RESUMED BY GERMANY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 58, 9 March 1936, Page 7

RESUMED BY GERMANY.

DEMILITARISED ZONE ENTERED.

TROOPS POSTED IN ALL GARRISONS.

SUDDEN ACTION SURPRISES THE WORLD.

United Prees Association.—Copyright.— Ree. 11.30 a.m. LONDON, March 8. Dispatches from Berlin state that German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland zone early yesterday morning. U*owds excitedly cheered the troops as they entered the City of Cologne at noon. They halted in front of the main Post Office, Wj u j ° Mayor, attired in his official robes, welcomed them and handed a bouquet of flowers to their commander. Troops also arrived at Deutz, south of Cologne. Numbers of military aeroplanes flew over Cologne. The citizens of Karlsruhe threw flowers, before a battalion of troops entering the town. Two companies marched into Aix-la-Chapelle.

A crowd packed the old aerodrome at Frankfort-on-Main when the troops arrived with an anti-aircraft gun. The Burgomaster sent the following message: "The populace at this historic moment remembers in grateful enthusiasm and love the man to wkom we owe this long-awaited hour of liberation." Storm Troopers lined the route for the infantry at Saarbrucken while detachments of the German Air Force marched into Mannheim. Only 200 Reichswehr men occupied the Kehl bridgehead, where hundreds of Strasbourg residents stood silently at the French end of the bridge.

The diplomatic representatives of the Locarno Powers have been informed that the reoccupation is symbolic and confined to a few battalions, and that the Government does not intend to carry out reoccupation in force.