Germany. London cabled: “Reports from Berlin indicate that Germany may collapse earlier than the most sanguine Allied optimists can afford to believe.” The Berlin correspondent of Stockholm’s Allehanda cabled: “The situation facing Germany in these November days is grave, difficult, exacting.”
Russia. Marshal Joseph Stalin said: “Victory is near.” The Red Army captured Kiev, the Ukraine’s capital, ended the summer-&-fall fight for the Dnieper and began the winter battle for western Russia. In the Nevel sector to the north, the Red Army was within 40-odd miles of Poland; in the south, 130 miles from Poland.
Italy. The Allies shattered the German line in Italy, fought their way through the mountains to easier but still difficult roads to Rome. If Allied commanders planned flanking attack by sea, rather than a frontal drive on the Holy City, the secret was well kept.
Pacific. Alarmed by U.S. Navy and Marine landings at Bougainville, the Japanese rushed reinforcements from Truk to Rabaul, the major South Pacific base which the Allies now threaten. Allied air planes found many warships in Rabaul, attacked and hit eight cruisers, two destroyers. Despite constant bombings, the Japs managed to keep air power pouring into the area.
China. The Japanese mounted their fourth offensive in the Tungting Lake district of central China. Purposes of the drive, as usual, were: 1) to devastate a rich agricultural area, 2) to give green troops experience, 3) to alarm Chungking. Crack Allied-trained, air-supplied Chinese troops drove into Burma to help extend the Ledo Road, over which, it is hoped, at least a trickle of lifeblood may eventually go to China.
Atlantic. War Reporters Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill prepared their monthly statement on U-boat warfare, which in October went swimmingly for the Allies, sinkingly for the Nazis. U-boats were out in force. They not only failed to press home their attacks but were sunk in large numbers, as planes from U.S. “baby flattops” (converted merchantmen) pounded them silly. Allied production, plus a net gain of 170,000 tons of Italian shipping, put the Allies far in the black.
Air. The U.S. Eighth Air Force, badly stung by losses to German rocket-bearing planes, tried new tactics which worked well. Planes were accompanied to their targets by long-range fighters, and mass attacks were meshed with large-scale feints and supplementary bombings. Subsequent bomber losses on three big successive daylight raids: 5; 10; o.
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