Hitler Retaliates

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 18, 21 July 1944, Page 6

Hitler Retaliates

HIMMLER TAKES GHARGE

LONDON, July 20. Late tonight Hitler broadcast to the Germans to—in his own " words—"assure them that he was still alive" after today's assassination attack. ' He alleged that the attack was plotted by a small clique of ..German officers with the aim of exterminating*not only. Hitler himself, but also the staff of the German High Command. The bomb, •- he said, was actually planted by a German colonel, whom Hitler named. Hitler described his own injuries as negligible, but said-that one of his staff standing by a few yards away was killed, and another was injured;-""'■• (

He then went on lo say that there existed in Germany a small group, similar to that which existed in Italy, "which believed it could thrust a dag-, ger into our backs, as they did in 1918. But this time they made a great ' mistake, and will be exterminated quite mercilessly." HIMMLER AS DICTATOR. The Hitler story is very heavily headlined in all Friday's London morning papers. Most of them make it their splash, and put the news from Normandy in second place. Their displays were put up • before v Hitler made his speech, but the . headlines show the version he gave'of the attempted assassination. The "Daily Herald" has a streamer across its front page in heavy type. The "Daily Express" deals with the propaganda aspect of the incident. It makes the point that wounded men had been used by Hitler as , his personal spies to watch the German High Command. The "News Chronicle" has an interesting story irom its Stockholm correspondent which was sent four.hours before the attack on Hitler: The correspondent says that Himmler is today, in effect, the dictator of Germany. He forecast that an announcement would . be made confirming Himmler as the -over-riding authority. ■ >■ "The Times" reviews the tense situation on the German home front, and emphasises the growing strain the Allied air attacks are putting- on the German people. It points out, however, that the Germans have not yet suffered actual shortages of food and do not face-the terrors of starvation which finally cracked the civilian resistance in 1918. So long as the Nazi leaders combine the advantages of food supplies with an efficient method of exterminating resistance, the paper says, there will be no serious doubts of their ability to hold the situation at home. "The Times" strikes the note

that the'key to the situation lies in Allied military victory, and in that alone.

Hitler said that no civil authority must accept instructions from them; and that applied to the military authorities also.. "To create order at last," to use his own words again, Hitler said he had appointed Himmler as commander-in-chief of the German home front, and he emphasised his intention of . stamping out with Nazi thoroughness the traitors and conspirators.

Addressing the German people, he said:, "You have today to conquer these elements at once with ruthless determination and wipe them out if they offer resistance."

Appropriate orders, it is reported, have been issued to all German troops.

Hitler announced that there would be a purge in Germany, and that accounts would, be settled in a National Socialist manner. .