THE OCCUPATION

Grey River Argus, 17 May 1945, Page 5

THE OCCUPATION

RIGID CONTROL German Industries BEING EXPLOITED FOR ALLIED USE. (Rec. 6.30.) LONDON, May 16. A correspondent stated: All trade, industries and food .resources in Germany are being mobilised by Allied Military Government Authorities under a co-ordinated plan to feed and equip the Allied occupying armies. Only ’ when Allied needs have been complely met, and when imports from Allied powers have been cut to a minimum will the Germans obtain their own products for themselves. “We are endeavouring to produce from German services every need of the British Army,” said a Military Government British officer. “Anything left over, Germans can have. We are here to avoid importing vast quantities of materials from the United Kingdom and other Allied sources. Every pound we save and obtain from the Germans will be a pound more for our people at home. We are not in any way concerned with any rehabilation of German industries for the German people. We are re-starting them to meet bare minimum needs of our Allied armies.” The officer added that the removal from the Reich of considerably more than eleven million displaced persons has raised urgent problems for the harvest and food processing industry. “Someone has to repmee them,” he said, “and the use of prisoners of war is under consideia tion.”

GERMANS TO WORK IN BELGIAN / MINES.

(Rec. 8.30.) LONDON, May 16. ■ Brussels radio says that four thousand German war prisoners are beginning to work immediately in Belgian coal mines, following an agreement between the Belgian Government and the Allies.

GERMAN PRISONERS FOR FARM WORK

(Rec. 10.56) LONDON May 16 An Associated Press ot Great IBiitain correspondent says: Thousands or members of the Volks Sturm are being realsed from prison camps in tne United States Third Army area ioi farm work. A military Government officer said: “We don’t want to have to feed these people this winter lhley are going out to grow food for them selves.”

SALUTING ORDERS. (Rec. 9.30). LONDON, May 16. A “Daily Express” correspondent at Allied Supreme Headquarters says-"* General Eisenhower has ordered that German soldiers must salute officers and men of the Allied forces, and also stand to attention to honour United Nations’ anthems and colours, but there must be no exchange of salutes between Germans and Allied forces as a form of greeting or a sign of. recognition. NO SALUTES FOR GERMAN OFFICERS LONDON, May 15. British Tommies are cleaning the jackboots of eighteen German officers who are living in a country mansion near Edinburgh. These officers arrived in Scotland by air last Friday lo* disclose to British naval and military authorities full details of Norway’s defences. Tommies who are acting as thfeir batmen brush their uniforms and wait on them at table, but they refuse to salute the Germans. It was suggested to a gardener’s daughter, who does the shopping, that while the Germans are at the mansion she should use the rear entrance, involving an extra walk of one mile each way. The girl promptly refused. STALKING HIMMLER. (Rec. 10.40.) LONDON, May 16. Himmler’s capture is only a matter of hours, says the “Daily Mail’s” Stockholm correspondent. Danish patriots and British soldiers are hunting him in an area around the Danish-German border, near Flensburg. According to Moscow radio, his wife and daughter were captured in the Tyrol.

Doenitz Regime ALLIED MISSION AT FLENSBURG (Rec. 12.33.) LONDON, May 16. The Evening Standard? correspondent at Rheims says that close control of the activities of the Doenity “Government,” at Flensburg has been achieved by a mission ol S.H.A.E.F. officials. When the Allied Mission arrived at Flensburg it found that the remnants of the German High Command, representing the Navy, Army and Air Force, had been established there. The Command, with elements of a number of other Reich' Ministries, has been taken over on a basis described as “seize and freeze.” The Allies will dceide what elements if any are useful in administering Germany. The Flensburg radio was earlier taken over to prevent a recurrence of unauthoiised broadcasts which presented news with a Nazi bias, suggesting a conflict between the Russians and the Western Powers. ent confusion surrounding the relaA Rhiems official said that appartion of the stop-gap Doenitz regime to the Allied military authorities resulted from the non-mihtary nature of the problem involved An official expressed the hope that the public would realise that. the cask oi re-converting a vast military operation to a co-ordinated venture in civilian administration could not be accomplished in a day.

CAPTURED GERMAN GENERALS.

(Rec 830). LONDON, May 16., The Exchange Telegraph Agencys correspondent from Luneburg says that Field-Marshal Von Milch, at one time a successor of Goering, and General Hasso Von Manteuffel former commander of the German Hind Panzer Army, are at the Luneburg prison camp, where, officially, they are living on Army field rations. Actually, they are living on champagne, eggs, and custards. Admirers ana friends almost daily bring them luxurious supplements to their ic.tions. Such supplementation of pnson camp rations is in accordance w regulations. Troops supervising tnese and other high-ranking Nazis live on Army rations, .augment ed only by fresh vegetables, and occasionally fresh milk and eggs.

GERMAN OFFICERS RETURN TO NORWAY LONDON, May 15. After a seventy-txw hours’ stay in of the disposileft fo Oslo. TKq D t SHAEF ? a y s 11 officers are returning interrogating ornceis to chock to Oslo with the Gei mans to check and supplement the disclosures.

