GENERAL STAFF AND NAZI PARTY SPLIT
DEEPER THAN EVER Officers Know Reich Has Lost The War N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 12.30 p.m. LONDON, March 22. "It is believed that the split between the German General Staff and the Nazi party is now deeper than ever," states Reuters correspondent at Allied Twenty-first Army Group Headquarters. "The General Staff has for long accepted the fact that the Reich has lost the war," the correspondent adds. "Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and other Nazi leaders have made it clear that they will never surrender. They will want to continue hostilities even after the German Army has been defeated east of the Rhine. They want the Wehrmacht to cover their retreat while with S.S. divisions and the Gestapo they escape to the Bavarian Alps. "We anticipate finding odds and ends of infantry, paratroops and panzer divisions drawn up in some sort of order along the east bank of the Rhine. The Germans, although they speak of army groups and divisions, have an unbelievably small number of troops for the defence of the vital Ruhr areas. We probably outnumber them by hundreds. to one in tanks, guns and planes. "The blowing up of bridges across the network of canals and rivers which criss-cross the whole area will be one of the engineering problems we will have to face, but we have obviously anticipated this and when our assault troops jump off they will be accompanied by engineers with all the equipment necessary to keep our armies rolling. Our forward observers have seen slave labourers across the Rhine digging long lines of ditches. Farther back they are constructing concrete steel blocks on roads. Everybody is digging and building or felling trees to place across the roads." •
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Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1945, Page 5
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288GENERAL STAFF AND NAZI PARTY SPLIT Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1945, Page 5
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