STREET DEFENCES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 January 1943, Page 3

STREET DEFENCES

NEW MOVE IN BERLIN FEVERISH ACTIVITY. PURPOSE NOT DISCLOSED. The storm which is now sweeping over Africa has filled with electricity not only the sky on the Mediterranean shores, but also the sky of Germany, reports Edmond de Maitre, Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Express. Although the dark clouds which stai t to cover Hitler’s Third Reich do not yet discharge any lightnng. the atmossphere is now tenser than it has evei been since the Nazis started their devastating march toward world domination. But the Nazi's are practical people. They do not wonder what to-morrow will bring and when the storm will break; they act. During recent weeks hundreds of corner houses in Berlin and other “strategically important” buildings have been expropriated by the Gestapo and S.S., which—supported by the “Speer organisation"—are now feverishly turning them into strong points. STEEL AND CONCRETE. Windows on the bottom and first floors are transformed, walls are given

steel or concrete supports. In some cases buildings are handed back to the proprietors when the work is completed. But in the case of “strategically important’ buildings they remain in possession of the S.S. Such has been the case—io quote one typical instance —of the Hotel an Knie, situated at the crossing of Kaiser Allee and Hardenberg Strasse. Guns mounted on the top of this building could easily sweep the Ost-West Axe. a new-ly-built, broad avenue running from Brandenburger Thor in the direction of Charlottenburg. _ • These preparations are going on. What purpose they are serving no one knows. To fight an enemy attempting to penetrate the German capital? To suppress an eventual rising of Germans? The Nazis are perhaps envisaging both. It is rumoured in Berlin ’that S.S. officers who participated in the Stalingrad battle have been recently recalled from the front in order to supervise the fortification of Berlin and train picked S.S. troops in street-fighting on the Russian pattern.