GESTAPO PURGE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22470, 4 January 1943, Page 5

GESTAPO PURGE

Fear Of Revolt (8.30 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 2. The Allied landing in North Africa, and the German defeats in Russia resulted in a Gestapo purge inside Germany with the object of eradicating all potential opposition in the greater Reich, reports “The Times” correspondent on the German frontier. Immediate victims have been those whose past experience, nature, ability or wide popularity might qualify them as possible leaders of revolt. The Gestapo always kept a list of persons whose latent opposition to the Nazis was feared, and whose removal would be imperative should the regime be imperilled. Thousands of such persons have been arrested since October. More than 1000 persons of higher social and intellectual standing have been arrested in Munich alone. Prince Ferdinand of Bavaria is reported to be confined at Dachau. Barons von Mumm and von Scheliha, well-known German diplomats, have also been arrested. Von Mumm never concealed his disdain for the Nazis and von Scheliha, a member of a wealthy aristocratic Silesian land-owning family has been accused of being pro-Polish because he helped Polish families whom he long knew, as their estates adjoined his. Regularly twice weekly executions by shooting and decapitation occur in the courtyard at Rossauer Laenge barracks in Vienna.