HUNT FOR HUSBANDS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 71, 21 February 1939, Page 13

HUNT FOR HUSBANDS.

"LEAP YEAR” IN GERA!ANA’. LONDON. Jan. 26. German girls are taking part in the biggest man-hunt the Reich has ever known. For the girls want husbands, land want them quioklv. For them, this I year is le.ap-vear. In Alunieh alone, it is estimated, every eligible bachelor lias received at least three marriage proposals. The reason for th s marriage rush is the conscription of female labour in Germany to make up the serious labour shortage. Only married women .arc exempt from the various jobs which German girls are now forced to take at certain ages. Girls are taken from their families t-o work on farms; others are warned that if they refuse jobs as maid-servants they will be sent to Labour camps.

Hitler’s methods are, in fact, driving thousands of girls into loveless marriages. In ANenna the number of marriages since the Anschluss has almost trebled, and the first "Hitler babies” are now arriving (says a correspondent o* the Daily Herald). Some of these newly wed Hitler couples have been bitterly disappointed, because husbands lost their jobs in party organisations in the recent purge of petty Nazi officialdom. A large number of enthusiastic young Nazi husbands, who enjoyed parading in uniforms and collecting a nice salary for little work, resent being .sent to work in arms factories and other industries, where they receive only small wages.