FIRST BLOW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1943, Page 4

FIRST BLOW

AGAINST AXIS BY EUROPEAN NEUTRAL SWEDISH TERMINATION. OF GERMAN MILITARY TRAFFIC (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) LONDON, August 5. The official announcement that the Swedish Government has cancelled the transit traffic agreement with Germany permitting unarmed German soldiers to pass through Sweden to and from Norway is the first blow against the Axis by a European neutral, says Reuter’s military correspondent. It is estimated that between 12,000 and 15,000 Germans were carried across Sweden weekly under the agreement, which has been in operation since June 1940.

The “Daily Telegraph's” Stockholm correspondent says that with nearly 500,000 troops guarding her frontiers, Sweden was determined to remove what had long been the main stumbling block to an improvement in her relations with the United Nations—the German transit traffic. The decision to cancel the agreement was based on a claim that a state of war or near war exists, de facto, 'in Norway today. This contention is based on large-scale British commando raids, heavy bombings of Trondheim, the presence of uniformed Allied guerillas in Norway and the activities of the Norwegian underground patriot army. The original concession was granted ’ to Germany in 1940 because a state of war had ceased to exist in Norway. Experts admit that one-third of the shipping tonnage now operating between Norway and Germany, carrying munitions and supplies, will have to be diverted to the transport of troops formerly carried across Sweden, thus exposing the German troops to constant attack in waters policed by British submarines and the R.A.F.