Russian motorized infantry and tanks were in hot pursuit of steadily retiring Axis forces.

If the Germans lost Prokhadnaya, they face the choice of a general retreat or the risk of annihilation of an army split into two sections.

The noon communiqué reported an unbroken succession of gains on six fronts from Velikiye Luki west of Moscow to the Caucasus Mountains, where the fall of Mozdok had removed, apparently for the winter if not forever, the Axis threat to the richest Caucasus oil fields.

Nazis throw in reserves

During a night of constant attack, the Russians stormed and captured several inhabited places, the noon communiqué reported.

Heavy enemy lines were reported – 700 killed within a few hours in one sector only.

Driving into one Cossack village, the Russians disabled eight enemy tanks and captured four guns and eight motortrucks.

Southwest and south of Stalingrad, where Gen. Georgy Zhukov has now joined two fronts in one gigantic offensive, the Germans were desperately throwing reserves into their lines in a vain and costly attempt to stop the Russians.

Crack troops smashed

Two full regiments (6,000 men) of Adolf Hitler’s black-uniformed SS troops, pick of the German fighting forces, were thrown into one sector last night, the Russians attacked at once and, smashing them, drover forward for new gains, the noon communiqué reported.

Village after village fell to the tanks and infantrymen before dawn today.

In Stalingrad City, the Russians sent night combat forces filtering into the German lines where they stormed and destroyed 18 blockhouses and three dugouts, the noon communiqué said.

Tanks attack alone

On the middle Don, night fighting troops captured a number of inhabited places and in two sectors, tanks, attacking alone, made important gains.

In one of these sectors, the tanks drove right through the Germans frontline, captured three villages, and sent the Germans retreating in disorder, leaving their arms and stores behind them.

In the other, the tanks killed 300 Germans and captured eight field guns and other equipment.

In the Velikiye Luki sector of the Central Front, where the Russians were now within 60 miles of Latvia after capturing Velikiye Luki itself, the Red Army advanced steadily during the night, the Germans tried one counterattack but all it got them was 400 killed.

Since last Thursday, the Russians had taken Kotelnikovsky, the greatest German base on the southwest Stalingrad Front, Velikiye Luki; Elista, capital of the Kalmyk Republic south of Stalingrad, and Mozdok in the Caucasus, for four of their most important victories of the war.

South and southwest of Stalingrad, the Axis position approached the desperate. Communiqués and dispatches of the weekend described how the German command was mainlining infantry in hopeless situations with orders to stand to the death. Transport planes were landing troops at key points. Infantrymen were thrown out in thin screens to try to stop the Russian heavy tanks and the thousands of troops following them. Little detachments were left to die at “strongpoints” in villages which the Russians took within a few hours.

Equipment captured

Thousands of Axis troops were openly retreating, and Russians tanks, racing ahead of the main forces, ripped through them with cannon and machine guns blazing.

Communiqués and dispatches continued to tell of great stores of weapons, equipment and supplies being captured.

In a single area of the Southwestern Front, the Russians captured 15 depots of stores (including nine of war equipment) one whole trainload of war equipment, a million artillery shells, 20 million cartridges, 15 tanks, 950 motor tanks and 8,000 head of cattle, the midnight communiqué said.

Food running low

German generals were deserting their troops to flee by plane. Dispatches reported that flight of one high German general in the Velikiye Luki sector and said that in the Don-Volga area where 22 German divisions, or what is left of them, are trapped, a divisional general had escaped. The plane carrying his staff crashed and 23 of the officers were killed.

A special dispatch to the army newspaper Red Star reported that the 200,000 Germans remaining of the original 300,000 in the Don-Volga trap were now getting between 100 and 150 grams (3.5 to 5.3 ounces) of bread a day and a small quantity of soup thickened by horsemeat.

German prisoners who gave this news said that nearly all horses of the cavalry among the trapped troops had been eaten now, that cases of frostbite were increasing, that deaths were taking place from under nourishment and that field hospitals were overflowing with the wounded and ill.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 5, 1943)

Reds smash Nazi attacks

Russians repulse massed tanks, infantry and resume advance
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
Russian troops smashed desperate German counterattacks on three southern fronts in grim battles under a moonless sky during the night in which every weapon from tanks to bayonets and rifle butts were brought into play.

Realizing that their defeats were assuming the proportions of a general disaster, the Germans threw massed tanks and infantry into counterattacks on the Caucasus, middle Don and south-southwest Stalingrad Fronts.

Foil Nazis in Caucasus

Hemmed in hopelessly in a big Caucasus village, the Germans massed all their reserves of infantry and tanks and hit the Russian line.

Russian artillery rained shrapnel and high explosives on the advancing enemy and knocked out eight tanks before they reached the lines.

Then in a clash of infantry against infantry, the latest communiqué reported, the Red Army troops, in hand-to-hand fighting with bayonet and rifle butt, smashed the enemy, captured the village and began to pick up the bodies of the 330 German dead who remained in the streets.

Tanks smash German attack

This was but part of a night of hard fighting in which the Russians swept through several additional towns, villages and district centers in their Caucasus offensive which threatened to split the German armies and force them to retreat all the way to Rostov-on-Don, 300-odd miles to the north – if they can.

Dispatches from the Caucasus said the Russians continued to advance in three directions on Prokhadnaya, 28 miles west of Mozdok, junction point of the Rostov-oilfields railroad, despite fierce counterattacks.

Peter Pavlenko, military writer of Red Star, reported that the Russians had the full support of the native Muslim tribes who had declared a holy war against the Germans and rendered invaluable aid.

On the middle Don Front, the Germans in their second big night counterattack sent newly-arrived men against the Red Army in another breakout attempt.

Great Russian Klim-Voroshilov tanks raced round to the flank of the attackers, crashed into the line, knocked out 49 German tanks, completely disorganized the enemy forces and sent them fleeing in retreat. Here the Russians found several hundred dead on the field.

Reds gain near Stalingrad

Here, as in the Caucasus, the Russians continued a general offensive which, the communiqué said, won them a number of new inhabited places.

The third big German counterattack was made on the southwest-south Stalingrad Front.

The Germans attacked in force only to be thrown back in disorder, while in other sectors, Red Army men advanced and captured several villages.

Advance on Moscow Front

Russian artillery destroyed 11 grounded German planes and four trench mortars at an airdrome.

In all, the Russians continued an unbroken series of advances on four main battlefronts along their 1,100-mile offensive line – Caucasus, middle Don, south-southwest Stalingrad and center.

On the Central Front, west of Moscow, the Russians broke through into a strongly-fortified village southwest of Velikiye Luki and ousted the enemy after a ferocious fight.

Nazis strike back in Rzhev

The communiqué reported small enemy counterattacks in the Rzhev area.

In the streets of Stalingrad, the Russians captured several buildings in the northern factory district.

In a new major victory, the Russians yesterday captured the town of Chernyshkovky and its adjoining railroad station of Chernyshkov, 100 miles west of Stalingrad on the railroad which extends to Likhaya, where it connects with the Rostov-Voronezh-Moscow line, and Kharkov.

This success on the middle Don Front which brought the Russians an important enemy air base, was reported in a special communiqué which said the Red Army captured with the town 17 grounded airplanes, 500,000 airplane bombs and two million artillery shells.

Tighten net on Germans

To those rich spoils were added newly-counted materials taken with Mozdok in the Caucasus where the communiqué said, a single Red Army unit routed 2,000 Germans and captured 15 tanks.

In the Chernyshkovsky-Chernyshkov sector, the Russians tightened a net around the Germans trapped between the Rostov-Voronezh-Moscow railroad and the Volga.

The Russians had pushed salient well west of the railroad. But the work of mopping up continued between the railroad and the area of the bend to the east.

Special dispatches reported that most of the territory east of the railroad was now in Russian hands, but there were still many small German pockets.

Special dispatches said that southwest of Stalingrad, the Russians continued to advance down the Stalingrad-Caucasus railroad from Kotelnikovsky, captured last week and had taken several railroad towns.

The Germans appeared to have been ousted from the whole left flank of the southwestern sector, south of the railroad.

They had been driven far southward and the Russians, holding the northern reaches of the Manych River, 200 miles southwest of Stalingrad, were able to drive southward and westward the southward drive being pointed toward the last Caucasian foothills.

A dispatch to the army newspaper Red Star said the Germans had suffered probably more extreme difficulties in these steppes than in any other theater and that inadequately-clothed German troops were starving and freezing to death in the wide shelterless spaces.

