GERMANY TO-DAY

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 187, 9 August 1941, Page 7

GERMANY TO-DAY

DIPLOMAT'S REPORT 90 Per Cent Of Male Population Mobilised l.'nitert I'rrstf Association. —Copyright. Rec. 2 p.m. WASHINGTON, Aug. 8. A foreign diplomat, who was recently transferred from Germany to Washington, said that practically all German men between 18 and 65 years are now in uniform. He estimates that more than 90 per cent of able-bodied German males have been mobilised.

Germany is relying upon women and about 1,500.000 French, Polish, Czech and Belgian prisoners to work farms, factories and mines. The Poles are assigned to the mines and heavy labour. French prisoners, still in tattered uniforms, are preferred

as farmers. Belgian and Dutch women have been imported to do housework.

The official paid that the R.A.F. bombings of Hamburg, Bremen and the Rhineland had caused enormous destruction to industries and harbours, but the Krupp armament works at Essen and other war factories in the Ruhr had escaped serious damage.

The diplomat believes that, this is because they are protected by dense clouds of artificially-manufactured fog and he said that wherever he went he found great numbers of German families who have lost their men but it is considered unpatriotic for the women to cry over their dead or openly discuss their losses.

The cost of living is mounting and the army demands are being intensified, There ace