GERMANS IN ROME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 October 1943, Page 3

GERMANS IN ROME

REPORTED TO BE LOOTING AND KILLING SIGNS OF IMPENDING EVACUATION VATICAN PREPARING FOR WORST ANXIETY FOR THE POPE (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 7. A critical situation has developed in Rome where, according to news reaching London from many sources, the Germans are acting as they did before the fail of Naples. The reports mention sackings, killings, the removal of Ministries and, in fact, all the preliminaries to an eventual evacuation. The Germans are looting Rome. They are stated to be removing paintings, old manuscripts, art treasures and anything else that is valuable. It is stated that no gangster methods have ever equalled what is occurring in Rome. The Madrid correspondent of. the “Daily Mail” says that the Vatican authorities are preparing for the worst, even for the possible carrying off of the Pope as a hostage. The Pojje has sent to representatives abroad a document which is to be published only if he is imprisoned or removed from Rome. PAPAL PRECAUTION In this document the Pope is understood to have declared that he would never leave Rome voluntarily but only as a prisoner. The Papal Nuncios throughout the world will present the documents to the Governments to which they are accredited if the Germans announce that the Pope has taken up residence elsewhere “to ensure his personal safety.” All the Vatican buildings which enjoy rights of extraterritoriality are being clearly designated in case fighting occurs round the city. “As Rome has been a war zone for 48 hours and the Italian Army has not taken adequate measures to protect the Vatican, German paratroops have taken over this task, and we are sure of the Holy Father's full understanding in this.” said the German overseas radio. “The Vatican authorities have ordered the construction of a modern barracks for our troops so that they need no longer pass the night in open cars. A hospital for our sick and wounded has been established in the Vatican. “Rome is not an occupied but a friendly city. The German forces are relatively small in order to. give Rome the character of an open city, but the German commander naturally exercises control and makes himself responsible for the security of the inhabitants. The Italian police have been armed and given equipment necessary to deal with the Communist elements. There are at present food supplies in Rome for 10 or 16 days.” ALLEGED KIDNAPPING PLOT ' A plot to kidnap the Pope and remove him “to a place of security outside the reach of the British and Americans” is reported from the Italian frontier, says the “New York Times" Berne correspondent. The plot failed, and the ringleaders, some discredited Black Shirts, were arrested. The truth of the story, which has caused great apprehension in Catholic quarters, cannot be ascertained, but it is considered significant that the Nazi-sponsored Italian radio warned its listeners that the Allies were planning to kidnap the Pope in order to use his name as a propaganda weapon against the Axis. Meanwhile, says the correspondent, the anti-Axis partisans’ operations in northern Italy have attained the pitch of outright warfare. For example, in the Como region 4000 Alpini have cleared more than 100 square miles of territory, and on other sectors, including Milan, the Germans have given up further attempts to maintain their railway communications in face of the partisan sabotage. FASCISTS MOVE NORTH. According to Rome radio, the Fascist Republican Government has moved from Rome to an industrial city in northern Italy, ome’s newspapers and the official news service will follow to the same city, and the Ministers are also being moved. The radio added: “The Foreign Ministry is always where Signor Mussolini is, and therefore it has no fixed headquarters.” The “Daily Express” says the Germans are talking openly of the Allied threat to Rome. The “Borsen Zeitung” states that Mussolini’s Government has been transferred north from Rome because the war can no longer be directed from the capital, which is endangered from the sea, while its communica-

tion lines may be cut off because of the nearness of enemy airfields. Other sources refer to a slate of seige in Rome, with the people bordering on starvation. The ‘Daily Express” correspondent on the Eighth Army front says: “The Germans are now fighting with a kind of desperate energy which they have not shown before, and are laying waste to everything possible between here and Rome. It seems clear that Kesselring aims somehow at holding the Allies in the south, hoping they will be caught by the winter. It has been raining lightly every day for the past week, and the early mornings in the mountains are bitterly cold. Streams which recently were dry are now filling up. “Prisoners report that there is much complaint in the German lines of tiredness and lack of reinforcements. They say that Rommel is sending nothing from the north.” FOOD FOR NEAPOLITANS. Several hundred thousand loaves baked from flour brought in by the Allies provided the inhabitants of Naples yesterday with the first bread they had eaten for over two months. Food had arrived by ship and road convoy, says a correspondent, and is being distributed through the civil rationing channels. The correspondent reveals that two days before the announcement of Italy’s surrender and the Allied invasion, the Germans stationed in Naples left in a violent hurry. Italian naval officers told him that the Germans did not return till September 11, the day after the Allied landing in Salerno bay. On the night that the Fifth Army landed Naples was actually wide open.

From the time the Germans returned till the Fifth Army relieved the city three weeks later, the Neapolitans lived under a reign of terror. At least 70,000 young Italians were forbidden to doff their uniforms, under pain of death, and within a week all were taken away under guard. They have not been heard of since. It is believed that they have been taken north to build defences.