Russian mechanized units are able to operate with ease over the flat wide steppes and Red Star described the war there as one primarily of wheels and caterpillars.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 6, 1943)

NAZIS FLEEING IN CAUCASUS
Cossacks lead assault; Reds gain on Rostov

Russians open eighth offensive at Stalingrad; 500,000 Germans retreat
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

The Russians keep rolling on at all points on the front in their smashing winter offensive.
1. Russian forces around Millerovo captured more inhabited places and continue gains.

2. Forces from northwest of Stalingrad join forces from southwest for powerful drive on Rostov.

3. Eighth offensive opened as Reds push west from Volga and overrun German defense lines.

4. Russians capture four important towns in Caucasus. Nazis reported in full retreat. Drive from Elista threatens Nazi flank.

Moscow, USSR –
The Germans are in disorderly retreat west of Mozdok in the Caucasus, front dispatches said today, and are blowing up bridges and mining roads in an attempt to escape from swift-moving Cossacks who are slashing at their flanks.

The Red Army, fanning out west and north of Prokhladny, 28 miles west of Mozdok, stepped up the pace of its advance in an attempt to covert a German retreat into a rout, Close behind the Cossacks went tank and infantry units to mop up any islands of resistance.

London newspapers carried large headlines saying 500,000 Germans were in retreat in Russia before the Red armies driving on Rostov.

Front dispatches revealed that it was the fierce-fighting Cossacks who made the first breakthrough that led to the German defeat at Mozdok and Nalchik.

The Red Army offensive in the south-Stalingrad sector picked up momentum, too, after the seizure of the Axis stronghold of Tsimlyanskaya in the south arm of the Don Bend. The army newspaper, Red Star, said the city fell after a two-day battle in which the German garrison was annihilated. Then the Red Army began fanning out and, Red Star said, the operations had now secured all of the eastern half of the Don bend for the Russians.

The Russians, harrying the Germans at every possible point, started their eighth offensive directly west of Stalingrad, the Soviet noon communiqué reported.

London head Radio Moscow report that Soviet troops have captured the crest of Mamayev Kurgan, the most vital defense point of the German troops encircled in the Stalingrad region.

Striking out from the west bank of the Volga River yesterday, the Russians by this morning had ripped through the first German defense line and captured dozens of trenches and dugouts and two important heights.

This newest in the astonishing series of Red Army winter offensives started with a terrific artillery bombardment.

Infantrymen including the famous Guards Regiments moved forward under cover of a creeping barrage, broke through the wire and machine-gun cover and, penetrating the first enemy line, captured 20 trenches and dugouts yesterday.

Last night, the assault troops stormed and captured two heights in fierce fighting, the noon communiqué said, and in addition captured dozens more trenches.

In addition to killing hundreds of enemy troops, the Russians captured prisoners both yesterday and during the night. Large stores of war spoils were taken.

In Stalingrad City, the Russian artillery laid down a heavy bombardment throughout the night, wrecking 12 enemy dugouts in the northern factory district.

The Germans continued desperately to supply their starving Stalingrad garrison and the Russians yesterday shot down none German planes in the metropolitan area, the midnight communiqué said.

On the middle Don front, now merging fully with the south-southwest Stalingrad Fronts in one gigantic steamroller attack toward Rostov, the Russians continued all night to sweep the Germans before them, the noon communiqué said.

They captured several inhabited places between dark and dawn. One unit alone killed all but about 100 men of an entire battalion of 1,000 Germans. The 100 survivors were taken prisoner.

In another sector, the Germans counterattacked, trying to reach an encircled garrison. The Russians crumpled up their infantry and tanks, killing 180 Germans and destroying six tanks.

On the middle Don Front yesterday, the Russians had stormed and captured the important cities of Morozovsky, 120 miles southwest of Stalingrad, and Tsimlyanskaya, 110 miles farther southwest of Stalingrad, whence the Germans started their summer offensive.

Here the army of Col. Gen. N. F. Vatutin, operating east of the Rostov-Voronezh-Moscow railroad, had cut the Stalingrad-Kharkov railroad at Morozovsky and had smashed as far south as the Don River bend to close another semi-circle around the 22 German divisions trapped in the Don-Volga area.

At Tsimlyanskaya, the Russians captured a great German supply base.

Prisoners and spoils had not yet been counted.

Several small towns and villages were taken in the middle Don yesterday. One entire garrison which put up a death fight was wiped put except for those who surrendered. The men who gave up included troops of an airborne infantry division landed as a last hope. With them surrenders a German regimental commander.

South and southwest of Stalingrad, the Russian assault troops took a fortified populated place. They killed 400 Germans and captured nine field guns, assorted weapons, 336,000 pounds of grain and many head of cattle which had been stolen from Russian civilians.

The Germans made one desperate night counterattack on the south-southwest Stalingrad Front, the noon communiqué reported. They sent 14 massed tanks against a sector held by the guards, who with anti-tank rifles and rifles set fire to five tanks. The remaining nine turned back.

Striding forward throughout the night in the North Caucasus, the Russians occupied “many” inhabited places, the noon communiqué said.

Enormous spoils were being taken here. The noon communiqué said that one unit in two days had taken a three-motored transport plane, 26 tanks, 29 field guns, 33 trench mortars, many trucks filled with infantry weapons and other war materials. This unit took 300 prisoners.

A special communiqué and the midnight communiqué reported the capture in the North Caucasus yesterday of Nalchik, Kotlyarevsky, Maysky and Prokhladny, which are respectively 57 miles southwest, 30 miles west-southwest, 28 miles southwest and 28 miles west of Mozdok.

It was also announced that since Dec. 24 in the North Caucasus line, the Russians had killed more than 11,000 Germans and captured 150 tanks, 109 field guns, 268 machine guns, 6,000 rifles, 59,000 anti-tank and anti-infantry mines, 500,000 cartridges, 263 motortrucks and 15 munitions and supply dumps. They destroyed 18 German planes, 170 tanks, 42 field guns, 222 machine guns and 390 trucks.

The capture of the four new towns in the North Caucasus was regarded here as the third big victory of the winter campaign.

The Russians had now cleared a long stretch of the Rostov-oilfields railroad and had removed definitely all danger to the Grozny oil fields, threatened since mid-October.

Thus, the winter campaign in the Caucasus Mountains had about ended with the freeing of more than 2,000 square miles of territory.

Remaining Germans in the Mozdok-Nalchik-Prokhladny area were now fleeing westward with the Russians in hot pursuit, their front apparently having collapsed.

In the last two days, the Russians had gained 27 miles westward and 25 miles northward.

Nazi position desperate

It was believed here that unless the Germans were prepared to abandon a long stretch of the Rostov railroad leading up from Prokhladny, they would soon be threatened by another Russian army advancing southward on the railroad from the Manych Canal. This is the force which last week captured Priiutnoe, 200 miles southeast of Rostov, and started southward toward the railroad which runs southwestward to the Novorossiysk Naval Base, crossing the Rostov-oilfield line.

London military experts said the collapse of the entire German north Caucasus Front seemed inevitable and that the Russians were likely within a few days to take the important city of Georgiyevsk, 40 miles northwest of Prokhladny on the Rostov railroad.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 7, 1943)

Reds capture city 75 miles from Rostov

German position desperate on Don Front; 5,000 killed daily
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
German armies south of the Don River faced the threat of disaster today and the great city of Rostov, gateway to the Caucasus, was brought within range of attack by Red Army troops who had stormed and captured Bolshaya Orlovka, 75 miles to the northeast.

A Red Army under Col. Gen. N. F. Vatutin, advancing from the Don, thrust a sharp 18-mile wedge southward to take Bolshaya Orlovka.

Vatutin was now only 63 miles north of the railroad junction of Salsk, where the Stalingrad-Caucasus and Rostov-Caucasus railroads meet and his forces were in position to strike direct at Rostov or to move on Salsk.

Reds gain on four fronts

A Russian drive southward would threaten with encirclement the entire German force retreating down the Stalingrad-Caucasus railroad.

Further, Vatutin’s army formed the southern claw of a pincer aimed at Rostov, the northern claw being in the neighborhood of Millerovo, 135 miles north of Rostov.

Advancing in giant strides, the Red Army swept through German-held towns and villages on four fighting fronts during a night of relentless attacks by infantry, cavalry, tanks and ski troops, the noon communiqué reported.

Nazis lose 5,000 daily

They had captured 23 towns and villages on the Caucasus and Don Fronts alone yesterday.

