DEVASTATED BERLIN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 168, 18 July 1945, Page 5

DEVASTATED BERLIN

INSPECTED BY VISITORS Recd. 6 p.m. London, July 16 Mr. Churchill and President Truman toured the devastated heart of Berlin to-day. Mr. Churchill, accompanied by Mr. Eden and Junior Commander Mary Churchill, were met at the Brandenburg Gate by the Russian military governor, Colonel-Genenal Borbatov. Mr. Churchill struck an almost belligerent pose while standing near the spot where Hitler’s body was reported to have been burned. He arrived at the Chancellery about ten minutes after Mr. Truman had passed, and unlike the President, alighted from his car and spent about half an hour stalking swiftly through the rubble of the famed building. He appeared to be particularly grim, and as he walked poked the rubble with his stick and frequently chewed the end of his cigar. He constantly questioned his Russian escorts. ?

Mr. Churchill closely inspected Hitler’s office and other parts of the Chancellery, and descended through a stench into the underground shelter where Hitler and Eva Braurr spent their last days before the fall of Ber-

lin. Mr. Churchill emerged with his face screwed up because of the smell. A photographer asked him to pose on the spot where Hitler is reported to have been bunted, but Mr. Churchill stalked off. Mr. Truman, preceded by an armoured escort, visited the ruins of the Reichstag and Hitler's Chancellery and other once-famous buildings. As his car stopped outside the wrecked and looted Chancellery, Mr. Truman shook his head and remarked: "It is a terrible thing, but they brought it on themselves. It demonstrates what man does when he over-reaches himself.” The “Daily Telegraph’s” Berlin correspondent says it was an extraordin-1 ary sensation to see Mr. Churchill, the bitterest foe of Nazism and the Ger-; mans’ most hated man, walking the ; streets among the Berlin crowd with I only a couple of detectives and a i handful of military police a.s a guard. I He was as much at ease as though ho j was strolling down Bond Street,! though the risk he ran must have! crossed the minds of most of those present.

A correspondent of the "Daily Express” says there is destruction everywhere in th? centre of Potsdam. A German told him that th? British raid last April tore the heart out of Potsdam. Th? Garrison Church, the burial | place of Frederick the Great, has only one wall standing.