Imperial Valley Press

Russian Forces Speed Drive On North Front Pour Through Great Gaps In Nazi Line
MOSCOW. Jan. 22 (UP)—Triumphant Russian columns are pouring through great gaps in the shredded German defense lines below Leningrad, front dispatches reported Saturday coincident with an official hint that the Red army is bound for Berlin.
Speaking in the presence of Premier Josef Stalin at a Kremlin meeting Alexander Sherbakov, member of the Soviet Politburo, declared:
"Our army and our people are confident that the Hitlerites will shorten their lines until the shortest line on the German front will run along the River Spree, on which Berlin is situated."
Military dispatches revealed that the Russians had driven the Germans from a second railway between Moscow and Leningrad and were pressing on in pursuit of Nazi units fleeing in disorder from the fortifications comprising the vaunted "impregnable line" below the old capital.
The capture of Mga, five way rail junction 29 miles southeast of Leningrad, opened new channels for supplying the Red armies of the northern front rounding out a week of victorious fighting.
Sherbakov spoke at a Lenin memorial meeting of high Soviet government officials last night.
Referring ironically to the Nazi propaganda method of backing into admissions of German reverses. he said:
"The Germans shortened their front in the winter of 1941, the
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Russian Forces Speed Drive
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winter of 1942 and the summer of 1943.

They are doing the same thing now in the winter of 1944.

But as the popular saying goes, what you shorten cannot be lengthened.

Let the Germans shorten their lines.

HITLER PLAN FAILS

Then came his reference to the River Spree and Berlin, after which Sherbakov declared:

Hitlerite hopes of splitting the democratic countries have collapsed.

Unity and mutual trust among the countries of the anti-Hitlerite coalition have been strengthened.

This was evidenced by the decisions of the Moscow and Teheran conferences.

The Soviet high command said the remnants of German divisions which besieged Leningrad for more than two years were abandoning one stronghold after another and casting aside their arms in a panicky attempt to escape a Soviet trap that threatened to annihilate 300,000 of them.

Enemy forces immediately south of Leningrad were squeezed into a 35-mile wide corridor that was disintegrating rapidly under Soviet pressure from three sides. Numerous prisoners were being rounded up, the Soviet high command said.