The Germans were losing an average of more than 5,000 men a day in killed and prisoners alone, aside from their wounded, and enormous quantities of war materials.

Dispatches reported that the Germans had little hope of reinforcement because the Russians were steadily increasing their retreat to main communications lines.

Advance 25 miles

On the Caucasus Front, the Russians were driving rapidly up the railroad leading toward Rostov from the rich eastern oil fields and had already advanced more than 25 miles from Prokhladny.

It was indicated that the Russians were also attacking 100 miles west of Prokhladny and the same distance east of the Maykop oil field in the Black Sea region. A Berlin broadcast heard in London said that fighting had broken out in the Tuapse-Novorossiysk area on the coast west of the Maykop fields.

In the Caucasus, in a ferocious night attack, the Russians stormed and captured a large inhabited place, the noon communiqué said. They killed 600 Germans, took 200 prisoners and captured 28 tanks.

Smash ahead on Don

On the middle Don Front, assault troops ripped into the German rear, smashed reinforcements still advancing toward the lines. They left 400 German dead on the field.

In another middle Don sector, Russian storm troops broke through desperate enemy resistance to take several more inhabited places.

South and southwest of Stalingrad, where two fronts have been merged into one, Russian infantry tore through the German defenses at two places in a wild fight with bayonets and hand grenades in almost pitch darkness. They killed 200 Germans.

Ski troops in action

Besides the gains on these southern fronts, the Russians gained ground in Stalingrad City and northwest of it.

On the Central Front, in the area west of Rzhev, Russian ski troops went into action in a surprise night attack on a German-held fortified village. They broke into the village streets, killing about 300 Germans and took some prisoners.

Besides the guns on the four fronts mentioned, the Russians on the northwest Stalingrad Front captured 20 trenches and took prisoners during the night.

In another sector northwest of Stalingrad, the Russians killed 200 Germans in cutting off attempted sorties by isolated enemy groups.

In Stalingrad City, small Red Army storm troop groups captured a series of German dugouts.

A special communiqué issued last night had put the toll of German dead between Jan. 1 and Jan. 5 at 20,000 killed south and southwest of Stalingrad. In these five days, the special communiqué said, the Russians took 6,500 prisoners on this front, to bring their total of prisoners since the Red Army offensives started Nov. 19 to 144,150.

56 tanks captured

War spoils captured in the five-day period included 27 planes, 56 tanks, 429 machine guns, 267 trench mortars, 1,016 anti-tank rifles, 10,000 Tommy guns, 15,750 rifles, more than three million artillery shells, more than 20 million rounds of rifle and machine-gun ammunition, 500,000 airplane bombs, 83 radio transmitters, 239 trucks laden with war materials and supplies, 4,400 loaded carts, 3,217 horses, 18 locomotives, 400 railroad freight cars and 36 big supply and material dumps.

The Russians destroyed in the same period 88 planes, 118 tanks, 122 guns, 291 trench mortars, 570 troop and supply trucks.

Communiqués and dispatches indicated that in the Caucasus, the Russians were approaching the important railroad town of Georgiyevsk, 40 miles west of the Prokhladny junction, captured of 15 towns and villages in the Caucasus had been announced by the midnight communiqué.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 8, 1943)

Reds converge toward Rostov

Prize troops sacrificed by fleeing Nazis
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
Driving ahead with triphammer power the Red Army stormed through town and villager on the Don and Caucasus Fronts during the night, smashed desperate German counterattacks and closed on isolated German garrisons in annihilation operations.

The Russians on the Don and southwest of Stalingrad Front were reported within less than 60 miles of Rostov, gateway to the Caucasus, and 56 miles from Salsk, junction of the Stalingrad-Caucasus railroad and the Salsk-Rostov line.

Soviet reports said the Germans were suffering enormous losses in men and material along the lower Don. A captured commander of a German infantry regiment said only 200 men of his unit survived, and that many of those were frostbitten. A German regiment normally includes 3,000-4,000 men.

The commander said his regiment had lost all its artillery and mortars.

Although the Axis troops encircled in the Don offensive appeared doomed, the enemy showed no inclination to surrender. Instead, he was battling fiercely and frequently counterattacking.

Great German armies were fighting desperately against threatened destruction below the Don bend and in the Caucasus, they were burning villages, blowing up bridges and mining roads, dugouts and blockhouses in a futile attempt top stop the Russians, leaving picked men behind them as sacrifice units.

A communiqué announced the captured yesterday of 18 railroad stations, district centers and other populated places in the lower Don and 40 inhabited places of various sizes in the North Caucasus.

Dive bombers used

The Germans threw tanks and motorized infantry into repeated counterattacks in the lower Don fighting during the night, only to have them utterly smashed, their men killed and their equipment destroyed, while the Russians, the noon communiqué said, swept on.

The Russians threw Shturmovik dive bomber planes into action in one Don sector where the Germans made an especially-determined stand. The planes shrieked down, hurling bombs on the enemy field guns and trench mortars. Battery after battery was silenced. Massed Russian tanks followed up the plane attack, destroyed eight remaining guns and captured the village which the enemy sought to hold.

Attack from rear

Red Army tanks, Tommy gunners and infantry attacked throughout the night in the North Caucasus, developing their new tactics of sending assault parties through to the enemy rear to cut off escape.

In one sector, shock troops crept close to the enemy trenches, unnoticed, under cover of night, while others went around to the rear.

At the same instant, the Russians attacked from front and rear, killed more than 100 Germans and took the remaining prisoners along with war spoils.

Storming parties in Stalingrad City captured 11 dugouts and seven blockhouses in the northern factory district during the night and destroyed neighboring fortifications.

Southwest of Velikiye Luki, on the Central Front, the Russians smashed a big German counterattack, destroyed 14 enemy tanks, and sent the rest reeling back in defeat, the noon communiqué reported.

A communiqué had told how the Russians yesterday developed their drive on Rostov and Salsk.

From Bolshaya Orlovka, taken the day before, the Russians thrust 16 miles northwestward to Strakhov and Tapilin, about 60 miles from Rostov. They had sent another force 19 miles to the southeast, along the Sal River to reach Martinovka 30 miles from the Stalingrad-Salsk railroad and about 85 miles from Salsk.

At the same time, Red troops were converging on the key port for the north and northwest.

They had cleaned up a whole series of towns and villages in the Central Don bend, between the Stalingrad-Likhaya railroad, which runs westward from Stalingrad and the Don bend to the south.

12 counterattacks repelled

Stiffened German resistance was being met in the whole area south and southwest of Stalingrad, but the Russians kept on.

In one sector yesterday, troops of the Guards Regiments repelled 12 counterattacks by Germans attempting to break out of encirclement.

In the eastern area of the North Caucasus, the Russians continued their drive up the railroad from Prokhladny.

It was also noted that the Russian gunners and planes continue to shoot down German transport planes in the Stalingrad area and said that a considerable number of enemy airmen had been taken prisoner recently.

One non-commissioned officer prisoner told the Russians who captured him after his Junkers 52 transport had crashed that he was taking two tons of bread for the Stalingrad troops.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 9, 1943)

RUSSIANS CONTINUE SWEEP ON ALL FRONTS
Nazis resist desperately in Caucasus

Russians close in on two key railroad centers, gain on Rostov
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

The Reds close in on Rostov and the arrows on this map indicate where the growing six-pronged Soviet offensive is doing the Germans the most damage. The Russians daily are chiseling deeper and deeper toward Rostov and final encirclement of the Germans in the Caucasus and Stalingrad areas. A possible new attack from the Black Sea has the Nazis in a flurry of worry.

Moscow, USSR –
Russian armies, their momentum and striking impact increasing steadily, drove throughout the night toward Rostov and Salsk and closed in on two key railroad centers in the Caucasus, dispatches and the noon communiqué reported today.

In the area of the southern Don bend and below it, the Russians captured three towns and villages during the night in fights to the death against desperate German resistance and in the Caucasus, they drove through the Germans to storm and capture a new inhabited place.

Northwest of Stalingrad, in a new flareup of offensive operations, Red Army assault troops captured 40 German trenches in a night fight and threw back a counterattack by 6,000 Germans supported by 20 tanks, killing 500 enemy troops.

Two areas stormed

In the lower Don area, there was a battle of many hours around two inhabited places before the Red Army men stormed them both, killing 400 sacrifice troops and captured their objectives and important spoils, the noon communiqué said.

