Terror's Spawning

At high noon on May 10, 1940--the day Hitler's Panzer divisions began their drive toward France--from the cloudless sky over ancient Freiburg a thin drone insisted. The burghers were not alarmed. They glanced skyward, expecting to watch another Luftwaffe observation plane drift toward the French border ten miles to the west. Instead, they saw a formation of planes, sweeping in at great altitude from the north. Seconds later, the burghers and their women and children ran for cover, shrieking. Terror bombing of undefended cities on the western front had begun.

The next day the German nation read Freiburg's story in scare headlines: the French had bombed an open city, a peaceful university town. Eleven children, 46 others had been murdered. Hitler ranted that he could no longer hold to his pledge never to bomb an open city.

Last week, Freiburg again rated headlines. The South Baden State Chancellory, after a thorough investigation of the origin of the Freiburg bombing, had decided to make public its findings, "regardless of how frightful and humiliating." The Chancellory's report said:

"Hitler wanted to launch an attack [on France] with all possible speed and recklessness. But he was hindered by the fact that he had taken a public position against the bombing of open cities. . . .

"In order to free himself from this encumbrance, the first step in this merciless attack [on open cities] had to be attributed to the enemy. This could be done only by staging a fake attack on an open German city. For this purpose Freiburg [was] particularly suitable. . . ."

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