ORDERED TO SPAIN

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4956, 16 February 1937, Page 2

ORDERED TO SPAIN

GERMAN “VOLUNTEERS.” Two thousand “S.S.” (Blackshirts) have been assembled at Munich and are about to leave for Spain, wrote the diplomatic correspondent of the “Manchester Guardian!’ on January 15. The so-called “military divisions” of the “S.S.’ 5 are a fully-train-ed and equipped military formation, 50,000 or 60,000 strong, and have the value of a Regular Army. Their function in case of war is chiefly the maintenance of order at home—this, as the German authorities conceive it, is a military task, for the menace of rebellion at home is reckoned with as the accompaniment of war abroad. The reason why “S.S.” and not Regulars (Reichswehr) are being sent to Spain would seem to be, partly at least, that they are to gain experience in street fighting. The 2000 men have been withdrawn from various “divisions” of the “S.S.” and tanks have been assigned to them. They are to go via Austria to Italy, and will embark for Spain at an Italian port. There is some discontent in the “S.S.” because their men are being sent to Spain as “volunteers.’ 5 A good deal of grumbling is heard, and some “S.S.” men have been saying that the Regulars ought to go to Spain because “that is what they are there for.” The fact that German troops are fighting on the side of the Spanish rebels is becoming more and more widely known in Germany, in spite of the recent official German denial that there is a single German soldier in Spain. Reports of German casualties are spreading, and have, no doubt influenced the attitude of the “S.S.”