The noon communiqué said:

In the Northern Caucasus, the enemy retreated and suffered heavy losses.

Driving into one North Caucasus town, the Russians counted the bodies of 380 German dead in the streets. They routed a battalion of 1,000 German infantrymen in another sector.

Action at Leningrad

On the Central Front, the Russians during the night consolidated new gains and killed 200 Germans in repelling counterattacks west of Velikiye Luki. They shot down five German planes.

The noon communiqué noted that in the Leningrad area, snipers within three days had killed up to 400 Germans.

Desperate German counterattacks were reported along the Lower Don. The Russians smashed them all and continued to advance.

In the Caucasus, the Russians were now 12 miles southwest of the Georgiyevsk railroad junction, 275 miles southeast of Rostov. They were advancing up the right of the Caucasus railroad, and rapidly clearing out the eastern half of the Caucasus.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 10, 1943)

Russians step up drive on Caucasus

Reds closing in on grain center; towns captured south of Rostov
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
Russian troops thundering through the Caucasus have tightened their pincer about Georgiyevsk, a key rail town and grain center, 50 miles northwest of Nalchik, and captured 21 more inhabited places, a Soviet communiqué disclosed today.

Red Army units captured a town 15 miles northeast of Georgiyevsk. Soviet troops had previously been reported 10 miles southeast of Georgiyevsk, indicating that the town might fall soon under heavy Russian pressure.

Front dispatches said enemy resistance had been broken on all important defense lines in the Georgiyevsk sector.

Fight through fog, slush

Falling back from their defense positions, however, Axis troops were still fighting strongly in the open country, Red Star, the army newspaper reported. At times, it said, they started futile counterattacks in an effort to reduce the accelerated pace of the Red Army advance.

Georgiyevsk was threatened directly by Russian troops pushing up the Baku-Rostov railroad from Prokhladny, captured last week.

The Russians fought through fogs and slush, closing in on the railroad junction at Georgiyevsk from which spur lines run to key towns northwest and southwest.

Captured more towns

The Russians threatened to join the Georgiyevsk column with one driving southward across the Kalmyk steppes. Such a junction would double the striking power of the Russian troops in that sector and increase the threat of annihilation to German forces there.

The drive toward Rostov and toward Salsk, an important Axis defense point 100 miles southeast of the Caucasus gateway city, continued throughout last night, the latest Soviet communiqué reported.

Soviet troops captured more inhabited places near Zimovniki, 68 miles northwest of Salsk.

Three towns and villages were captured in the area of the southern arm of the Don bend and below it, the communiqué said, and another inhabited point was stormed and captured in the heavily-mined Caucasus despite desperate German resistance.

Battle near Stalingrad

A new flareup was reported northwest of Stalingrad, where Russian shock troops captured 51 enemy trenches in a night raid. Six thousand Germans, supported by 20 tanks, started an immediate counterattack but were thrown back, after 500 troops were killed.

To the north, the Russians repelled night counterattacks by German forces southwest of Velikiye Luki, the town 80 miles from the Latvian

Bitter, costly fighting

Still farther north, within the Leningrad area, Russian snipers had killed upwards of 400 Germans and anti-aircraft guns had downed two enemy fighter planes in the past three days.

The official German news agency reported today that German planes raided Murmansk, Russia’s Arctic supply port, Friday night, starting fires in the city and harbor.

The Caucasus situation had developed to a critical point for the Germans within the past week.

It was emphasized by military circles here that the Soviet victories had been gained at the expense of bitter and costly fighting in difficult terrain exceptionally well-fortified by the enemy.

The Germans had erected powerful fortifications and laid upwards of 200,000 mines in the Eastern Caucasus. Red Star said the Russians had been forced to reconquer almost every yard of land by persistent frontal and flank attacks.

They met particularly fierce resistance at rail stations and in villages where stone houses provided ready-made pillboxes for the enemy. In many cases, there was bitter hand-to-hand and bayonet fighting in the streets.

Peter Pavlenko, special Red Star correspondent, said the mine barriers laid by the Germans in the Caucasus were among the most formidable ever erected in Soviet territory.

‘Even mined corpses’

He wrote:

Literally everything was mined. Forest tracks, houses, water wells, corpses, dead horses, balconies and cellars. Had it been possible, the Germans would have mined the air itself.

In one week on a small sector, Russian snipers collected 34,000 mines, neutralized 205 peasant houses which had been rigged as booby traps, and restored hundreds of blown-up bridges and roads.

Pavlenko wrote:

The villages are deserted. The inhabitants, forewarned of the danger, have not yet descended from the mountains, pending removal of the mines.

‘Torchbearers’ wiped out

The newspaper Izvestia, describing the capture of Prokhladny, said special German destruction battalions had attempted to raze the city to the ground.

It said:

The best buildings were ablaze. The schoolhouse, the hospital and the meat factory. This was the work of special German “torch detachments” left behind to complete the destruction.

But Hitler’s plan to convert the town into a desert was not fully realized. The Russians broke into the city so fast they caught and wiped out many ‘torchbearers” before then could do any damage. The rail station was captured intact.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 11, 1943)

Russians push into 17 towns in Caucasus

Tanks lead way as drive gains momentum – rail center surrounded
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Moscow, USSR –
Red Army troops, driving through icy slush behind tanks, captured 17 towns and villages in the North Caucasus during the night after taking 43 in the preceding 24 hours, the High Command announced today.

The important railroad center of Georgiyevsk, 275 miles southeast of Rostov, was bypassed and all but surrounded. Russian armies were in its skirting villages and were within striking distance of Mineralnye Vody, 15 miles to the northwest, and Budyonnovsk, 60 miles to the northeast, both key cities, in the most important rail system in the entire area.

Hundreds of Germans were killed, more hundreds were made prisoner and enormous quantities of wat spoils fell into Russian hands in an unbroken night of advances in the North Caucasus, the noon communiqué said.

Nazis overwhelmed

Desperate German sacrifice troops who tried to hold a river crossing with the aid of 20 tanks and many field guns and six-barreled mortars were overwhelmed by a Russian frontal attack. The Russians stormed across the stream, forced an enemy retreat and captured prisoners and important spoils, the communiqué said.

Communiqués and dispatches indicated that the Russians were near one of the big victories of their winter offensive in the North Caucasus.

There was every reason to believe that Georgiyevsk, Mineralnye Vody and Budyonnovsk would fall soon, to advance the Russians along the main northward railroad and give them the spurs which lead northeastward.

Counterattacks fail

Throughout the night, the Germans sought by counterattacks to slow the drive in the lower Don, but the Russians smashed the attacks and made new gains.

One Russian unit stormed and captured an inhabited point, capturing a big war supplies dump and 18 motor vehicles and killing 100 Germans who tried to regain the point in a counterattack.

Russian tanks in another sector led infantry in an attack in which two German battalions, 2,000 men, were broken, six enemy tanks and four field guns destroyed and one tank, two armored cars and 11 motortrucks captured, the noon communiqué said.

Gain toward Rostov

In the lower Don area, the Russians had reached a point within 32 miles of the Salsk railroad junction, 100 miles southeast of Rostov.

Striking westward above Rostov, in a new threat to that city at the mouth of the don, the Russians were advancing on Shakhty, important mining city 47 miles north of Rostov on the railroad to the north.

The noon communiqué reported that in Stalingrad City, Russian assault groups captured a German strongpoint during the night killing up to 300 Germans, after destroying or capturing 47 dugouts, blockhouses, pillboxes and gun emplacements in the preceding 24 hours.

Nazis lose material

On the Central Front, a Russians unit breaking one of a series of enemy counterattacks knocked out nine German tanks, destroyed three self-propelling guns and killed more than 300 Germans, the noon communiqué said. In another sector, the Germans at the cost of heavy losses filtered into the Russian positions but were thrown back in a counterattack, losing 200 more dead, three tanks, many field guns and other equipment.

What quantities of materials the Germans are losing in the Caucasus fighting was indicated by the midnight communiqué, which said that yesterday the Russians captured 20 tanks, 170 motortrucks, 180,000 artillery shells, 25,000 hand grenades, 19,000 mines, 141,000 anti-tank rifle cartridges, five million dynamite sticks and signal rockets, 4000,000 containers or rifle ammunition, three million artillery shell cases and 12,000 spools of barbed wire, in addition to other equipment.

