MEN IN GERMANY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 August 1941, Page 6

MEN IN GERMANY

NINETY PER CENT SAID TO BE MOBILISED HEAVY CALL ON WOMEN & PRISONERS. ENORMOUS DESTRUCTION IN BRITISH RAIDS. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.30 p.m.) WASHINGTON, August 8. A foreign diplomat recently transferred from Germany to Washington said that practically all German men between the ages of 18 and 65 years were now in uniform. He estimates that more than ninety per cent of the ablebedied German males have been mobilised. Germany is relying upon women and about 1,500,000 French, Polish. Czech and Belgian prisoners to work farms, factories and mines. The Poles are assigned to mines and heavy labcur. French prisoners, still in tattered uniforms, are preferred -as farmers. Belgian and Dutch women have been imported to do housework. The diplomat said the R.A.F. bombings of Hamburg, Bremen and the Rhineland had caused enormous destruction to industries and harbours, but the Krupp armament works at Essen and other war factories in the Ruhi- had escaped serious damage. The diplomat believes this is because they are protected by dense clouds of artificially manufactured fog. He said that wherever he went he found great numbers of German families who had lest their men, but it was considered unpatriotic for women to cry over the dead or openly to discuss their losses. The cost of living was mounting and Army demands intensified shortages of food, textiles and footwear.