Concentration Camps

REPORT TO CONGRESS. against (Rec. 9.20.) WASHINGTON, May 15. The Congressional Committee, which visited German concentration camps at the invitation of General Eisenhower, reporting to Congress, demanded swift, certain and adequate punishment for all persons responsible “for the sickening spectacle we witnessed.” The report said that it was inconceivable that the German General Staff did not know about the savage practices of Storm 1 loopers and the Gestapo. The Committee believes that these practices constituted nothing less than organised crime against humanity, and added that neither pictures nor descriptions of Buchenwald could adequately portray the camp’s horrors. “It is only when the camp’s stench is smelled that anyone can have complete appreciation of the depth of degradation to which German organisations and practises have dropped in the treatment of those who failed to accept the doctrines of the master race,” the report said. The Committee saw with its own eyes, firstly barracks, work places, and physical facilities for torture, degradation and secondly, alive and dead atrocity victims; thirdly, the progress of liquidation by' starvation which was still going on • . fourthly, a number of victims actually die. The Committee added that the policies constituted a calculated and diabolical programme of extermination on the part of those in control of the German Government. SURRENDER OF U-BOATS. LONDON, May 15. At least 37 U-boats had surrendered on both sides of the Atlantic by today. The Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches (Admiral Sir Max Horton) said ■ that when Germany capitulated there were between 50 and 70 U-boats at sea. A Copenhagen message says that Danish patriots in Durmeister and the main shipyards captured five German armed auxiliary cruisers. Patriots disarmed 250 German naval men who refused to surrender. The Press Association correspondent says:

At least 37 U-boats of Germany’s Atlantic fleet are accounted for. Admiral Horton, Commander-in-Chief of the western approaches, expressed the opinion that some of the 50 to 70 U-boats at sea when Germany capitulated have not yet received the surrender orders.

About 550 large U-boats were sunk during the war, says the British United Press, quoting London naval circles. Constant air and sea pounding for five and a half years whittled dowm the German Navy by the time of ,the surrender to two majorwarships, the eight-inch cruiser, “Prinz Eugen,” and the six-inch cruiser, “Nuremburg,” besides three hundred large U-boats, 20 or 30 destroyers and a number of small craft. Allied Navies are now outlawing U-boats which have not yet surfaced and reported their positions said an “Evening New’s” naval correspondent. Allied warships have been ordered to depth-charge any enemy detected beneath the surface. The Admiralty Intelligence has a record of the exact number of U-boats. A check is now being made. Those missing after a specified time will be sunk on sight. Their officers if captured will be court-martialled. One unit that has not yet surrendered is the former British submarine “Seal” which was lost in May 1940, and later was salvaged and repaired and commissioned by the Germans. A Press Association reporter says: Tossed 1 by heavy seas and whipped by a sixty mile an hour gale, Royal Navy little ships enjoyed the greatest hour of triumph of the war as they escorted eight U-boats from Locheriboll to Londonderry, where they formally surrendered. British and 'American destroyers, corvettes, and frigates shepherded the prizes which were manned by their original crews under direction of a British naval guard. Coastal Command and Fleet Air Arm planes circled overhead. It was an impressive scene as rusty Üboats. with decks awash, entered Lough Foyle. MADRID, May 15 Two U-boats towed by a British destroyer arrived at Gibraltar after surrendering a hundred miles out m the Atlantic. The crews totalling a hundred, are being interned with sixty others, who manned two Üboats which surrendered a tew days ago. ,

RUINED GERMAN CITIES. LONDON, May 15. Imagine acres or roofless houses licked clean inside by fire and with onlv the walls standing, walls .slotted with squares that once were windows, but now look like so many, sightless eyes; imagine bomb bursts that have pulped buildings to heaps of dun brown rubble; factories that are heaps of twisted, rusted girders; and whole areas pocked with bomb craters, some filled with muddy water and others greyish white, empty gashes—imagine this, and you have a glimpse of the great German cities as they; were seen from the air to-day. This was the picture seen by Mr Jordan, Mr Holland and Mr Doidge when they flew at 1000 ft from Brussels to Germany, and circled Munchen, Gladbach, Dusseldorf, Hamm, Essen and Hanover, en route to Celle, in Northern Germany. Cities of the dead they have been called, and that is what they are, ruins of new Fompeiis killed by the volcano of modern war. Surrounded by the neat, regimented countryside, there is, oddly enough—from th e air —some semblance of orderliness qbout them, for streets lined 'with trees in their summer foliage, are still clearly defined. Here can be seen a bent and twisted train lying on its side as though left by a careless child, and there stands the shell of a 1 gasometer, a mere husk with its centre filled with a circular pool of dirty, yellow water that suddenly winks evilly; as it catches the reflection of the sun. Acres of houses look as though their roofs have been sliced off by a great scythe -as neatly as a knife i-emoves the top from an egg. Occasionally chimney, stacks rear up undamaged, but round them is the mash of their factories.

. The scenes ai’e repeated in each city, the extent of the ruins the more sharply defined by comparison with the placid countryside that. laps all round. Each city has some stark, brown scab. Essen, for instance, in the heart of the air crews’ “happy valley”, the prime target of the Battle of the Ruhr, is dominated by acres of the broad, flat roofs of Krupps’ armament factories, rusty, brown and dishevelled, some mere husks of twisted girders with brown, earthern floors sprouting fresh grass. No chimney smokes, and a few people and fewer cars crawl along the dark veins of road. ■At Hamm are' the marshalling yards, a great black, gloomy, oval striped with rusty rails, with acres of surrounded land, a measley rash of bomb pocks. Hanover is a sheet of dun brown, gutted shells of houses standing like so many l rusty colanders.

Here and there on the flight, the New Zealanders did see occasional factories si’ll qndamaged, and a few chimney stacks breathing yellowy smoke, eddying lazily away But, generally speaking, the heart of German' industry is one great ash heap.