NAZIS IN SYRIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 June 1941, Page 5

NAZIS IN SYRIA

I COUNTRY VIRTUALLY TAKEN I OVER ACCOMMODATION FOR NAVAL CRAFT. IMPROVEMENT OF AERODROMES. LONDON, June 6. A “Daily Express” correspondent on the Syrian frontier says that Dr. von Roser, Hitler's “under-cover man” in Syria, virtually took over the country j from the French yesterday. A great round-up of anti-Nazis began in Beirut, where security police in a house-to-house search roped in hundreds of the pro-British element and sent them to Damascus in the interior. The Germans warned the naval base authorities at Beirut that they must soon make room for German E-boats and submarines, which must be given equal facilities to the French navy. According to the Istanbul correspondent of the British United Press, a German ground staff is now completely in control of the Palmyra aerodrome. The Beirut correspondent of the “Palestine Post” reports, however, that Germans have not yet appeared in appreciable numbers in Beirut and Aleppo, but says that a group of German experts has inspected all the aerodromes in Syria and Lebanon with the object of making them serviceable for the Luftwaffe. The Germans have drawn up plans for improvement of. the aerodromes, on which the French have started work.

In spite of anti-aircraft fire, British planes today bombed the oil area in Beirut, starting large fires, this correspondent says. A later message from Ankara says it is reliably reported that German personnel have occupied the aerodromes at Damascus and Aleppo as well as Palmyra.

The Nazi-controlled Brussels radio reports that General Wcygand will shortly be visiting Syria to co-ordin-ate defence measures against what is described as British aggression. The Paris radio reports a violent attack on the United States Ambassador to Vichy, by a German controlled paper, which stated that on the. daj' the Governjncnt handed him his credentials there would be one enemy less on the soil of France.