AGE SIX T . HE MICHIGAN DAILY*Alft PAi-, P. SST AY ; m Y 0. 1044' THs ti n _.. a¢s1E 1.s HIEEANA. DA[TTlE l .d P c1i T/AI..TI' * ~ 1.7 q.+1 $.V a U _/a1 i V, LO22 Vengeance-Mad Nazis Destroy Greek and French Villages Over 2,000 Massacred Both Towns Are Reported Burned By the Associated Press Cold-blooded massacres of virtual- ly the entire populations of the Greek village of Distomo and the French village of Orado-sur-Glane and burning of both towns by ven- geance-mad German soldiers 'were reported in accounts reaching New York Saturday. The Greek puppet government an- nounced the Distomo slaughter, in which 1,000 persons died, saying it occurred on June 10, the second anni- versary of the massacre and destruc- tion of Lidice in Czechoslovakia. BBC Reports Story The' story of the French village 12 miles northwest of Limoges in central France, came from the British Broadcasting Corporation, which said 1,100 out of a population of 1,200 were slain. The Greek puppet communique, a copy of which was received Friday in Izmir (Smyrna) Turkey, said the populace was shot and the town burned in reprisal for the deaths of 30 German soldiers in a fight with guerrillas the previous day. At Lidice, which the Germans themselves announced was destroyed in reprisal for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, "protector" of Bohemia-Moravia, the men were killed and the women and children carried away. Men, Women, Babies Slaughtered But at Distomo, according to infor- mation received among Greeks in Izmir, men, women and wailing ba- bies were slaughtered impersonally. This account said that after the guerrilla battle on June 9, German SS (Elite Guard) troops on the after- noon of June 10 surrounded Distomo, herded all inhabitants into the pub- lic square, and there chopped them down with machine-guns. Then, the account said, German troopers walked among the massed -corpses, firing pistol bullets into the head of every body that twitched, and trampling the life out of any infants who had been shielded by their mothers' bodies. Then they burned the village down over its dead. Red Cross Barred Representatives of the Red Cross were not allowed near the spot until June 14, the report said, and then they found only a few half-mad children who had hidden in the. woods. The village, known to many Ameri- can tourists, was 65 miles northwest of Athens and ten miles southeast of Delphi in a region famous in ancient Greek history and mythology. The British radio account of the French village was in many respects tragically similar to that from Greece. The broadcast; recorded in New York by CBS, said: "The Germans demanded the sur- render of patriots who'had killed four German soldiers, and when there was no response, prepared to kill 50 hos- tages. "The patriots replied with another attack on the Germans, who de- stroyed the entire village. INTERPRETING THE WAR NEWS: Germans Must Form New Plans By KIRKE L. SIMPSON Associated Press WarLnayst Imperative necessity of shortening Nazi battle fronts drastically some- where to meet the triple Allied at-f tack from East, South and North was forcing the German High Com- mand at the week end toward deci- sions that must go far to shape the nature of the war in the critical months before winter closes down again in Europe. The cumulative effect of three- front warfare attrition was sap- ping enemy reserves in both man- power and materiel in Italy and France, but most of all in Russia and Poland. It left him small choice but wholesale retreat cer- tainly in the East, probably in the South and possibly in the West to stand seige within the inner ramparts of his tottering conti- nental fortress. There can be no doubt that if the sweeping Russian break- through from White Russia to converge on every key communication junction in Poland and the lower Baltic states from Brest Litovsk to Dvinsk was not aided by a German attempt to fall back slowly to the Bug-Baltic inner defense line from which the attack on Russia was launched, it represents the major Nazi defeat of the war. The Baltic sioases and Finland are all but lost now to Germany. In the West her effort to contain the Allied invasion bridgehead in Normandy is rising to its crisis. Only commitment of major Nazi strategic reserves to decisive bat- tle in that most remote theater on the western front conceivably could wall off General Eisenhow- er's ever growing invasion army. That German connanders in Italy and in the east are desperately pleading for reinforcements also goes without saying. Russian forces were less than 100 miles from Germany's own frontiers in East Prussia at the week end. On the war maps, at least, and by Mos- cow front line reports, the enemy plight on whole Baltic flank of the line seemed so grave that it must dominate German Nigh Command deliberations. That front necessar- ily must have first call on available reserves. A decisive test oi that conclusion nay be close at hand in Italy. The Allied advance up the Italian Penin- sula boot is drawing close to the first short and naturally strong de- fense position to be reached in the German retreat from Rome, the so- called Gothic Line. It spans the pe- ninsula from the Ligurian seacoast in the west above Leghorn (Livorno) to the vicinity of Rimini on the Adri- atic. It remains to be seen whether events in the East and in the West exerting compelling pressure on the German High Command to move heavy reserves in both di- rections may not result in enemy abandonment of the whole Italian peninsula with no more than de- laying actions. SAIPAN'S CAPITAL SHATTERED BY YANK ATTACK--Wreckage of what once was a part of Gara- pan, capital of Saipan in the Marianas, 'shows the effect of Yank air, land and sea bombardment. This scene was on June 28 when Garapan still was in Japanese hands. Americans since have seized the city. Heavy Aerial Blows Struck at German Robot Bomb Ramps Overwhelming Allied Air Power Supports Montgomery's Troops in Normandy By the Associated Press LONDON, July 8.