Hitler’s Christmas Day

Northern Advocate, 12 February 1940, Page 4

Hitler’s Christmas Day

BERLIN. December 26. A neutra lobserver records how Hitler spent Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve Chancellor Hitler set foot on French soil for the first time since 1918. when, as an unknown soldier, he fought on the side of the German Army in France. In a French pillbox on Spichern Heights before Saarbruecken—taken by a German patrol during sporadic fighting in the last few weeks —the German Chancellor celebrated Christmas Eve with a company of his troops occupying this advanced post of the German lines. The captain of the company was personally promoted by Herr Hitler to the rank of major for bravery in action. In tlic course of Christmas Eye he spent a brief few moments with the German advanced patrol under the command of a young lieutenant, who was holding the watch at the outermost German observation post in French territory. Later in the evening German soldiers penetrated to Spichern village and rang the bells of the village church while the Chancellor passed through the lines back to his headquarters.

In the main German line in the Saarbruecken sector the Chancellor went from one fort to another distributing Christmas packages among the soldiers. In one fort a soldier was just putting the finishing touches on his Santa Claus costume and the Chancellor stuffed packages into his Christmas sack. The night was reported foggy and cold. There was no snow, but everything outdoors was covered with a thick while coat of frost.

On. Christmas Day Herr Hitler visited young soldiers of the regiment with which he served in the World War. He had a simple soldier’s luncheon with a German flying squadron in a canteen of a Westwall airport. With each group he spent an hour or so reminiscing about his own war Christmases of a generation ago.

Nothing was known beforehand about the Chancellor’s plan to visit the Western Front during the holidays. Even the troops he visited were informed only that a “high-ranking general” would come to see .them. His presence in the foremost lines was kept entirely secret until today, when the newspapers announced that he had broken his tradition of Christmas celebrating in Munich and Berchtesgaden to be with the troops of the Westwall. The concrete pillbox where he spent part of Christmas Eve was only a bare kilometre or so across the German border but well within range of French guns, it is said. According to a German Army communique, however, no guns were fired on the Western Front during Christmas and no fighting whatever took place. The Chancellor spent three days on the Western Front and returned to Berlin this evening. His trip apparently took him chiefly through the sec-, tor between the Rhine and Moselle > rivers, where most of the action on' the Western Front has taken place, j