The Tacoma times. [volume] (Tacoma, Wash.) 1903-1949, 1939-09-18

Of MILLIONS
MAY Be NEAR
Western Allies Are
Stunned By Eastern
Front Collapse; Big
Army 10 Destroyed

Nan iroops met the Red
army with ; friendly greeting
NJ the fortified Polish city Of
Bresi-lltovsk TODAY.
n ~ asgselsi ANNOUNCEMENT, nat
ire Man ara Soviet ARMIES bad
mace centaSf tn . folns ins.xaon
cf Poland Instead 81 the warfare
thai bad heen thre&ssned h<swe~n
the ssro governments IN the past
the German high command said
battle operations had been re-
surned 10 crush ths Polish troops
sslIl defending wsTxsw.
REPORTS N Paris said that The
sovie; troops. advancing along q
3oo-nile front into Poland. had
taken Wilma. the big Polish city
far In the northeast tpop. EOS. oool,
near the Lithuanian frontier. In
the southeast Of Poland. Red army
forces were said 10 be at zalesx-
cxyki. on the Rumanian borderl
Arrival Of Soviet forces NJ
Brest-IItovsk. after an I'D
vance Of 40 miles In less than
So hours, meant the Ger
man Russian wise Was being
squeezed rapidly shut on the
remaining Polish troops In
central Poland.
The German-Russian treaty OF
1915. making collapse of resist
ance by Russia on the esatern
front, was signed at Brest-Litovsk.
1t was indicated that in the
next day or two the world
would witness one of the most
sudden and most tremendous
annihilations in the history of
a great modern army.
With hundreds of thousands OF
Russians sweeping across eastern
Polands 50o-mile eastern frontier
To meet the onrush Of more than
1 GOO. 900 Germans. the fate of TIN
Polish army of 800. 900 men. with
their retreat In every direction cut
off, now was sealed.
Except for sporadic re-
sistance here and there. tho
Polish military force could Be
considered ~ extinguished-
Poland's 100000 men had
the alternative Of = titantsc
surrender on q scale unpsrai-
Ieled, or desperate isolated
battles with certain annihils-
ton.
Allied military men had hoped
that the Polish army, which was
fairly intact the middle OF last
week, would be able to continue
sufficient resistance. despite loss
of the industrial regions and OF
access to supplies, to hold several
hundred thousa Germans
throughout the autumn and into
the winter.
This hope had been snuffed out
by the Russian invasion.
The big question looming In
the minds of military men now
was the effect the Russian
move would have on German
power on the western 'front.'
They cherished the hope that
mutual Russo-German sus-
picion might cause Hitler to
retain more forces In POLAND
than he might have done
otherwise.
The most important considera-
tion seemed to be the extent on
which Hitler could obtain raw ma
terials from Russia, to enable MN
to escape the pressure OF the Brit
ish contraband control.
In Moscow, the official govern
ment newspaper Izvestia indicated
q new frontier line and the extent
of Nazi and Soviet military oper-
atoms by publishing a map on
which "the line of exit for Ger
man troops" was drawn from a
point on the East Prussian from
tier southwark through Bre l.
Litovsk and Lwow to point neal
the western boundary of Rumania
Best information was that a
buffer state, presumably In
Central Poland and possibly
including Warsaw, was en-
visaged, In order to separate
the German and Soviet from
tiers, but it appeared that in
any eyentuality there would be
a common frontier in the East
Prussian sector.
Confronted by series of stun
(Continued on Page IA, Column g.