[NormanStewart]

The Pittsburgh Press (January 12, 1943)

Russians gain 100 miles in 8-day drive

Cossacks lead advance; big grain and rail center falls
By Henry Shapiro, United Press staff writer

Soviet drive in South Russia gains speed as more rail towns fall. In the area of (1), Red Armies are advancing on Salsk and Shakhty as Soviet troops gain inside Stalingrad.

At (2), Reds sweep down steppes near Voroshilovsk, 45 miles from Armavir. At (3), the Russians capture the grain center of Georgiyevsk and seize troop trains in Mineralnye Vody in another driver on Armavir.

The Nazis are believed ready to dig in on a winter line anchored on Voronezh, Rostov and Novorossiysk, indicated by swastikas.

Moscow, USSR –
Red Army troops drove from two directions today on Armavir and Voroshilovsk, German defense points northwest of Georgiyevsk, and front dispatches reported the axis retreat was becoming a rout in some sectors of the Caucasus.

Maj. Gen. Ivan Krichenko’s Cossacks raced 13 miles up the Caucasus railroad from the town of Mineralnye Vody during the night.

They were within 100 miles of Armavir, a strategic town on the railroad and on the Rostov-Makach Kala oil line which parallels it. Voroshilovsk, the other German point immediately threatened, is 42 miles east of Armavir.

Other Soviet forces were driving down from the Kalmyk steppes and had advanced to a point 34 miles northeast of Voroshilovsk.

These two columns threatened to cut off the enemy troops retreating from the Georgiyevsk-Mineralnye Vody-Pyatigorsk region captured yesterday by the Russians.

Axis sources refused to admit the loss of the Georgiyevsk grain and railroad center. Radio Vichy said German reports asserted that “particularly violent” fighting was in progress near Georgiyevsk and Pyatigorsk.

In the Caucasus fighting, the Russians had smashed through German defenses along a 100-mile front to make an advance of more than 100 miles in eight days.

Front reports said the Georgiyevsk area was taken only after particularly heavy fighting along the rail lines leading to the junction.

The Soviet newspaper Pravda said the Russians attacked all the centers of resistance from various directions and surrounded them. Before taking Georgiyevsk, Mineralnye Vody, and Pyatigorsk, Soviet troops had to oppose the Germans along railroads, highways and streams and drive the enemy from hills.

The collapse of the German garrisons came so suddenly, Pravda said, that at one point a Soviet tank unit caught four German regimental leaders in bed.

While the Red Army developed its offensive toward the Armavir-Voroshilovsk area, two other Russian columns menaced Salsk, 100 miles southeast of Rostov and 95 miles north of Voroshilovsk. One force advanced on the city from the northeast and the other from the east. Both were reported last within 30 miles of Salsk.

In the Georgiyevsk area, infantry moved in fast behind Krichenko’s Cossacks to mop up pocketed Axis troops and collect rich war spoils.

An Exchange Telegraph Moscow dispatch said Russian troops had stormed and captured dominating Mt. Mashuk and Mt. Beshtau in the Mineralnye-Pyatigorsk area.

Cavalry, tanks, armored cars and the infantry under Lt. Gen, Ivan Maslennikov had captured the key towns of an entire Caucasus railroad system, reaching from the foothills toward the Kalmyk steppes, in a day of big gains yesterday.

Drive toward Rostov

On the Stalingrad-Don Front, Col. Gen. Andrey I. Yeremenko advanced from Luberie down the Stalingrad-Tikhoretsk railroad on Salsk, 50 miles southwestward while other forces occupied five new villages on his right flank, and a Russian Army drove westward on Shakhty, 47 miles north of Rostov.

The Exchange Telegraph reported that the Russians advance was so rapid in the North Caucasus that Pyatigorsk and other cities had been taken intact before the Germans could destroy the buildings.

All stations on the railroad system keyed at Georgiyevsk, 275 miles southeast of Rostov, had fallen to the Russian within the past 24 hours.

Now the Russians were driving northwestward from Georgiyevsk and Mineralnye Vody on Armavir, 115 miles from Mineralnye Vody, and a second army, sweeping down from the steppes.

At Armavir, the Russians would cut the railroad leading through the Maikop oil fields to Tuapse, oil port on the Black Sea; at Voroshilovsk they would tighten their grip on the railroad leading 100 miles northeastward to Divnoe.

The latest communiqué reported that the cavalry, in its 13-mile gain during the night, killed up to 400 Germans, took more than 200 prisoners and captured nine field guns.

Capture two trains, kill troops

The tanks and mechanized forces which drove into Mineralnye Vody yesterday, the communiqué said, captured two trains laden with troops and supplies, which were in the station ready to leave.

The communiqué said:

The Soviet troops wiped out the troops and captured the trains.

On the lower Don Front, the Germans threw machines and men lavishly into overnight counterattacks in vain attempts to stop the Russians.

Gain inside Stalingrad

Soviet troops fighting through the factory area of Stalingrad City thrust into German positions and captured six field guns and the artillery, pounding throughout the night on enemy positions in another sector, destroyed many enemy dugouts and street trenches.

On the Central Front west of Moscow, the Germans lost about 800 men killed, including 300 Tommy gunners, and 75 prisoners in a number of overnight counterattacks.

Soviet bombers sank a 5,000-ton German transport in a raid on an enemy port.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (January 13, 1943)

Reds threaten Smolensk, seize city 25 miles away

Close on key point in Caucasus – attack around Leningrad

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
Russian forces, in a powerful thrust southward from Velikiye Luki, have advanced to within 25 miles of Smolensk, anchor point of the German defense system on the Central Front, dispatches reported today.

Correspondents of the official TASS News Agency reported that Soviet forces had captured Sloboda, 25 miles north of Smolensk. Sloboda is nearly 100 miles southeast of Velikiye Luki, major town near the Latvian border which the Russians won two weeks ago.

The Red Army was now in position to offer serious threat to Smolensk, ancient fortified town, 230 miles west of Moscow.

Meanwhile, the German Transocean News Service broadcast from Berlin an admission that Russian forces were attacking in the Leningrad area. The broadcast said violent fighting was taking place between Lake Ilmen and Lake Ladoga.

Reds close in on Salsk

While Red Army forces advanced on the Central Front, other Soviet columns closed in on Salsk, key

Driving down the North Caucasus railroad from Kotelnikovsky, Soviet troops were in contact with the Germans “at the last natural defense position” protecting the northeast approaches to Salsk, front dispatches said.

The communiqué reported that Russian forces swept through more villages and towns on the Caucasus and Don Fronts during the night and battered back the Germans within Stalingrad. The Red Army appeared gathering momentum to drive the enemy out of Stalingrad.

Soviet shock troops, smashing German defenses in the northern industrial settlement of the Volga city, reached the western outskirts of Stalingrad while rear units, intensifying their pressure from the northeast, recaptured several additional streets and enemy dugouts.

Kill 1,000 in Stalingrad

The Stalingrad fighting grew fiercer as the short-rationed German troops sought desperately top cling to their positions, but they were being forced to yield house by house and street by street, dispatches said.

Upward of a battalion (1,000 men) of enemy troops were destroyed during the night in the industrial district.

Around Georgiyevsk, the railroad center 275 miles southeast of Rostov, Red Army forces cleared six more localities 34 miles southeast of Georgiyevsk and continued their northwestern drive along Baku-Rostov line.

Roads strewn with dead

Dispatches reported that Russian tanks and Cossack cavalry were driving up the Caucasus railroad, and on its flanks, along roads strewn with dead Germans and the wreckage of their machines, the cavalrymen sabering fleeing troops and the horses trampling them. Prisoners were reported streaming to the rear. Infantrymen surrounded isolated German sacrifice garrisons at fortified points and wiped out all who would not surrender.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (January 14, 1943)

Nazis stiffen in Caucasus; Reds roll on

Soviet fliers launch drive on big German air base at Krasnodar

Moscow, USSR –
Russian forces advancing through the Caucasus encountered stiff resistance today from Axis troops who stubbornly defended railroad stations and highway junctions in an attempt to block the road to Rostov, dispatches to the army newspaper Red Star said.

Despite the tenacity with which the Germans were attempting to hold to their positions, the Red Army continued to advance – most of the time through rain and snow that left icy slush on the battlefields.

Blast Krasnodar air base

Russian planes, flying far ahead of the Red Army forces, started a day and night offensive against Krasnodar, 150 miles south of Rostov, in an attempt to knock out the big German air base.

A special dispatch to the newspaper Pravda said Russian Shturmovik dive bombers, gliding undetected at high altitude over the Krasnodar Airdrome, had wrecked or damaged 40 grounded German planes in 24 hours of attack and had shot down two fighters as well as wrecking installations and fuel dumps.

