GRIP ON GERMANY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21581, 7 December 1944, Page 5

GRIP ON GERMANY

NAZIS SLIPPING? REPORTS OF CLASHES VOLKSSTURM V, S.S. (9 a.m.) LONDON, Dec. 6. Nazis and anti-Nazis are fighting in Germany, says the Daily Telegraph’s Stockholm correspondent. Clashes have occurred between Volkssturm and S.S. in Duisburg, Dortmund, Dusseldorf and Cologne. Apparently, considerable numbers of anti-Nazis are in the Volkssturm. Several of the S.S. leaders are reported to have been ambushed and assassinated, among them a y0u..,. Bavarian leader sent by the Gestapo chief, Himmler, to the Ruhr recently because of his ruthlessness. In the Ruhr, any S.S. man is said to walk after dark in peril of his life. The correspondent’s informant, who had just arrived in Stockholm from Germany, says: “The Volkssturm may be the last straw in breaking the Nazi Party’s hold on Germany. On the journey between Cologne and Hamm our train was machine-gunned. I was told the attack came from anti-Nazis who believed the train to be carrying an S.S. draft. “In Duisburg, the clashes lasted several days. Smailarms are being sold freely in towns behind Germany's Western Front, and in the Ruhr foreign, workers can purchase tommy-guns and machine-guns.” The Stockholm correspondent of the New York Times says that the Gestapo hangings in Germany average 1000 weekly. Members of tre oid German nobility are among Himmler’s main victims. The iamn.y of Field-Marshal von Witzloben, who v/as hanged for his part in the bomb plot against Hitler on Ju y ZO. has been wiped out. The youngest victim was the Field-Marshal’s daughter, aged nine.