FATE OF GERMANY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23113, 30 January 1945, Page 5

FATE OF GERMANY

Next Eight Days Vital Panic Sweeping Country

By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright (Rec. 8.0 pun.) LONDON, Jan. 28. “The next eight days will be decisive—a question of life or death. No quarter will be shown and these days will settle our late.” This was a passage from an Order of the Day which General Guderian, German commander on the Eastern Front, broadcast to the deienders of Breslau over the Berlin radio. “The time we have left is very short,” said General Guderian. “We have no Urals, no Steppes to retire behind until the enemy exhausts himself. All our cards must now be placed in the gigantic battle for which both armies are concentrating. Two empires, two revolutions, two worlds will meet in battle to find the solution to everything that separates them. These eight days will decide if all those hundreds of thousands of Germans killed in foreign countries have fallen in vain, or if our sufferings which have brought us to the limit of our strength and endurance will be rewarded. The enemy is only some hundred kilometres from the capital.” Guderian’s Order of the Day added: “The High Command is following a carefully worked out plan. According to intelligence received, we have all units under control. No entire formations, divisions or corps have fallen into Soviet hands. Our divisions are slowly making their way west from the middle Vistula. Their spearheads have already reached new positions, where they joined up with the bulk of our forces at the same time reinforcements are streaming forward from all directions. The fight against the attacking Soviet forces will begin at the moment our deployment is ready.” The Cologne newspaper “Koelnische Zeitung” forecasts that the war may be decided within a week, “We Germans within the next week will know whether the hangman’s noose is to be our collar for the future. Panic is sweeping the country. The spirit of leadership among the Reich’s officers and the quality of her weapons are worn out. Every Berliner Is asking whether the Russians can be stopped. The situation is very dark.” The correspondent of the British United Press says that the German propaganda machine is maintaining its policy of playing on the German people’s fears to keep them up to the mark. The German News Agency last night said: “The enemy does not intend to inflict a mere military defeat. He means to exterminate the whole German people, men, women and children.” An excited neutral diplomat who stepped off a plane from Berlin at Stockholm aerodrome told the correspondent of the “Daily Mail” “that Hitler’s game is up.” The diplomat, who was still keyed up by all he had seen and heard in Berlin, told the correspondent that he w’as going to report the following facts to his Government:— “(1) The German General Staff has informed Hitler, as head of the State, that, judged by all military standards, it is useless for Germany to go on fighting. “(2) That the body of‘Frederick the Great has been removed from the historic garrison church at Potsdam, and with the body of Hindenburg, had been taken to a secret hiding place in South Germany. “(3) That Berlin is seething with peace talk, and nobody now fears Gestapo counter-measures.”