GERMANS MAKE READY

Southland Times, Issue 25328, 1 April 1944, Page 5

GERMANS MAKE READY

PREPARATIONS TO MEET INVASION

(Rec. 10 p.m.) LONDON, March 31. It is reliably reported from Paris that the Nazis, preparing for invasion, have fenced in Paris parks in which the male population will be corailed like cattle as soon as the second front opens, says The New York Times Stockholm correspondent.

The Germans are also feverishly whipping Paris into shape for street fighting, with pill-boxes and anti-tank guns constructed in all the important streets. Huge defence works have been erected in the Place Concorde and other city centres, with guns sweeping all avenues. Near the German headquarters in the Champs Elysee huge shelters have been constructed four stories underground. Other important anti-invasion measures announced include the building of a second defence line on the French Atlantic coast. The German News Agency says that German specialists and mining experts have used hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete for the new fortifications on the Bay of Biscay coast. CLEARING COASTAL AREAS

According to Vichy radio the French authorities are preparing to evacuate civilians from the strip of coast from Southern Brittany to the Gironde, including the port of La Rochelle, the neighbouring towns of Rochefort and Royan and the islands of Ore and Oreron.

The Belgian News Agency says that the Germans have ordered a clearance of the Antwerp area. They are building elaborate defence works in the neighbourhood. The Germans have completed a Mediterranean “wall” stretching from the Pyrenees to the Italian border, according to a Berlin radio reporter who made a tour of the new defences with the Japanese Ambassador and his military attache. “This girdle of concrete and steel was completed within a few months, and is staggered in great depth, and is manned by picked troops,” the reporter stated.

By Hitler’s order every man in Greater Germany will be called up to learn to shoot.

Announcing this, the German News Agency says: “Every German ready ‘to defend the Fatherland must show his readiness.”