BATTLES IN GERMANY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21130, 12 March 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

BATTLES IN GERMANY.

COMMUNISTS AND FASCISTS.

TWO MEN KILLED IN BERLIN.

PROFESSOR STABBED IN BACK.

Germany's smouldering civil war flared into open flame on the night of January 18, when pitched battles took place it) Goenningen, Wurtemburg, and in Weidmanslust, a garden suburb just outside Berlin, between Fascists and Communists. Scythes, axes, daggers, and bludgeons were used in the Goenningen clash. Two men were killed in the Berlin battle and ten were seriously wounded. Many minor casualties are reported. At Goenningen, a man was killed with a. scythe. At Obercassel 400 Communists raided a Fascist meeting. There were a number of casualties in tho fighting that followed.

Among tho Berlin wounded were two policemen who had attempted to intervene in tho fight. Ihe Fascists had held a meeting at Weidmanslust, and had broken up about midnight to march home. A troop of 200 Fascists, escorted by a lorry load of armed police, were the main detachment to march to Berlin. Tho Fascist officer-in-command, after they had been marching for about twenty minutes, gave his men the order to march down a dark lane which led to a noted Communist settlement.

The Communists had been expecting a raid, and had been lying in ambush for the Fascists. Suddenly the sound of a gong rang out. It was the signal for a wild fusillade of revolver shots and stones to be opened from all sides on the advancing Fascists. The Fascists at once returned the fire. Tho police opened fire as well, and

within a few seconds a regular battle was in progress, in which, owing to the darkness, no one knew who was who. The firing, stabbing, and stone-throwing were entirely indiscriminate. One of tho first victims was Professor Schwartz, the celebrated German artist and a member of the Fascist party, who was stabbed in the back by a Communist from whom ho was trying to escape. Paul Klenke, a thirty-year-old Communist workman, was shot dead as he rushed out of his house to defend his wife and children, whom he thought in danger. Ono policeman was wounded when he was trying to run to the nearest telephone to summon reinforcements. His colleague was likewise wounded, but succeeded in making his way to tho telephone and giving the alarm. It was not until the arrival of the flying squad, after half an hour's fighting in the dark, that an end was put to this battle, which is typical of similar fights taking place throughout Germany.