"Heavy German Reinforcements Moving Into Crimea and Donets for Drive"
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| An Office of Strategic Services map of the Leningrad Front as of January 20, 1943 (Click to enlarge – source) |
Soviets Still Battering at Weary Nazis⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯Heavy German Reinforcements Moving Into Crimea and Donets for Drive⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯By WILLIAM R. DOWNSUnited Press Staff Correspondent
London — (UP) The Russians steadily battered the Germans on the Leningrad Front today, having killed 3,000 of them, demolished twenty-two blockhouses and captured or destroyed huge quantities of supplies in forty-eight hours of fighting.
Dispatchers from the front said the trapped German Sixteenth Army in the Staraya Russa region below Leningrad had lost 1,800 in a new attempt to break out, and that Russian artillery was blasting them from all sides, and in one sector, at point-blank range.
The Russians, according to advice from Moscow, had cleared the enemy from large areas in the Vyazma district on the Central Front, the reinforcements had arrived to relieve the weary Germans who had been resisting continuous attacks.
A British military commentator said the Russians had driven "deep salients" into German positions, but the Germans had created "similar deep salients in certain positions."
"The question is now who can cut off the other," he said.
Regarding the situation in the Staraya Russia region where the Russians have trapped the Sixteenth German Army, the commentator said the Soviets were operating over a large area, and "everything will depend on whether the Russians can reduce the Germans before the Nazis can bring up reinforcements."
Heavy German reinforcements also were moving into the Crimea and Donets basin in preparation for a supreme drive the Germans were expected to begin soon with 1,125,000 men.