The fighting became so severe over night that Russian tanks and Tommy gunners broke all the way through to the German rear on one sector of the Caucasus front and seized a concentration camp where Russian civilians and army men were held prisoner.

The Red Star dispatches reported the Germans were not only attempting to cling to defense points but that at some places in the Caucasus, they were even counterattacking in defense of railroad stations, highway junctions and river barriers.

Nazis report new Red drives

Meanwhile, Germany reported new Russ9ian offensives on three fronts, admitted reverses on four fronts and indicated Adolf Hitler was becoming desperate in his search through the satellite Balkans for more fighting men.

German broadcasts reported that the Russians were attacking at Voronezh, 210 miles northwest of Stalingrad, an anchor point of the German line; in the Tuapse area of the Black Sea coast, and around Leningrad.

Breaks in the German line, though the Nazis minimized their importance, were admitted on the Voronezh, Tuapse and Leningrad Fronts and on the Stalingrad-Don Front.

Stockholm dispatches reported that the Germans were evacuating generals and staff officers by plane from the pocket west of Stalingrad, leaving colonels instead of major generals to command divisions and lieutenants instead of majors to command battalions.

These reports said the Russians had thrown at least 300,000 strategic reserves into their offensives.

At other defense points in the Caucasus, the Germans, instead of retreating remained in their positions until they were surrounded. An advance tank unit of the Red Army encircled a large enemy airdrome, Red Star said, and captured grounded German bombers, fuel and bombs.

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (January 15, 1943)

Die Feindangriffe bei Woronesch zusammengebrochen –
Schwere Kämpfe im Raum um Stalingrad

dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 14. Jänner –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Nach den am Vortage erlittenen schweren Verlusten führte der Feind im Westkaukasus nur vereinzelte und zusammenhanglose Angriffe, die abgewiesen wurden. Zwischen Kaukasus und Don und im Dongebiet scheiterten die fortgesetzten Angriffe der Sowjets unter Verlust von 26 Panzerkampfwagen. Im Raum von Stalingrad wehrten die deutschen Truppen starke Infanterie- und Panzerangriffe in heldenhaften schweren Kämpfen ab. Die Luftwaffe griff an den Schwerpunkten der Kampfhandlungen auf der Erde ein.

Feindliche Angriffe südlich Woronesch gegen die Stellungen deutscher und ungarischer Truppen brachen zusammen. Die Kämpfe südöstlich des Ilmensees und südlich des Ladogasees dauern an.

In Libyen schossen deutsche und italienische Jagdflieger bei zwei deutschen Verlusten elf, Flakartillerie drei feindliche Flugzeuge ab. Wiederholte Vorstöße feindlicher Kräfte in Tunesien wurden abgewiesen. Deutsche und italienische Luftwaffenverbände zersprengten Nachschubkolonnen und Truppenansammlungen des Feindes. Auf Flugstützpunkten wurden beträchtliche Zerstörungen hervorgerufen.

Bei Tagesangriffen britischer Flugzeugverbände gegen die besetzten Westgebiete wurden fünf, im Nordseebereich zwei feindliche Flugzeuge abgeschossen. In den späten Abendstunden griffen britische Flugzeuge westdeutsches Gebiet, vor allem die Stadt Essen, an. Die Bevölkerung hatte Verluste. Es entstanden vorwiegend Gebäudeschäden. Nachtjäger und Flakartillerie der Luftwaffe brachten fünf Flugzeuge zum Absturz.

Deutsche Kampfflugzeuge griffen bei Tage Anlagen der englischen Südostküste, in der Nacht das Stadtgebiet und die Werften von Sunderland an. Ausgedehnte Brände wurden beobachtet.

[NormanStewart]

Reading Eagle (January 15, 1943)

Soviets continue sweep on two fronts

New offensive reported near Leningrad; German resistance battered down in Caucasus and lower Don regions

Moscow, USSR (AP) –
The rapid pace of Russian vanguards in the drive northwestward from the mid-Caucasus brought up the problem of reinforcement and supply today, but dispatches said the winter offensive continued to make progress on both the Caucasus and the Don Fronts.

Red Army men occupied several more strongpoints in the Caucasus and in the lower Don region, overriding strong German resistance, field observers reported.

Having blanketed in three days a vast triangle which the Germans took three months to conquer – the area between Mozdok, Nalchik and Mineralnye Vody – the Red Army now has the job of moving up its main forces to support the men consolidating newly-won positions for further thrusts toward Rostov.

A heavy toll has been exacted from Axis contingents aligned along the lower Don Valley, it was reported officially.

From Stockholm came reports that Marshal Semyon Timoshenko is leading a new offensive to break the semi-circle the Germans have held about Leningrad, the former capital, since August 1941.

The Russians have offered no comment on German claims that new Soviet offensives are in the making either about Leningrad or near Voronezh. A DNB News Agency dispatch broadcast early today said there was large-scale air activity south of Lake Ladoga and that 47 Russian planes had been shot down without any German loss.

Red Star said breaking of the German lines on three main fronts, the Caucasus, the Don and the central region, had spread confusion and uncertainty in the ranks of the invaders and urged the Red Army to press its advantage.

Hike 30 miles a day

Red Army foot troops are hiking as much as 30 miles daily to catch up with the tanks, cavalry and motorized infantry which has led the advances, the military newspaper said.

German counterattacks appeared strongest on the Central Front southwest of Velikiye Luki and along the lower Don, where they are using tanks liberally to back up infantrymen.

Red Star said the invaders launched several counterattacks in recaptured districts west and northwest of Mineralnye Vody, on the Rostov-Baku rail line, but Soviet troops repulsed them with the aid of mobile field guns and drove the survivors across the Kuma River, which flows eastward to the Caspian Sea.

The Caucasus army has put 125 miles behind it to push through Sotnikovskoe, within 45 miles of the Kalmyk steppes, in the new gains announced in that region. It was fighting through heavy, wet snows that bogged the roads, but it was advancing at a clip that promised to weld the South Russian front into a unit. Tank units and Cossack cavalrymen, jubilant over reentering their homeland, led the drive.

The recapture of Sotnikovskoe marked a 26-mile push from the Zuhravskoye region in a day’s fighting. Farther south, nearer the Mineralnye Vody-Rostov Railway, other columns recaptured both the town and the railway station of Suvorovskaya and the village of Grazhdansky-Pervy, 20 miles west of Mineralnye Vody, the Russians announced.

Sixty miles from Rostov

On the Lower Don Front, where the Red Army vanguard was last reported within 60 miles of Rostov, almost at the ends of the marshes and swamps that fill the river basin, the Russians reported that they had taken six more populated places in bitter engagements.

They said that about 1,000 of the enemy were killed and 22 tanks put out of commission in the battles in one sector and that ceaseless counterattacks were beaten off in another. Nine German planes were burned in a battle near a town, the regular early communiqué reported.

The midday communiqué said that German counterattacks were smashed along the entire front during last night’s fighting, especially in the Caucasus where a determined Nazi effort was launched to hamper the Red Army advance toward Rostov.

But, the Russians claimed, all the counterattacks were repulsed, the Germans suffered heavy losses and several settlements were added to the list of towns recaptured by the Red Army forces.

A number of places were also taken in the night’s fighting on the lower Don, the Russians reported, with 800 Germans left dead and 19 of their tanks disabled in on e exchange of counterblows. One of the villages taken in a lower Don sector was described as a strongly-fortified populated place.

Southwest of Velikiye Luki, German troops with automatic rifles and supported by tank units and soldiers in armored cars attempted to storm a Russian position but were hurled back with heavy losses, the war bulletin said.

Reds’ confidence grows

Growing Soviet confidence in ultimate victory was noted by Adm. William H. Standley, the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, who has just returned from conferences in the United States.

Following an hour’s visit with Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov, Adm. Standley said in an interview yesterday that Molotov displayed “an air of increased confidence.”

[NormanStewart]

Death-and-duty talk given Nazis

Soldiers in Stalingrad told to hold on

New York (AP) –
In a special broadcast intended for German troops on the Stalingrad Front, the berlin radio preached a death-and-duty sermon to Hitler’s soldiers, it was disclosed today in a report to the Office of War Information.

The broadcast came on the heels of a Berlin German-language propaganda broadcast intended for European continental consumption, the OWI said, reporting that all Soviet attacks in the Stalingrad area “were shattered by the wonderful valor of the German defense.”

