Only Military Chiefs So Far Captured

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 111, 12 May 1945, Page 5

Only Military Chiefs So Far Captured

United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Friday, 9.50 p.m. LONDON, May 11. The whereabouts of the 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 the 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 f~ million people in the extermination camp of Oswiecim. Where t Himmler is hiding no one seems to know. The whereabouts of Ribbentrop is also a mystery since Admiral Doenitz dismissed him from his post as Germany’s Foreign Minister.

Hitler’s deputy and head of the Nazi Party, Bormann, is stated to have committed suicide. The head of the Presidential Chancellery, Dr. Otto Meissner, sometimes called “the shadow behind the throne,” is still to be found. Then there is Robert Ley, dipsomaniac leader of the Nazi Labour Front. Nothing has been heard of him since he broadcast three times 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 Rosenberg, 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 Poland. Julius Streicher, the Jew baiter and editor of the notorious Stuermer, bolted from Nuremberg a few hours before the Americans marched in. Then he disappeared. Reuter’s correspondent with the American Third Army says Henlein, the notorious Gestapo Governor of Czechoslovakia, committed suicide yesterday in a prisoners’ cage by slashing his wrir+i with a razor blade which he had hidden in his cigarette case.