BANDIT TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1943, Page 4

BANDIT TACTICS

WHOLESALE NAZI LOOTING & DESTRUCTION. PEOPLE TAKING VENGEANCE WHEN THEY CAN. (Received This Day, 12.55 p.m.) LONDON, October 6. Among documents captured when Major Rau (commander of a German army group) was captured in Teimoli, was an order to Hermann Goering engineer battalions to destroy everything of the slightest value to the Allies, particularly railway lines and other means of transport, also buildings of military value, and even flour mills. Reuter's correspondent at Allied Headquarters says the Germans interpreted the order so literally that they took even bicycles and carried off loot in perambulators. The Germans in one village burned 30 tons of grain before the eyes of hungry men, women and children. Italian peasants, when they get an opportunity, avenge themselves. In one village they attacked four German stragglers who had been looting. They killed one and left the others for dead. Our troops found these seriously wounded. The Germans are most anxious about the speed of the Allied advances, says Reuters’ correspondent with the Eighth Army. Marshal Kesselring has ordered his troops to “hold or die,” as the only alternative to a general withdrawal to Rome.