But the program for the German forces was a lengthy admonition in which reference was made at least twice to soldiers “who see no sense in holding on.”

Usually, the German broadcasts for the forces on the Russian front play familiar melodies and transmit messages to the soldiers from relatives, it was noted.

The special broadcast, however, only had a short musical prelude before the preaching began.

The OWI said the soldiers were told:

Personal wishes are of no account. It is up to the soldier to carry out orders in a spirit of blind and unquestioning confidence.

There is a saying which has now become almost second nature to use:

The Führer knows the position and he will cope with it. It is our job to obey.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (January 16, 1943)

Russians gain 30 miles in Donets drive

Two other armies smash ahead of Don and Caucasus Fronts

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
Three great Russian armies, crushing all opposition while increasing their own striking impact, pushed on to new gains on the Donets, Don and North Caucasus Fronts today.

Col. Gen. N. F. Vatutin, Russian Commander-in-Chief on the Southwestern Front has broken through the German defenses on the Donets River front in a bloody battle to reach a point less than 90 miles north of Rostov, special dispatches said.

Striking suddenly and with terrific impact, Vatutin cracked the German defense line on the Likhaya River, which empties into the Donets, drove desperately resisting Germans before him or crushed them under his tanks and the weight of his infantry, and advanced 30 miles to take the Glubokaya railroad station on the Rostov-Moscow line and the towns of Borodinov and Potseluyev, 18 miles from the Likhaya railroad station.

Now near Kamensk

Glubokaya is 90 miles north of Rostov and only 14 miles north of the important city of Kamensk.

On the lower Don front, Col. Gen. Andrey I. Yeremenko’s army drove down the Stalingrad-Tikhoretsk railroad to capture Dvoinaya, 40 miles from the Salsk junction, and seven other towns and villages.

Lt. Gen. Ivan Maslennikov’s army, with Maj. Gen. Ivan Kirichenko’s crack Cossack cavalrymen, advanced 19 miles in the North Caucasus to capture the railroad terminal of Blagodarnoye, whence a rail line runs westward to join the Rostov-Baku railroad at Kropotkin, 135 miles south of Rostov, along with Alexandrovskaya, 30 miles up the Rostov-Baku line from Mineralnye Vody, and six other towns.

Reds advance steadily

Yeremenko’s army was advancing steadily on the German defense line based in the Manych River, 30 miles northeast of Salsk, and there was every indication that he would crack it, take Salsk and keep on down the railroad to the Rostov-Baku junction at Tikhoretsk.

Maslennikov and Kirichenko, in addition to clearing out the entire North Caucasus area east of the railroad and advancing northwestward, were clearing the foothills area to the west.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (January 17, 1943)

Nazi losses at Stalingrad put at 142,000

Reds capture key city on rail line to Rostov

Moscow, USSR (UP) – (Jan. 16)
Red Army forces, launching a smashing offensive from their positions south of Voronezh, have driven 31-55 miles in three days and have captured the important center of Rossosh on the railroad to Rostov, a special Soviet communiqué announced tonight.

The charging Russians killed more than 15,000 German troops and recaptured more than 600 inhabited places in their three-day drive, the communiqué said.

At the same time, the Soviet High Command disclosed that another offensive had been launched from Stalingrad last Sunday, threatening the remnants of 22 enemy divisions encircled in that area.

Ultimatum is issued

Already, it said, the encircled German garrison had been reduced from 220,000 to 76,000 men and the Russians had issued an ultimatum to the remainder. The ultimatum was presumably refused.

The Red Army forces had driven from 12 to 21 miles in the Stalingrad area, killing 25,000 troops, the communiqué said. It reported that 600 German transport planes had been shot down in the Stalingrad area between Nov. 19 and Jan. 10.

Radio Berlin tacitly admitted for the first time tonight that German divisions were encircled in the Stalingrad area.

The special communiqué said the new offensive was starred “several days ago” in three directions from Russian positions south of Voronezh.

Nine infantry divisions – three German and six Hungarian – were routed in the three-day advanced, and 17,000 enemy troops were captured.

In addition to the 15,000 men killed and 17,000 taken prisoner the enemy lost 135 tanks, 210 guns and 17 planes, the special communiqué said.

The special communiqué said:

Liquidation of the encircled German troops in the Stalingrad area is nearing its end.

The encircled enemy units have already eaten corpses of their dead horses. An attempt by the German High Command to drop food by air for their forces failed. From November 19 to January 10 in the Stalingrad area, more than 600 enemy transport planes were shot down.

The German troops are being deprived of all means of transport and supplies and are in a catastrophic situation.

A representative of the Red Army Supreme Command and Col. Gen. Konstantin Rokossovsky issued an ultimatum to the commander of the enemy forces, a Col. Gen. Paulus, offering to accept their capitulation on the following terms:

All German encircled troops headed by you or your staff should put an end to their resistance. You will hand over to us in an organized way all manpower, armaments, war material and war equipment in working order. We guarantee all officers who stop resistance their life and safety and return to Germany or any other country according to the prisoners’ wish after the war.

[NormanStewart]

Völkischer Beobachter (January 18, 1943)

Die Besatzung von Welikije Luki schlug sich durch

Sowjetische Massenangriffe bei Stalingrad am tapferen Widerstand der deutschen Verteidiger gescheitert

dnb. Aus dem Führer-Hauptquartier, 17. Jänner –
Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt:
Im Süden der Ostfront wiesen die deutschen Truppen auch gestern starke Angriffe des Feindes, zum Teil in beweglich geführter Abwehr, ab und fügten dem Feind in den harten, bei strengem Frost durchgeführten Kämpfen schwere Verluste zu. Am 15. und 16. Jänner wurden 60 Sowjetpanzer abgeschossen. Starke Verbände der Luftwaffe schirmten die Verteidigungsfronten ab und unterstützten eigene Gegenstöße. Im Raum von Stalingrad standen unsere Truppen weiter in schwerem Abwehrkampf gegen erneute Massenangriffe des Feindes, die wiederum an dem entschlossenen Widerstandswillen der tapferen Verteidiger scheiterten.

Im mittleren Frontabschnitt erfolgreiche Späh- und Stoßtrupptätigkeit. Die Besatzung der Zitadelle von Welikije Luki hat sich befehlsgemäß zu der zum Entsatz angreifenden Kampfgruppe durchgeschlagen. In harten Kämpfen verlor der Feind bei Gegenangriffen 47 Panzerkampfwagen. Kampffliegerkräfte bombardierten bei Tag und Nacht zwischen der oberen Wolga und dem Lowat den Nachschubverkehr der Sowjets. Jagdflieger, Flakartillerie der Luftwaffe und des Heeres schossen 41 feindliche Flugzeuge ab.

Vereinzelte Angriffe südöstlich des Ilmensees wurden abgewiesen. Bei der Wiederholung seiner Angriffe südlich des Ladogasees erlitt der Feind hohe blutige Verluste. 26 Panzer wurden vernichtet.

Die schweren Abwehrkämpfe der deutsch-italienischen Panzerarmee in Nordafrika dauerten auch am gestrigen Tage an. Der auf breiter Front mit starken Panzer- und Infanteriekräften anstürmende Feind wurde unter sehr hohen blutigen Verlusten zurückgeschlagen. Deutsche Sturzkampf- und Schlachtflugzeuge griffen in die Kämpfe ein und vernichteten unter anderem zehn Panzer und beschädigten eine größere Zahl weiterer Kampfwagen.

Die Luftangriffe auf den Hafen von Bone wurden fortgesetzt und erhebliche Zerstörungen erzielt.

In Luftkämpfen wurden im Mittelmeerraum drei britische Flugzeuge abgeschossen.

Britische Bomber flogen in den Abendstunden in das Reichsgebiet ein. Neben planlosen Störangriffen an einigen Orten warf der Feind auch auf das Gebiet von Groß-Berlin Spreng- und Brandbomben. Die Bevölkerung hatte Verluste. In Wohnvierteln und an öffentlichen Gebäuden, darunter Krankenhäuser, entstanden vorwiegend Brandschäden. Zwei Flugzeuge wurden abgeschossen.

Bei den Kämpfen zwischen Kaukasus und Don hat sich die 16. motorisierte Infanteriedivision besonders ausgezeichnet.

[NormanStewart]

Brooklyn Eagle (January 18, 1943)

Reds score new gains on five major fronts

Troops now within 110 miles of Kharkov – capture railroad junction of Millerovo

Moscow, USSR (UP) –
Russia announced new gains today on five major battlefronts along the 550-mile Red Army offensive line between Voronezh and the North Caucasus.

