MISSING NAZIS

Grey River Argus, 12 May 1945, Page 5

MISSING NAZIS

EUROPE’S BIG MYSTERY No Reliable News (Rec. 9.55) LONDON, May 11 The whereabouts of top-ranking Nazi leaders is Europe’s greatest mystery. Three days after the surrender of Germany we have no reliable news of Hitler, Himmler, Ley, Ribbentrop, Streicher, and many others. The Allies have captured some of Germany’s Field Marshals and scooped up the generals, but of the men who led Germany into war we have hardly a trace. If Hitler is dead, the title of public enemy number one descends to Himmler. For the .last four or five months Himmler has been trying to perform a quick-change act in the hope of convincing the world and his eventual captors that after all he is a decent fellow. It' is reported that he countermanded an order by Hitler for the shooting of a big contingent of British and American prisoners after the Allies bombed Dresden. He also allowed a number of Jews to escape to Sweden. Nevertheless there are enough charges against Himmler to hang him many times over. He is charged by the Russians, for example, with personal responsibility for the murder of four million people in an extermination camp dt Oswiecim. Where Himmler is hiding no one seems to know.

The whereabouts of Ribbentrop is also a mystery since Admiral Doenitz demissed him from his post as Germany’s Foreign Minister. Hitler's deputy and head of the Nazi Party is stated to have committed suicide. The head of the Presidential Chancellery, Doctor Otto Meissner, sometimes called the shadow behind the throne, is still to be found. Then there is Robert Ley dipsomoniac leader of the Nazi Labour Front. Nothing has been heard of him since he broadcast thrice in one week and was clearly drunk, on each occasion. Fritz Sauckel, Germany’s manpower chief, whom the French claim to be responsible for the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen to forced labour service, was last reported to be with Marshal Petain. Alfred Rusenberg, one of the leading figures on the Russian list of war criminals, has not been heard of since he lost his job as Nazi Minister of the occupied eastern territories, when the Russians liberated P’oland. Julius Streicher, Jew-baiter and editor of the notorious “Stuermer,” bolted from Nuremberg a few hours before Americans marched in. Then he disappeared. After seven years under Hitler’s cruellest Gauleiters, Hydrich the Hangman, and Frank, all Prague donned holiday garb and rushed outdoors, to-day says the “Daily Telegraph’s” Prague correspondent, in a despatch dated May 8. The red, blue and white banner’of Czechoslovakia rose over the city, ending the fourclay street battles that cost more than 5.000 civilian lives on the fina] day of the war. The enemy discreetly left by the western routed where they surrendered to the Americans, while Russian vanguards simultaneously burst into the city from the east. Patriots told how S.S. troops killed <6O civilians in a furious half day battle last Saturday around the (Prague radio station. When a professor of literature -at Prague University led the underground rising the Germans forced women and children to walk in front of their tanks. One German grenadier walked down the pavement, his machine-gun blazing, with two Czech children tied to his belt, so that the Czechs could not return his fire. _ The Germans slaughtered all residents in the streets in which firing occurred, and when they finally retreated Unaer the surrender armistice drunken S.S. troops fired indiscriminately into the crowd. , ~ . The Prague radio reports there is still firing in Prague, but the Russian commander has ordered the immediate clearance from the city of an resistance. . The Russians are massing m Czechoslovakia, says Reuter:s correspondent, to bring to their senses the Germans in the central pait of the country who offered some rearguard resistance as they fled. Social mopping up parties are clearing tne woods, mountains and by-ways from the Baltic to the Alps, thousands of Germans. e ha<? C arradio stated that Dr. Benes has ar rived in Prague. . .. A political correspondent of th- “ Evening Standard’ states: Ectexperienced secret service agents of the Allied, powers are hunting Europe for Nazi leaders. Everything possible is being done to capture those Jiving and establish without deaths of those reported killed or to have committed suicide. The Allie.. are inclined to accept the German statement that Hitler is dead, out a search for his body is going on.

TRIAL OF WAR CRIMINALS (Rec. 6.30) SAN The U.S. State Department announced that the United States proposed that organisations like the Nazi Partv ns well as individuals, should be tried for atrocities and war crimes. The State Department added that Judge Rosenman, President Truman’s personal representative, had completed conferences in San Francisco with representatives of Britain, Russia and France on the prosecution of war criminals. the Department said it was proposed that proposals be laid before the gioup bv Judge Rosenman, “to organise machinery to establish procedure which will assure a just expeditious trial to major individuals and organisations, but one which will not permit evasion, undue delay or dilatory tactics.” A State Department official explained that if any enemy, political organisation is placed on trial ana convicted of war crimes, all the members of such organisation would be subject to punishment. This would make possible the mass prosecution of individuals who otherwise might escape being charged because they were not ranked as major ci iminals. The State Department added that Judge Rosenman, in conference with Messrs Eden, Stettinius, Molotov and Bidault sought to lay a groundwork for the organisation, of the international military tribunals to try European war criminals. Formation of tribunals would not affect a principle contained in a Moscow declaration of November 1, . 1943, that criminals guilty of specific atrocities in any occupied country would be returned to that country for trial, according to its laws. There was not vet any’official indication from other Governments as to the possibility of acceptance bf the American pioposals. NEW'YORK, May 10. The Office of War Information confirmed that films of the German atrocities that revolted the woild will be seen by the nation which perpetrated them, even if every German was seized by the scruff of the neck and forced to look upon the evidence Newspapers, magazines, nictures and radio will all be marshalled to present humanity’s bill Igainst Germany. The Office of War Information points out that the Germans have no sense of national guilt or ‘•hame for the atrocities. They do not'realise that as Germans they must accept the responsibility for the contamination Hitler visited upon civilisation. SUDETEN LEADER. LONDON, May 10. Konrad Henlein, the man who pre- ! cipitated the Munich, crisis in 1938

does not. see why he should .be icgarded as a war criminal, sa Y s t v‘_ Associated Press correspondent n Czechoslovakia. , .. Henlein, who was a Gauleiter i Sudetenland, surrendered yesterday, wearing a new tailored suit ana ,^ < ;’ .fully polished shoes. “I kave alw y. been a man of high honour, h- < _ " mented. “If left to myself, 1 could have got the Czecns to undersUnd German rule and work wll -k , mans, but always there v from Berlin, and the S.S. wanted (o rU HeS’fim r a small bottle of tablets marked with the emblem Of the skufi and crossbones for Ml »«n y captured by: Czech patriots.