PLIGHT OF GERMANY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 July 1943, Page 4

PLIGHT OF GERMANY

UNDER RAIN OF ALLIED BOMBS. EXPOSED IN LETTERS TO SOLDIERS. Letters from Germany, which reached the addressees on the Soviet front, in spite of Nazi censorship, and later fell into the hands of the Soviet military authorities, indicate the effect the Allied air raids are having on the material values and minds of the “Herrenvolk.” Here as some extracts:— “Bremen is a picture of utter devastation." — (F. R. Klabe to Karl Rabens.)

“You ask what Bremen looks like today. It’s quite appalling.” (A certain “Annchen” to Bergmann, Fieldpost 31802 D.) “Duisberg no longer exists. The Tommies wrecked it completely, along with a number of other towns.” —(Letter to Willy Teussen, Fieldpost 16307 from his wife in Unterbirten.) “By the time you're due for leave the Ruhr and the Rhineland will be boarded up. All I can say is it’s time the war ended . “What a frightful form the war has assumed!” (Echerleben, of Duesseldotf, to Willy Meier, Fieldpost 040965.) “In the last raid not a single street was spared. Wherever you look round, near the station and in the city, everywhere are ruins and more ruins.” “It's possible even that there’s no point in raiding Cologne any more.”— (Ernst Kalb to F. Krapp, Fieldpost 25597.)

The Germans complain more and more of the bad A.R.P. organisation in many German cities. In Dusseldorf “there was no water for two hours and the fires raged unchecked,” — (Mariq Notebaum to N.C.O. Willy Notebaum, Fieldpost 07306 C.) “In one air raid on Duisburg, the alert was given only after the British had dropped their bombs.” —(H. Prien, Fieldpost 37826.) The same thing appears to have happened in Nuremburg and othei- cities. A letter informs Heinz Schildt, Fieldpost headquarters 11/261, that “when several hundred planes come over Hamburg at once the A.R.P. is worth nothing.” It is easy to visualise the plight of Nazi Germany and the disastrous discomfiture of the Hitler clique when the United Nations launch simultaneous combined attacks on the ground and in the air.—“ Soviet War News.”