WAR END IN BERLIN

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 May 1943, Page 5

WAR END IN BERLIN

AIR' MINISTER’S PROMISE

R.A.F.’s GREAT STRENGTH

v RUGBY, May 21. ■ That the war would end in Berlin, (was a promise made by the Secretary of State for Air (Sir Archibald Sinclair) speaking at Edinburgh to-day. ‘This is not a time to relax,” he said. “It is a time for pressure. We shall pursue the enemy from North Africa into Europe and the .R.A.F. will continue to hammer him. This Will be a main contribution to victory victory to be achieved without delay. Our Air Force has been built up into an engine of war of unparalleled strength. When the time comes we shall take our enemies by the throat in their own land. The R.A.F. <is now of such strength that it will cripple German war industries, destroy everything set against us and the war will end only in one way, that is in Berlin.” Sir A. Sinclair devoted the greater part of his speech to the significance of the mighty battering the R.A.F. is inflicting and will continue to inflict on German industry. “There is only one hope of getting to Berlin without the slaughter which land battles of the war entailed, and that is to paralyse the German war power by the Bomber Command.” He pointed out that since the middle of February, Germany has received the weight of an attack beside which previous attacks look small and beside which the German attacks on Britain look puny. Despite the vastly strengthened German defences, the

BRITISH CASUALTY RATE

in night attacks during the first four months this year has been almost exactly the same as for the corresponding period last year. ‘ Except for the German armies on the eastern front, there is no concentration' of German force equal to the great army which the Bomber Command contains on the western front. In Western Germany, well over threequarters of a million German soldiers and sailors are fully engaged m defence against the British air offensive Besides troops manning guns and’searchlights, a further threequarters of a million men and women are employed in full-time fire fighting defence.” . Sir A. Sinclair said: lhe Ministry of Economic Warfare experts, who have been investigating the damage at Essen in March, say: ‘lt is on a scale without parallel in the previous experience of bombing. At Dortmund which was attacked on May 4, a purely industrial area of forty-five and a half acres was devastated with particularly heavy damage to steel works. Duisburg, Bocham, and Dortmund had likewise been Sir Y Sinclair pointed out that the industries of these four towns amount to 15 per cent of the total German urban industrial activity. Speaking of the epic attack on the Ruhr Dams, last Sunday Sir A Sinclair said: “The attacks had to be continued until the dams were cleaily and visibly breached. These dams were perhaps the stiffest targets the Bomber Command ever attacked. Mohne had a base nearly a hundred feet thick. The top carried a road twenty feet wide. It contained 50 per cent, of the total reservoir capacity in the Ruhr catchment area Coke ovens in the Ruhr use two cubic metres of water to produce each ton of coke, and the foundries use ten cubic metres to produce one ton of pigiron. This gives you some impression of the dependence of a great industrial area like the Ruhr on a generous supply of W Sir A. Sinclair also paid a tribute to the infinite courage and resource of the magnificently trained crews ol the United States Air Force m carrying out the daylight offensive which is the complement of the R.A.b. night bombing.

INVASION PRECAUTIONS

RUGBY. May 21. The Germans have mined the Rhine bridges at Cologne, and aie ■building fortifications along both banks of the river, according to ie■ports of Belgian workers, who had been deported to Germany and ha\ e now returned home, states the Bel gian News Agency. In the Rhineland many inhabitants of the bombed aieas live very miseraoly in tempoiaiy shelters.

UNIVERSITY CONSPIRACY

LONDON, May 21. The diplomatic correspondent of “The Times” says: “Further light has been thrown on the recent Munich University conspiracy lor whic... a number of students were executed and imprisoned on charges of amiwar activity. It is now known .hat Kurt Huber, who had been a professor at the university since has been beheaded for inspiring tne conspiracy. It is unlikely that he. will be the last victim. “Huber is stated to have been arrested, with his wife, when he was distributing leaflets. He told the gauleiter • before whom he was brought that the youth ol Germany and the soul of the people were being endangered. The gauleiter is reported to have described him as the intellectual leader who inspired the conspiracy, and to have added: ‘We know there are between 10 and 20 more like him hiding in the university.’ ”