SUDDEN DEATH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 January 1942, Page 4

SUDDEN DEATH

NAZI ARMY COMMANDER

ATTRIBUTED TO STROKE

STATE FUNERAL ORDERED. (British Official Wireless.! RUGBY. January 17. The Berlin nows agency announced that Field Marshal von Richenau. who commanded an army on the Ukraine front, is dead as the result of a stroke while en route to Germany. Hitler has ordered a State funeral. ANOTHER STORY RICHENAU SHOT BY GESTAPO SQUAD. ACCORDING TO ANTI-NAZI RADIO. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright i (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, January 18. The secret anti-Nazi radio station, operating somewhere in Germany, declared that Marshal von Richenau’s death was the sequel to Moscow’s publication of his order. It asserted that Hitler summoned General von Richenau and shouted at him, saying it was due to his negligence that his order had fallen into the hands of the enemy and that the order should have been transmitted orally. The station added: “Marshal von Richenau died a quarter of an hour later —shot by a Gestapo squad.” The Tass Agency quoted a Stockholm report that the death of von Richenau had not surprised those in well-informed circles, who had no doubt that Himmler’s agents removed him, then hurriedly concocted the stroke story, which is all the more ridiculous because von Richenau was famous in Germany for his exceptional health and endurance.