INVENTED CHARGES AGAINST BALKAN STATES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1941, Page 6

INVENTED CHARGES AGAINST BALKAN STATES

Talk of “Counter-Offensive” AGAINST COUNTRIES THAT NEVER THREATENED GERMANY STRONG RESISTANCE ADMITTED IN STRUMA V ALLEY. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Dav, Noon.) RUGBY, April 6. In London there is as yet no news of fighting in the Balkans resulting from Hitler ’s new aggression, except what conies from German sources. . A German communique mentions acts of violation of the Greek and Yugoslav frontiers this morning, and later bombing attacks. The same communique, in describing as a “counteroffensive” this fresh onslaught on two peoples which never threatened Germany, gives the key to long propaganda statements emerging in almost identical form from Berlin and Rome. The model adopted in Hitler’s brutal descent on Norway is closely followed in a parade of fabulous accounts of a British conspiracy and allegations of the connivance therein of local leaders. The world knows that British diplomacy in the Balkans persistently sought to prevent the spread of. hostilities. It was for that purpose, as stated at the time, that the British Foreign Secretary (Mr Anthony Eden) went again to Athens. As to the Yugoslav leaders, it may be assumed that, like their predecessors in falling victim to Nazi outrage, they determined not to risk compromising the neutrality it was their whole concern to preserve. 21n official statement in Rome associates Italy with the Nazi attack on Yugoslavia. Characteristic touches in the German communique are the use of the name “Serbia” for Yugoslavia and the description of the capital, which has been twice bombed, although it was declared an open city by the Yugoslav authorities, as the “fortress of Belgrade.”

A German communique admits that German troops met with stubborn resistance in the Struma Valley.