REACTIONS IN REICH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 95, 19 October 1944, Page 7

REACTIONS IN REICH

ALLIED OCCUPATION

EVACUATION OF VILLAGES

(Special P.A. Correspondent.) Rec. 10 a.m. LONDON, October 18.

How are the German civilians reacting to the occupation of the Reich by the Allies? A description of the way the position is being handled is given by Alexander Clifford in the "Daily Mail."

In each village, he says, it starts with electrification of the atmosphere. The guns grow louder across the border of Holland. German civilians" write to their menfolk at the front: "We hear the guns. What will happen now? Surely God. will not permit Germany to be occupied. Our'Fuhrer will do something." The place fills up with troops. i% tremendous spy hunt starts. Circulars are issued ordering the instant arrest of all civilians- who behave in any way suspiciously, and all unfamiliar soldiers, especially those with identity cards who say they are on special missions. Anyone is liabla to be picked" up -as an Allied agent The underground fear grows. There is terror of what foreign workers may do as the Allies approach. "THE BLACK FIST.". There is also another new hidden terror in western Germany. People are beginning to hear of the Edelweiss pirates, otherwise known as "the Black Fist." These are dissident members of the Hitler Youth who are convinced that the war is lost. They are organised arid have plenty of food, money, and arms, and faked ration cards. They carry out local attacks on loyal Hitler youths and others. Amid this atmosphere of fear and suspicion the fighting grows near and the village waits for'something to be done. At last it comes, a knock- on. the door and an official buff envelope containing one of two things, or perhaps both: an order for any man in the family to dig anti-tank ditches and, for the rest of the family to evacuate. Women and children and men who ara totally unfit for labour get an evacuation ticket—yellow if they are capable of going on foot, arid a blue one for cripples, nursing and pregnant mothers, tiny children, and invalids. The latter, in theory, will get some sort of conveyance. The yellow ticket people must take a maximum of 301b of baggage, includI ing three days' rations and also [changes of clothing, bed clothes, lanterns, and all their documents. They can take perambulators and bicycles if they have them. They soon realise that they are going to join one of those weary columns of foot-slogging refugees which the German airmen used to chase around Europe. There is no transport for them, for the railways of western Germany are in a state of chaos, so the refugees must walk.

. Food, curiously enough, is the least of their problems. ■ All Europe is powerfully food-conscious just now, but the subject hardly ever crops un in German letters.

So, at an appointed time and places the inhabitants of the -village muster and trail off eastwards. "Disobedience," says the official order darkly, '"will be punished' on the spot, ana> Germans know what that means."