Evening star., 1944-08-27
Allies Score Wholesale Gains
In Both North and South France;
Bu| |garia Orders Nazis to Leave
Nozi 9TH Army's
Elimination Said
To Decide Bottle
10000 NAILS REPORTED taken
near Bordeaux Page A-3

10000 NAZIS REPORTED taker
near Bordeaux. Page A:
By the Associated Press.
LONDON. Aug. 26.-The Ger
man flight in France appeared to
be spreading rapidly tonight as
Allied armies liberating the
country from the west and south
made wholesale advances and
drew to within 200 miles of a
junction.
1t. Gen. Alexander M. Patch's
American 7th Army began a drive
up the wide Rhone Valley and struck
eastward to within miles of the
Italian frontier and by tonight had
wrested more than 5000 square
miles from the Nazis.
Allied armies invading from the
west were striking across the Seine
on a 200-mile front toward Alsace
and Lorraine deep into Eastern
France, and were driving northward
toward the Luxembourg and Ger
man borders.
The Germans were fleeing along
q wide front in the north but max
ing bitter rearguard stands, while
In the east the speed of the Ameri-
can armored stabs tanning out be-
yond Troyes indicated slight enemy
resistance.
Well Beyond Grenoble.
Similarly Allied columns driving
north from the southern invasion
beachhead apparently found little
opposition and were reported we'll
beyond captured Grenoble in terri
tory now cleared of Germans and
controlled by French patriots all the
way to the Swiss border.
1t was these columns and those
striking southeastward from Troyes
which were reported less than 200
miles apart
The magnitude of the German
debacle in the south was indicated
by the fact that a party of war
correspondents. including Edward
Kennedy of the Associated Press,
drove clear to the Swiss border in
jeep well ahead of the advancing
army in territory conquered by the
French Maquis patriot forces.
The Allied advances were de-
scribed as considerably greater than
yet announced and the German sit
uation far more critical than had
been generally believed.
Reduction of Marseille Continues.
French officials at Hendaye an
nounced that 10000 German troops
encircled by American and French
forces at Belin, 80 miles south of
Bordeaux, surrendered late yester-
day, ending all organized Nazi re-
sistance in Southwestern France
This report was unconfirmed by
Allied headquarters either here or
IN Rome.
French army forces continued
their methodical reduction of the
German holdings in Marseille and
Toulon. the two great southern
ports where organized enemy re-
sistance remained.
The Germans contended they
had thrown armor into a battle
to stave off the American efforts to
bottle up the Rhone Valley escape
route, but they admitted the
Americans were trying to inter-
cept our movements in the direc-
tion of Lyon"
The Allied Mediterranean COM
mander- -in-chief, Gen. Sir Henry
Maitland Wilson, congratulated Gen
Patch on the American French
progress and expressed confidence
the drives would result in total de-
struction of the German 10Th
Army
In Northern France supreme Al
lied headquarters said the elimina-
ton of the German 7th Army as a
fighting entity has decided the bat
tie of France"
It broadcast a warning to Luxem-
bourg, Alsace and Lorraine that
theater of war, as only the harasseo
survivors of the German 7th Army
and a few divisions of the reduced
German 18th Army stood in the path
of the Allies.
What there is left of the Ger
mans in Northwest France is hang
ing like meat on butchers hook
waiting to be cut down." said a
high officer at British field head
quarters.
Southeast of Paris there was brisk
fighting on the northeast bank Of
the Seine between the American
bridgeheads at Corbeil and Melur
as the enemy strove to delay the
American advance.
The ragged remnants of the Ger
mans remaining on the southwest
bank of the river at its mouth were
(See FRANCE, Page A-6D