GESTAPO PURGE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 2, 4 January 1943, Page 5

GESTAPO PURGE

HEADS FALL IN GERMANY (Recd. 11 p.m.) London, Jan. 2. The Allied landing in North Africa and the German defeats in Russia have 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. The immediate victims have been those whose past experience, nature and ability or wide popularity might qualify them as possible leaders of a revolt. The Gestapo always keeps 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 were 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, were also arrested. Von Mumm has never concealed his disdain for the Nazis. Von Scheliha. a member of a wealthy and aristocratic Silesian land-owning family, is accused of being pro-Polish because he helped Polish families whom he long knew as their estates adjoined his. Regularly twice a week executions by shooting and decapitation occur in the courtyard of the Rossauer Laenge barracks at Vienna.