EUROPEAN UNREST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 38, 16 February 1943, Page 5

EUROPEAN UNREST

BULGARIAN WAR MINISTER ASSASSINATED (Recd. 6.40 p.m.) London, Feb. 14. General Mikhoff. a former Bulgarian War Minister, has been assassinated, reports Berlin radio. He was attacked by several men in front of his house. The assassination is believed to have a political background. ■General Mikhoff was shot in the presence of his daughter. The assassin, who wore goggles, followed him inside the doorway of his house, tired on his prostrate body, and then fled. Later the German-controlled Swedish Telegraph Bureau reported the assassination of M. Van Vavenswaasy, Social Minister in the Dutch Quisling Government.

Dr. Werner Best, Imperial Commissar in Denmark, is quoted by Berlin radio as saying: “Germany is going through un-heard-of difficulties. I appreciate that Denmark is going through times which are certainly not easy, but the fact remains that Denmark and Germany And themselves in the same boat, and neither of them can get out of it.”

According to the Munich Neueste Nachrichten the German Minister ot Justice, Dr. Otto Thierack, announced that 9000 Germans judges were being sent to the front or war factories to increase the authority of the remaining 5000 judges. “It is unpatriotic to keep 14,000 judges on duty when both the front and war industries urgently need the largest possible reinforcements,” he said.

The New York Times’ London correspondent, Sulzberger, says that reports from underground sources indicate growing anti-Nazi feeling in Rumania. For example, German customers and members of a fashionable Bucharest night club recently requested the band to play the song “Wir Fahren Gegen England" (“We March Against England.”) The band complied, but Rumanian patrons rose and sang “Tipperary,” whereupon the Gestapo arrested 150 and charged them with “leading a dissolute life.” Opposition is kept alive by several clandestine anti-Nazi radio stations, one reported to be supported by Antonescu, and also the increasing passive resistance of high Government officials, of whom several were recently arrested.