 Your commentator is Basil Reisdale. The first military surprise blow in the Italian stalemate comes in a bold, large-scale landing on the Nazi hill post near Anzio. Yanks of the American Fifth Army sees a wide beachhead. Swarming ashore in force, they take the German high command completely unaware. British units of the invading force come ashore from the fleet of landing craft to back up the American division. Nazi bombers meet a warm reception, but get over the target. Throughout the landing operations, the bombs rain down, to lie where they fell. Fires sweep Anzio. It is here that Nero fiddles while Rome burns. Now the Nazis try to turn the tables. Weapons, supplies, and men pour ashore until the beachhead becomes firmly established and a threat to Rome that puts Hitler on the anxious alert. South of the casino area, swirling floodwaters and terrific handicaps of the Italian terrain face the allied armies. Pontoon bridges are frequently swept away as calm rivers suddenly burst into roaring torrents. Engineer battalions struggle valiantly to keep communications open. There is no battle area anywhere where nature is more closely allied with the enemy than in Italy. But battle-hardened Yanks, supported by British artillery, continue to move up, exerting a constant pressure on the Gustavs lines, even the patient donkey becomes hardened to war. The Italian people reap the bitter fruits of fascism's alliance with Hitler. American bazooka as it blasts a nearby Nazi pillbox, it continues with its deafening chorus constantly reverberating to the war-torn hills. Termin artillery checks its range from a water tower, so allied engineers destroy it. Veterans of Sicily and Salerno are in the thick of the fighting and adding to their laurels, putting Hitler's best storm troops to their most severe test. These tough Nazis have had enough. The villages enter, close to fortified heights that dominate the allied lines, so they prepare to take action. It is the ancient St. Benedictine monastery, occupied and fortified by the Nazis. Pathlets of warning are strewn over the objective before the bombardment begins. Few warning, the artillery gets the rain. From those heights, the Nazis have shelled American and British troops for weeks. Causing serious casualties. Now the bombers operating from captured Italian fields come over to teach the Germans that no sacrilege of ancient landmarks can save Hitler. Enemy gun emplacements on the hills around Casino are hammered without letter, as the constant allied pressure on enemy lines draws heavily on Hitler's reserves of men. His weakening air force, his oil, his armor, his munitions of empty shell cases speak eloquently of the fury of the allies fight for Rome. Fails to save the Nazi invaders. The Red Army smashes forward from the Liengrat Ukraine. Soldiers of Soviet Russia press onto the very borders of Latvia, Poland and Romania, to complete disregard of heavy Nazi shell fire. From a crippled Nazi tank, still serving the makeshift pillbox for its crew. The enemy is driven out and shot down. The world marvels at the long sustained power of an offensive stretching 800 miles from Stalingrad all the way to the Tamplin Gulf. Frontline casualties get immediate first aid by heroic nurses. German mechanized equipment is battered in a banner from the Gulf of Finland to the Boog River. But Nazi strategy is to force the Russians to pay as heavily as possible in munitions and men for every mile reconquered. Enemy artillery tries to find a destructive Red Army rocket battery hidden somewhere in this area. Field Marshal Timoshenko watches the blasting of enemy positions. Moliensk, Gomell, Gep, Revoi-Rov, thousands of smaller towns are swept clean of the enemy. Hundreds of thousands of Germans either perish or surrender. Completed ruin is left behind by every retreating Nazi division. They blast and burn in a senseless orgy of destruction. The bitter fruit of Hitler's intuition is not only useless slaughter and waste, but a Russian hatred of everything Germans symbolize by a thousand flaming villages. Flame-lighted streets of a recaptured town, the Soviet tide floods on toward Poland and Romania, sweeping the shaken enemy before it, but never a let-off in months of fighting. Suicide squads of the German rear guard are encountered. There goes a grenade, and there goes a Nazi sniper. On the heels of the victorious army, Russian peasants straggled back into their devastated villages in pitiful groups. Everything lost, homes, personal belongings, and most of their men. The Red Army frequently gains from 10 to 15 miles a day, smashing great holes in the German positions from the private marches to the Black Sea. The intense emotional joy of Russia's liberated people blinds them to scenes of destruction. Every soldier is a conquering hero. Homes may be a flame, but a woman kneels in thanksgiving. Everywhere peasants weep for joy that the Nazis are beaten. Out of hiding comes a suffering people. The procession of Hitler's hoodlums passes under guard, mainly to protect them from an enraged people. The rumble of a Soviet tank brings up the children with a wild joy. Every Russian soldier is decked with garlands and hailed for its courageous part in Russia's smashing offensive.