GERMAN BLOOD BATH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 196, 21 July 1941, Page 6

GERMAN BLOOD BATH

SLAUGHTER IN RUSSIA. TRAIL OF DEVASTATION. (United Press Association. —Copyright) (1 p.m.) LONDON, July 20. The Germans themselves reveal the extent of the Russian “scorched earth’’ policy. The Berlin radio states that vast expanses of forest country north of Lake Ladoga are aflame and the Russians are laying waste everything as they retreat.

Finnish troops find ilcscrtod and ruined villages. The Berlin News -Agency suit! hundreds of villages have been reduced to ashes east of Smolensk, and that the Russians have practised wholesale destruction: The retreating tanks pour incendiary bullets into the thatched rools oi buildings, causing enormous fires. The Berlin correspondent of the Spanish newspaper ABC says that by torch and dynamite the Itussians razed Smolensk to the ground. John Gordon, writing in the Sunday Express, says such casualties as the Germans are suffering in Russia cannot be concealed. It it is true there is one German dead for every two wounded, then Germany has never previously endured such’ a blood bath. There is a point at which the cleverest propaganda fails and the German people may soon reach that point. Hitlers needs a dramatic success. All his conquests will go tor nought unless he can place them on a solid 1 emulation.

For a nation that, according to Hitler, had its air force obliterated in the first week of the war, its armies disintegrated in the second, and its reserves consumed in the fourth, the Russians seem to be doing rather well. The Daily Telegraph's Istanbul correspondent says it is reliably reported that the .Rumanian Government is seriously concerned about the evergrowing effects of sabotage, especially in the oilfields, in which, so-called Communists arc co-operating with the Soviet agents responsible. It now appears that Fifth Columnists, and not Soviet bombers, were responsible tor most of the devastation at Ploesti, Tuieea, Sulina, and Constanza. The last-named is described as one huge area of ruins. Sabotage and other cooperation with the Itussians cannot be the work of Communists, because all have either been exterminated or gaoled. . , The majority of Itumanians have not forgiven General Antonescu for subserving Rumania’s true interests to Germany. The Rumanian -High Command has issued only five communiques since the outbreak of the war, apparently because the carnage among the Rumanian troops is so great nod the progress is so disproportionate that it cannot risk the public reaction. The Moscow radio has all day been calling onp the Serbs and Croats to join the great army of saboteurs. “Do any damage you can; derail trains; blow up bridges; destroy factories; cut telephone wires. Arise and . overthrow the foreign usurpers!”