RAIDS ON THE RUHR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 188, 12 August 1941, Page 5

RAIDS ON THE RUHR

KRUPP ARMAMENT WORKS ESCAPE ARTIFICIAL FOG AS PROTECTION ENORMOUS DESTRUCTION IN IN RHINELAND Washington, Aug. 8. A foreign diplomat who was recently transferred from Germany to Washington said that R.A.F. bombings of Hamburg. Bremen, and the Rhineland have caused enormous destruction to industries and harbours but that the Krupp armament works at Essen, and other war factories in the Ruhr, have escaped serious damage The diplomat believes that this is because they are protected by dense clouds of artificially-manufactured log. He said ... wherever he went he found great numbers of German families who had lost their men, but it was considered unpatriotic for women to cry over the dead or to discuss their losses.

The cost of living in Germany was mounting, he said, and the demands of the army had intensified the shortages of food, textiles and footwear. Practically all German men between the ages of 18 and 65 were now in uniform. He estimates that more than 90 per cent, of able-bodied German males have been mobilised. Germany is relying upon women and about a million and a-half French, Polish. Czech, and Belgian prisoners to work farms, factories and mines. The Poles had been assigned to mines and heavy labour, and French prisoners. still wearing tattered Uniforms, were preferred as farmers. Belgian and Dutch women had been imported to do housework.—U.P.A.