On the South Voronezh Front, Red Army men were within 110 miles of Kharkov; on the Donets River Front, they captured the railroad junction of Millerovo; in the Stalingrad area, tanks, infantry and cavalry were ripping into the remnants of 22 German divisions now numbering only about 70,000 men; on the lower Don Front, Russians were within 25 miles of Salsk junction and in the Caucasus, they were only 80 miles from Armavir, whence a railroad leads through the Maikop oil fields to the Black Sea.

Capture 1,255 Germans

Driving ahead throughout the night south of Voronezh, the Russians took several new inhabited places, wiping out almost the entire garrison of one fortified town and capturing 1,255 Germans, including a colonel, in storming another.

On the Donets Front, the Russians took three populated places in a single sector and killed about 1,000 Germans, the communiqué reported.

In the Stalingrad area, where the resistance of the trapped German Army was nearing its end, the Russians spent the night wiping out additional nests of German resistance isolated in fortified villages.

One unit, overwhelming a resisting enemy force, killed more than 1,000 Germans, took 850 prisoners and captured 20 airplanes, 38 tanks and 91 field guns.

Several inhabited planes and two railroad stations were taken during the night on the North Caucasus Front.

[NormanStewart]

70,000 Nazis doomed as Reds capture airport

Trapped divisions between Don, Volga lose last supply link
By M. S. Handler

With the Red Army in southwest Stalingrad, USSR (UP) –
Soviet forces exterminating the remnants of 22 German divisions encircled between the Don and the Volga Rivers, have captured the Pitomnik Airfield on the outskirts of Stalingrad, sounding the death knell for 70,000 men whom the Nazi command chose to sacrifice rather than surrender.

The airport was their only contact with the outside world. Transport planes, which had made as many as 500 flights a day in a desperate attempt to supply the trapped divisions, thus lost their last base, leaving the battered forces to struggle on with what remains of their supplies.

From the south, west and northwest, the Red Army is attacking the encircled divisions, inflicting terrific losses. The Russians have reoccupied about 50% of the area.

In 220-mile triangle

Maj. Gen. Pyotr Vasilievich Kotelkov reported that the remnants of the enemy divisions are boxed in a triangle measuring approximately 220 square miles.

German commanders have stiffened the resistance of their men by indoctrinating them with the fear that the Soviets would not take them prisoner, but would slaughter them all.

German prisoners questioned by American and British correspondents at Kotelnikovsky all said their officers had told them they would be killed. Captured Nazi airmen all expressed surprise that the Russians had not shot them.

Red Army officers believed it was this implanted fear which to a large extent explains the ferocious enemy resistance in the area and the refusal of the German command to accept Col. Gen. Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky’s ultimatum to surrender.

Maj. Gen. Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky told us conditions among the trapped men were desperate. Their resistance is also complicated by the fact that over 50,000 inhabitants still within the enclosed area give the German command practically no room to maneuver.

They face starvation

The area has already been stripped of local supplies and there is now no further possibility of the Germans getting any food with the loss of the Pitomnik Airport.

Gen. Malinovsky said the German Command is feverishly transferring troops from one sector to another in a frantic effort to stem the Red advance, and the enemy is abandoning great quantities of equipment along the line of retreat. He said:

Captured German officers express disappointment over the High Command’s direction and German generalship has weakened this winter compared with last summer.

Malinovsky’s analysis is corroborated by German prisoners interrogated by correspondents. All the prisoners appear badly informed of the extent of the German disaster.

One corporal conscript confided that the men were “sick and tired of war and wanted to go home.”

[NormanStewart]

Reading Eagle (January 19, 1943)

Leningrad triumph spurs Soviet armies

Red forces follow up lifting of siege by new smashes into German lines

Moscow, USSR (AP) –
All Russia thrilled to the news of great accomplishments of the Red Army today as the fire of enthusiasm was stoked by word of Soviet smashes into sagging German forces all the way from ice-bound Lake Ladoga outside newly-reopened Leningrad to the high Caucasus in the south.

Izvestia, government newspaper, reported Leningrad was now in direct land communication with the rest of the nation after nearly a year and a half in which its 1,000,000 wartime inhabitants had been supplied by air transports and by roads

While the Red Army continued to batter at the once-encircling German armies around Russia’s second city to widen a five-mile corridor through which the 17-month siege was broken, other soviet forces moved further in the direction of the Latvian border southwest of Velikiye Luki, threatened Salsk, German supply center for its entrapped southern armies, tightened the vise in the Stalingrad area and made further progress in the direction of the steel city of Kharkov, the Pittsburgh of the Ukraine.

Workers shout news

Workers coming off their shifts in Moscow shouted the news and pounded each other on the back, and newsdealers in the capital were swamped with the citizens’ insatiable appetite for fresh tidings of the widening triumphs of the winter offensive.

Dispatches related that the Leningrad offensive began on Jan. 12 at 9 o’clock in the morning with a hurricane of artillery fire upon the German positions on the elevated left bank of the Neva River.

So terrific was the barrage, Pravda reported, that it plowed up the frozen soil and splintered concrete pillboxes as though they were matchwood. The pounding lasted two hours and 20 minutes.

The lift which the Russian people got out of the breaking of the blockade of the city, named for their revolutionary leader and considered the home of the revolution itself, bolstered army morale and lent new momentum to the series of drives against the Axis armies all along the 1,200-mile front.

More prisoners taken

Southwest of Velikiye Luki, where German resistance has been exceptionally strong, a Russian advance captured six populated places and added to the growing toll of Axis prisoners.

London military quarters pointed out that Hitler’s satellite armies had taken a particularly heavy drubbing in the winter drive, calculating that six of nine Hungarian divisions on the Eastern Front had been badly mauled, seven of ten Italian divisions had been knocked out, and that 16 of 20 Romanian divisions had been liquidated as casualties and prisoners.

The army moving southwest from Voronezh in the sixth and newest of the Red offensives in the south was reported within 108 miles of Kharkov after the capture of Afanasyevka, 20 miles north of the railway connecting Svoboda and Kupyansk.

Advance line straightened

As the line of advance was straightened in this sector, Russian forces were reported to be encountering “excessively stubborn resistance” from German and Hungarian troops in some cases.

As the squeeze on the trapped force of 50,000 Germans at Stalingrad tightened, an increasing number of prisoners was taken, indicating the Nazis were taking heed of the Russian ultimatum to surrender or die.

The plight of the Germans in this area was heightened by the crossing of the Manych River and Canal, announced yesterday. This endangered the supply base and airfield at Salsk, from which material has been flown into the surrounded divisions. The Russians had already reported the capture of the last usable landing field in the vicinity of the trap.

German ring pierced

The week-long smash that resulted in piercing the German ring around Leningrad that had existed since August 1941, was the work of two Russian columns. One striking eastward from Leningrad was commanded by Col. Gen. Leonid Govorov, and the other striking westward from the Volkhov River was led by Gen. Kirill A. Meretskov.

The two groups, supported by powerful forces of artillery and tanks, caught the ancient Nazi-held fortress of Schlüsselburg in a nutcracker and smashed it, killing 13,000 Germans, routing four divisions, taking prisoner more than 1,260, and capturing huge quantities of armament, the Russians announced.

Marshals Gregory K. Zhukov and Kliment Voroshilov were the masterminds behind the coordinated operations which had apparently cut about a five-mile-wide corridor to Leningrad. Schlüsselburg is about 22 miles east of Leningrad on the south shore of Lake Ladoga.

Fortifications pounded

In announcing this gain, the Russians told of the tremendous belt of Nazi fortifications that had to be reduced – 470 enemy strongpoints were demolished and 172 artillery batteries silenced – and it was assumed that the corridor was firmly held or the announcement of the siege’s lifting would never have been made.

Leningrad’s 1,000,000 residents, less than half of the normal population, had endured incredible hardships. Their suffering was even greater than that undergone by the besieged at Odessa, Sevastopol and Stalingrad.

But they fought on and never surrendered, and the news that relief is now being sent to them caused a greater uplift to Russian morale than any of the great strides made by the Russians in southern Russia.

These successes in southern Russia were reported growing greater every day. The Red Armies fighting in piercing cold and sometimes in waist-deep snow are now stretched over a 1,200-mile front from Leningrad to the Caucasus, but the biggest coordinated action is the operation in the south.