-Every type of aircraft at the command of the Allies was hurled at the Nazi war machine in the west today in an awesome display of supremacy in the skies, striking heavy twin blows at the robot bomb ramps and stor- age places and hitting savagely in support of Gen. Montgomery's troops fighting to take Caen in Normandy. The great blows at the robot bombs coincided with the longest respite in southern England from the eerie weapons since those at- tacks began, but after nightfall they came winging over again. But there was no doubt the raids had been ef- fective. Cavern Collapsed They were opened by an earth- quake attack by Lancasters which dropped six-ton bombs on great limestone caves at St. Leu-D'Esser- ent, 30 miles north of Paris, collaps- ing one of the caverns which served as a robot bomb supply depot. This was followed later by assaults on launching ramps by American heavy bombers. Meanwhile British and American bombers and fighter-bombers rained loads of explosives on German-held Caen in a display whose deafening din awed even the front line troops crouched before the city At least one of the 12,000-pound bombs hurled at the robot storage caverns on the Oise River ripped through the earth and inside a cave. Robots Believed Buried "This produced a great subsidence of earth, 540 by 300 feet in area, and masses of rock and soil must have callapsed into the cave below," said the air ministry, raising a pos- sibility that hundreds of the death- dealing robots, along with Nazi per- sonnel, were buried. Aerial reconnaissance showed the earth had collapsed around both en- trances, and there were fresh cave- ins on top of the bomb storehouse. The Air Ministry said tonight that "the approaches to the cave now are covered by a dense concentration of craters." The heavy Lancasters strewed their six-ton bombs over the roads and railways leading to the cave and the landing stage at the river's edge, 60 feet below. Pas de Calais Area Hit Up to 500 American Flying Fort- resses and Liberators, escorted by perhaps 750 Thunderbolts, Mustangs and Lightnings, dlumped thousands of tons of bombs on the robot ramps in the Pas de Calais area of northern France. Peace Terms Spur Nazis On MADRID, July 8.-(/P)-Nazi Pro- paganda' Minister Paul Josef Goeb- bels, writing in "Das Reich" today, said that "the greatest political er- ror our adversaries committed in this war was imposing a war of life and death on the Reich." In Madrid, where the frequency of peace editorials led correspondents to watch for feelers in a peace cam- paign, the statement was interpreted as a complaint that Germany has no way out of the war, and as a clear suggestion that Germany would be pleased if the Allies would give them- something better than uncondition- al surrender terms. Japanese Fail In Defending 1omeland Area By the Associated Press WASHINGTON, July 8.-Japanese inability to put up effective defense over some of their most vital home- land areas was emphasized today by airmen studying the latest attack of the United States Fleet of super- fortresses on the enemy in Asia. The mission of China-based B-29s which hit five targets, three of them on the home island of Kyushu in a Friday night raid, returned without loss of aircraft after encountering only "very weak fighter opposition and meager anti-aircraft fire," a communique by the 20th Air Force Headquarters said today. Supply System Hit A spawning bed for the Japanese Navy and the supply system. of the enemy's land armies in China were hit in the latest operation. The com- munique reported that Sasebo, Ja- pan's third largest naval base, "re- ceived the heaviest bomb load" of the mission which also rained de- struction upon Yawata and Omura, all three targets being located on Kyushu Island at the southern end of the Japanese chain. Almost as vital as Sasebo to the fleet-building and repair efforts of the enemy are the steel-producing factories at Yaw- ata and Omura. China Targets Pounded The mission also pounded two tar- gets in occupied China, Laoyao, a coal and shipping port on the north China coast and Hankow on the Yangtze River, 450 miles inland, which has been bombed often by Maj.-Gen. Claire Chennault's 14th Air Force. Through both of these ports funnel supplies and. reinforce- ments for the enemy's columns now attempting to split Free China and seize American air fields. L BOOKS ... lew and Z'e4 MM TEXTS AND MATERIALS for EVERY COURSE IN ALL DEPARTMENTS New book shipments coming in every hour. Books that were out of stock are now in. WAHR'S BOOKSTORES 316 South State . . ,1 I I Q DON iT RELAX BUY BONDS Above striped f. cotton pajama rf wonder at $4 You'll practically live in cot- Sabotage, Street Fights, Strikes Tear Cities of Northern Italy ton from now on! Come see I, our fashion-fresh collection- Below: Pastel cotton date AT THE ITALIAN FRONTIER, July 8.-(I)-Sabotage, street fight- ing and violent strikes in German- held northern Italian cities are bring- ing murderous but ineffectual reac- tion from the Nazis, according to reports reaching here today. From Chiasso the Swiss telegraph agency reported that Italian Parti- sans had begun a general attack on German army communications throughout Tuscany and that street battles were in progress in the impor- tant port of Livorno (Leghorn), which is being threatened by the Allied advance northward. A dispatch from Turin said the Nazis had turned harbor guns on the homes of striking dockworkers in Genoa after seven German soldiers had been killed. The Nazis then roped off the, streets, made mass arrests, and summarily shot many persons without trial, this account said. Others were shipped to Ger- many for slave labor. 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