The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-12-15
Reds Slowed
 At Budapest
BY BRUCE W. MUNN

Dy DANOOG w. MOANAN
 United Press Staff Correspondent) London, Dec. 15-(UP)-Desper- ate German counter-thrusts, icy down-pours and sodden battlefields today slowed down the Red Army advance on Budapest, where pris- oners said Nai S!S Guardsmen were carrying out reign of Terror.
 Soviet front dispatches said the Germans undertook local counter attacks in all vital sectors where the fate of Budapest was being de- cided, and were throwing up sec ondary defense lines beyond the Hungarian capital.
 The roads through the narrowing escape corridor out of Budapest were reported damned with carts carrying thousands oewildered refugees. Hungarian units in the Axis fighting forces were reported surrendering whenever possible Captives said all Hungarian groups were ringed by German machine gun posts ready to mow down the Hungarians if they tried to retreat.
 Axis spokesmen said the Soviet pressure was increasing hourly, and called on the HungarionS to make their capital another Stlingrad."
 Moscow, as usual in the climactlc stages of a great offensive, ramaln- ed silent on the progress of the as- sault on Budapest. The early morn ing communique centered on the north and northeast where con yerging Soviet columns struck i'll force along the Slovak-Hungarian border in a bid to trap thousands of Germans in the mountains of eastern Slovakia.
 Berlin commentators, however, reported ferocious tank and 1ntan- try battles all along the mile siege arc extending two-thirds of the way around Budapest from the north east to the southwest. .
 The Germans said upwards or 1900 900 Russian and Romanlan troops had been hurled into the spreading battle for Hungary in gigantic effort to enfulg Budapest, roll up the Nad Hanks above and below the capital, and lay open the invasion road to Austria.
 Rumors that the Budapest radio had been silenced by Russian bombs or shells were spiked last night when Paul Vago, secretary of state for the puppet Hungarian govern ment, broadcast a defiant proclama- tion that Budapest must become the Hungarian Stalingrad."
 Both sides were reported suffer- ing heavy casualties along the east bank of the Danube where German counter r-attacks and formidable screen of Notifications temporarily blocked Marshal Rodion Y. Malinov- sky's second Ukrainian army drive through the outskirts of Pest.
 Soviet front dispatches made 1t clear, however, that the Russians had not yet achieved a decisive breakthrough late yesterday either on that sector of southwest of the capital, where massive armored battle was in progress along the Budapest Szekesfehvar railway em- bankment.
 Tens of thousands of Hungarian civilians were being mobilized into labor and combat battalions to de- fend the railway embankment, ac- cording to one Moscow dispatch which intimated strongly that the knockout of Budapest would come from that direction.
 Berlin said the heaviest fighting ragged along a 16-mile stretch of the railway from Erd, six miles south h-southwest of Budapest, to the edge of Lake Valencie, P miles southwest of the capital.
 The stubbornness of the Axis de- fense traced to the German real ization that the fall of Budapest would be followed swiftly by a Red Army invasion of Austria that would be difficult to halt short of Germany itself.
 Radio Moscow accentuated that threat with a broadcast urging the people of Vienna to revolt and drive out the Nazis even before the ar- rival of the Russian armies.
 Meanwhile, other units of the second Ukrainian army were forg- ing a great trap around the Ger man army or eastern SlOVdkla WlIH a multi-pronged attack along the Slovak Hungarian border 40 to 30 miles northeast of Budapest.
 Eastward Push
 One column pushed eastward from the Danube river bend to the Szec- seny area, IS miles below the Slovak border, while a second 48 miles to the east advanced three miles through the mountains north northwest of Miskolc to take Vadna, nine miles from the frontier.
 A third force advanced west of the Hernad river valley above Misk- ole and captured Szolnok, 26 miles south-southwest of the Slovak rail center of Kassa. A fourth prong captured Csobad in the Hernad val ley miles south of Kassa, and a fifth drove up east of the Hernad of Szerencs. 3 miles south southeast of Kassa.
 ARMY LISTS VICTIMS