Half a million men surged all week over rainswept fields around Orel. This week the Berlin radio spoke guardedly of fighting "in the southwestern part of the town." If true, this meant the Russians were finally forcing them to abandon their easternmost strong point in the central front. To their own people, the Germans glibly explained the dogged Russian advance in terms of the Wehrmacht's policy of "elastic defense."
Out of the welter of grim and costly clashes one all-important fact emerged. Cabled Reuter's Moscow correspondent, Harold King: "It has been clearly demonstrated that the Wehrmacht is no...
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