REIGN OF TERROR

Evening Star, Issue 25700, 25 January 1946, Page 5

REIGN OF TERROR

NAZIS'POLICY IN FRANCE > BLAME LAID ON GOERING AND KEITEL (Rec. 12.45 p.m.i NUREMBERG, January 24. The Germans executed 29,000 hostages in France alone, said the French prosecutor ? M. Dubost, at the "War Crimes trial to-day. - The Nazi High Command followed a sweeping programme -of seizing andl executing innocent hostages as part of the occupation policy. He laid the responsibility on * Goering and Keitel. , The Germans , hoped to divide the occupied countries into pro-Communist and anti-Corn-, munist factions, and to bring the antiCommunists to the service of Germany. The affidavit from a Paris mechanic, Octova Rabate, who was arrested as a hostage, said that manjft hostages were shot in the notorious Romainville - prison. They were arrested merely because they happened to be on the spot when arrests were made. > An official report statedl that about July 20, 1944, the date of the Hitler bomb plot, a number of Norwegians were taken from a concentration camp, and executed without trial. M. Dubost told the court that the execution of hostages in occupied western countries had not the desired effect.'" The Germans therefore created a complete reign of terror. Freedom of action was given • the Gestapo, and so arrests of civilians for political reasons became completely arbitrary.. All colour of legality disappeared. HESS CASE POSTPONED. A further postponement of the case' against Hess has been ordered! by the International War Crimes Tribunal. The ruling on his request that he be permitted to conduct his own defence was withheld. The condition of Streicher, who suffered a heart attack yesterday, is stated to be improved, but he was- excused attendance at the trial pending further medical examination. Sir Davidl Maxwell Fyfe, continuing the case against von Neujath, demanded a conviction. After outlining the career of the first Reich Foreign Minister*, then as Protector, 'Sir David accused him of instituting the Reich terror designed to Germanise Czechoslovakia. In hiding his intentions of future conquests from the eyes of potential opposition, Hitler found in von Neurath his handiest instrument.