RULE IN GERMANY

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25210, 24 May 1945, Page 5

RULE IN GERMANY

AT/LIEI) CONTROL POST FOR MONTGOMERY (Heed. p.m.) LONDON, May By command of the King. Mr Churchill has announced that FieldMarshal Montgomery has been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British forces for the occupation of Germany and the British member of the Allied Control Council in Germany. His chief representative for control questions will be LieutenantGeneral Sir Ronald Weeks, who has been deputy-Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The establishment is announced of a German Government for the entire occupation zone of the Fifteenth United States Army, covering an area of 14,000 square miles, with a pre-war population of 11,000,000 and with the capital at Bonn, states the Associated Press correspondent with the Army's headquarters. General Gerow selected as head of the administration Dr Hans Fuchs, a veteran of the last war, a prominent figure in the Catholic Centre Party and, before the Nazi regime, Oberpresident of the Rhine Province. The Rhine military district, over which he is now to preside, is a political unit 60 per cent larger than the Rhine Province under the Weimar Republic. One of his Cabinet members will be Dr Karl Mueller, who has been given charge of food and agriculture. The Nazis imprisoned Mueller for two months and removed him from his post in connection with food administration. Major-General Lowell Rooks, General Fisenhower's assistant chic! ot staff, has been appointed General Fisen bower's chief of staff with the German High Command at Flenslnirg, says a correspondent at Supreme Headquarters. The main purpose of General Hooks' command is to impose the will of the Supreme Command on the Ger man High Command and to make such use ot it as is necessary*to control tin l German forces in occupied areas.

GERMANS GOING HOME LONG TREK FROM HOLLAND (Kecd. 5.35 p.m.) DON DON, May 22 One hundred thousand Germans will begin to walk home on Friday from Holland, says a correspondent with the Canadian Army. Most will foot it all the way. a distance of about, 230 miles, except for the crossing of a part of the Zuider Zee. One thousand German service women. 8000 veterans and 29,000 men will go by sea, mostly in German naval vessels, which will dock at Wilhelmshaven. VERMEER MASTERPIECE GOERING'S GIFT TO NURSE (Reed. 5.35 p.m.) LONDON, May 22 ,lan Vermeer's 17th-Century painting "Christ and the Adultress" has been found in the possession of Frau Goeri np's nurse, reports the Associated Press correspondent at Bcrchtesgaden. American Army art experts, who valued the painting at £250,000, found it in the nurse's room wrapped round a length of stovepipe and concealed under a blanket. The nurse said: "I did not know what it was. Gocring told me to keep it and 1 would never want for money again for the rest of my life." HEALTH OF GERMANY DESCRIBED AS EXCELLENT (Kecd. 5.35 p.m.) LONDON, May 22 .Major-General Draper, chief of the public health branch at Supreme Headquarters, said today that the health of Germany is excellent and from his personal observation he found the Germans more robust and better nourished than many people he had seen in Britain. "Germany has sufficient food for CO days," lie said. "After that there may be serious developments. The Germans certainly are not going to get more than the people in liberated countries." awaiting Repatriation LONDON, May 22 Displaced llussians, numbering 200,000, are at present waiting in the American occupational zone to be repatriated, reports the Associated Press correspondent with the Fifteenth Army. Their return is hold up 'pending the completion of arrangements by the Russian Government.