DESPERATE NOTE IN BERLIN APPEALS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 29, 3 February 1945, Page 5

DESPERATE NOTE IN BERLIN APPEALS

CITY IN FERMENT Food Rations Further Reduced N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 1.30 p.m. LONDON, Feb. 2. Berlin radio exhortations to-day included the following: "Berlin must gird herself for the great struggle. Now is the time for our people to prove their worth. We must defend the capital to the last. We can and shall do it." "To you German soldiers everywhere we say: be faithful to the last. Surrender means complete destruction." "The Allied leaders are meeting now. You mustn't again fall for Wilsonian bluff. There is no mercy in their hearts. They would march you off to slavery. To believe their lies now would seal our doom." Berlin radio announces that ration cards for the next eight weeks must suffice lor nine weeks. "The only way to solve the food problem is to reduce rations for everyone of us," said the radio, emphasising the seriousness of the loss of various agricultural areas in Eastern Germany. "The problem has become more serious because we have not only temporarily lost these food-producing provinces, but must now feed hundreds of thousands of Germans pouring in as refugees from these very parts." Clashes in Capital The Red Army's advance on canals and railways is already beginning to exercise a choking grip on the whole eastern regions of the Reich, says Reuters Moscow correspondent.

Enemy supply lines over the whole area east of a line due south of Stettin along the Oder River are either cut off or in almost hopeless confusion—crammed with refugees, transport columns and masses of troops whose orchxis for battle are sometimes changed in a few hours as road and railway junctions fall.

A Berne newspaper says that clashes between S.S. troops and civilians have broken out all over Berlin. It adds: "The city is in a ferment. Refugees who streamed into Berlin have eaten all the available food .stocks. Mobs of them are roving the streets in search of something to eat. They are prepared to brave the Gestapo guns rather than go hungry." Another clash between S.S. troops and civilians occurred when mothers stormed the newly-formed Information Office. They were seeking news of their children who had been sent to Eastern Germany during the R.A.F. blitz in 1943. S.S. troops opened fire on the crowd, killing 30 women and children. With the front line only an hour's car drive away, Berlin has been turned into a city of barricades, with everyone watching the thaw and hoping that the ice on the Oder River will break and turn the river into a tank barrier again, state Stockholm correspondents quoting messages from Berlin. No Sign of Panic

There is no sign of panic, but there is one topic of conversation and one question, "Will the Germans be able to hold the Russians at the Oder and for how long?"

A Berlin military spokesman said Germany was taking countermeasures, but it was impossible to judge whether they would be taken east or west of Berlin.

The Nazis have murdered scores of political prisoners in Berlin prisons in the past lew days, says the Free German news agency in Stockholm.

A report from Berne says a stormy meeting has taken place between Hitler and Himmler, when Himmler accused the German Army commanders of being "too conservative in their plans to halt the Red Army." The Daily Telegraph Stockholm correspondent reports that the German Finance Minister, Schacht, has been arrested in Berlin.

Under the headline, "The Fortress of Berchtesgaden," the Zurich newspaper Weltwoche reveals that extensive preparations have been made to convert the whole of Berchtesgaden into a stronghold, where staunch Nazis expect to keep fighting after the war. The paper says the Fuehrer's retreat, the Berchof, is blossoming into a small town. From it a labyrinth of tunnels leads to a strategic outpost. A complete division of hand-picked S.S. troopers guards the fortress. Salt mines have been transformed into huge stores of arms. A Messerschmitt plant and a synthetic petrol installation have been built into the mountain slopes, and there are subterranean hangars and workshops. The area in which the Nazis are expected to make their final stand is roughly outlined by Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Graz.