Destruction, Unlimited?

Will the Germans, retreating to the Reich, do their best to leave the lost cities of Europe in utter ruin?

They did not wreck Naples. They did not wreck Rome. The fear that extremist Nazis intend to ravage the rest of Europe has been carefully cultivated by German terror propaganda. But the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, in the past no sucker for German propaganda, reported that such plans did exist. The paper's informants said that the catacombs and sewers of Paris were "stuffed with dynamite," that Warsaw, Prague, other cities were to be laid waste if the plans were carried out, that Berlin's frantic exploitation of Allied bomb damage was to be used to justify unlimited destruction.*

Die Weltwoche said that only a thoughtful minority of German leaders stood between Occupied Europe and the execution of the extremists' plans. This minority argued that Germany's one hope was to make no more enemies, do nothing to increase the huge postwar reparations bill. Germans who put forward this sensible argument must have remembered, with a shiver, Adolf Hitler's words last January: "In the end there will be no victors or losers, but only survivors and annihilated."

*Berlin radio told the world that flames swept the Rouen cathedral, destroying the roof, ruining the delicate, priceless rose window and melting the great bell which tolled when Joan of Arc burned.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.