NAZI “SPORT”

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21215, 11 September 1940, Page 5

NAZI “SPORT”

DEVASTATION IN FRANCE LITTLE RE-BUILDING DONE (Times Air Mail Service) LONDON, July 31 Nazi dive-bombers which devastated many towns of Northern France left the churches standing, states the Daily Herald. “It was sport for the dive-bomb-ers to try to avoid hitting the churches,” a German soldier told a neutral correspondent, who has just arrived in Paris. Time after time I saw a church spire untouched, while every other building in the vicinity was levelled in a mass of debris, writes the correspondent. 1 saw French peasants, with expressionless faces, poking among the ruins of their villages and homes. They did not talk to each other. They were ragged. Among them were often mothers with half naked children. In my tour of Northern France I found little yet done to rehabilitate the bomb-wrecked towns and roads. Only essential streets have been cleared to permit traffic, most of which is military lorries, to pass, under the direction of German police. Back to Germany Alsace-Lorraine, the border territory which passed from Germany to France under the Versailles Treaty, is German again today. Customs barriers have been removed, and everywhere in the towns the street names have been changed. Any former Marshal Foch Avenue or street becomes Adolf Hitler Strasse. | Boards are nailed up over the broken windows of Jewish shops, and shutters over the broken windows of synagogues ir. several towns of this region indicate that the interiors have been wrecked.