The Lincoln Times

Advancing Russian Armies Capture Big Coal Fields In Silesia

Area Seized By Soviets Produced One-Fifth Of Nazis' War Machine Coal Supply

London, Monday, Jan. 29.-The Red Army in a 16-mile advance rolled to within 109 miles east of Berlin yesterday, completely conquered the rich Dabrowa coal fields and industries of southern Silesia with the capture of Katowice and Beuthen, and seized the long-surrounded Baltic port of Memel in a new northern offensive.

Premier-Marshal Stalin announced clearance of the enemy from southern German-Polish Silesia areas that produced one-fifth of the German war machine's coal supply, and the activation of an Eighth Soviet army in the north brought the total to perhaps 4,000,000 Russians now engaged in the gigantic winter offensive.

On the 11th day of the big push, Marshal Gregory K. Zhukov's First White Russian Army overran 400 more western Polish localities beyond encircled Poznan, last big Polish city in German hands, and deployed on an 80-mile arc facing straight toward Berlin.

Pniewy Also Falls.

Zhukov's central columns, threatening to cross momentarily into Brandenburg, Berlin's home province, captured Pniewy, on the Warsaw-Berlin motor road 21 miles west of besieged Poznan and 109 miles due east of Berlin.

In the northwest they reached the prewar German-Polish frontier at a new point by capturing Czarnkow, 126 miles northeast of Berlin and 90 miles southeast of Stettin, German Baltic port. At the southern end of the arc, the Russians rolled through Lezno, a 10-way highway junction close to the German frontier and 130 miles from Berlin.

Berlin dispatches said Soviet spearheads, however, had reached the Obra river frontier 21 miles west of captured Opalenica, 16 miles southeast of Pniewy. That would put the Russians only 95 miles from the German capital.

While Zhukov's troops drove directly on Berlin on the shortest route to the Nazi capital, other Soviet units spread out on the south and to the north to secure its flanks.

Drive Twenty Miles.

In the north, the Russians drove 29 miles into the Polish corridor northwest of Bydgoszcz, capturing Sepolno, six miles from the German Pomeranian frontier and ten miles from the Danzig-Berlin trunk railway. At Sepolno, the Russians were 74 miles southwest of Danzig.

Seizing Lobzenica, 30 miles west-northwest of Bydgoszcz, another column rolled to within three miles of the Pomeranian frontier and to within 110 miles east of Stettin. These troops were outflanking on the north the German rail center of Schneidemuhl, 20 miles to the southwest, and Berlin said that Schneidemuhl was under Soviet assault.

Other Russian troops had crossed into the Polish corridor from the east, ferrying the lower reaches of the Vistula river.