CAPTORS GREETED

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25180, 18 April 1945, Page 7

CAPTORS GREETED

LEADING GERMAN CHEMIST HOPES TO VISIT AMERICA KEecd. 6.30 p.m.) LONDON. April 17 Dr Georg von Schnitzler, a director of the I. G. Farben Industrie chemical concern, was pleased to see Americans when captured on the Western Front. He told United States officers that he was looking forward to visiting America very soon "so that he could see 'his friends the du Ponts." Schnitzler mentioned several other heads of well-known firms in America and Britain whom he described as intimate friends. He has been living at a farm near Frankfurt. When American officers ■ visited him, ; le was wearing fine Scottish tweeds and English brogues. He said he regretted that records of the Farben works at Frankfurt, the biggest chemical and explosives plant in Germany, had been destroyed. He declined to go to his office to give certain information which the Allied authorities wanted because "it is such a long way and I am getting old." The Americans solved the argument by sending a sergeant with a jeep and a tommy-gun to fetch him. When Schnitzler arrived, he bowed and said: "Gentlemen, it is indeed a pleasure to ke working with you again. ' GIRONDE RESISTANCE BACK NOW BROKEN LONDON, April 16 The back of the German resistance on fcoth sides of the Gironde Estuary is ■broken. Bomb-dazed remnants of the garrison of 20,000 are fleeing under a murderous hail of bombs and shells, eays the British United Press correspondent. The Germans are falling back to the northern tips of the Royan and Point de Grave pockets for a final Btand.

French forces at Point de Grave, after bounding forward four miles, have pinned the Germans in the narrow area north of the tip of the peninsula *ith their backs to the sea, where they ttHist surrender or fight to the death. Some 450 French-based Flying Fortresses for the third successive day attacked German positions in the Gironde gefcoary*