What Churchill

concealed

By MALCOM MacEWEN

theory that Sir Winston
Churchill is just a doddering
old fool, who can’t remember
what telegrams he sent in 1945,
and hardly knows what he is say-
ing in 1954, is not without its at-
tractions.

But it is not the whole truth.
It no longer really matters
whether he did send a telegram
to Field Marshal Bernard Mont-
gomery in 1945, ordering him to
stack captured German arms for
possible use by German troops
against the Russians.

For whether such a telegram -

can be found or not, Sir Winston
declared in the course of his re-
cent “apology” in the British
House of Commons that the tele-
gram accurately expressed the
ideas he held in 1945.

It was, he said, only one of
“scores of similar telegrams.”
a:

The real question to probe is
why Churchill was thinking of

arming the Germans at the very.

moment that the British Army
was uncovering the hideous tor-
tures and massacres of Belsen
and the other concentration
cemps.

It is easy to understand why he
kept his ideas a secret from the
Men and women in the armed
forces and the factories. They
would have torn Churchill limb
from limb had they known how
his mind was running.

Tt is easy to understand why he
concealed his conspiracy (for that
is what it amounted to) from the
peoples of the countries Germany
hed occupied and enslaved.

What would the French, not to
mention the Russians, have said
if Churchill had announced, as
he did on December 1:

“I did not judge the German
army of that time, whatever
may have been their political
label, by that label.

“I think the majority were
ordinary people compelled into
military service and fighting
desperately in defence of-their
native land.”

So, the Germans who marched

to Stalingrad, to Narvik, to El
slamein, to Greece and Marsel-
les, who left behind them the gas
chambers, the incinerators, the
death pits, the war graves and
the ruined cities, were really
patriots.
" At any rate, by the time they
had marched back to Berlin (not
w:thout a certain amount of prod-
ding) they were only “fighting
Gesperately in defence of their
native land.”

By 1945, Churchill was on the
German, not the Russian, side.
“The Soviet menace,” he wrote,
“had already replaced the Naz
foe.” <2
e 5
Churchill's excuse for prepar-
ing to arm the Germans is that
i’ was a reasonable precaution to
t;ke, in case the Russians march-
ed too far to the west.

But the Soviet Union never
kad any intention of marching
y.estward against Britain and the
United States. Nor-has it ever
had such an intention at any time.
This is a lie invented by the gov-
ernments of the Western powers

to justify their rearming, and
. used now as a pretext for restor-
ing arms to Hiiler’s generais.

At the very’ moment that
Churchill was sending these tele-
grams the Russians were already
giving proof of their loyalty by
withdrawing from parts of Aust-
ria which they had liberated, but
which fell within the agreed zone
of U.S. occupation.

The Russians did not march

WINSTON CHURCHILL

westward. It was Churchill who
planned a march eastward.

His war memoirs quote a mes-
sage sent to President Roosevelt
en April 1, 1945, in which ‘he
said:

“From a political standpoint
we should march as far east into
Germany as possible, and should
Berlin be in our grasp we should
certainly take it.”

His strategy, he says on page
400 of his memoirs (vol.-6), was
to create a new front against Rus-
sia “as far east as possible.”

When the fighting ended on
May 8 the U.S. armies had in fact
advanced 100 miles into the part
of Germany which, by agreement,
was to have been included in the
Soviet zone of occupation. °

The Allies were solemnly
pledged to withdraw into their
respective zones, but Churchill
immediately made secret propos-
als that the U.S. Army should tre-
fuse to do so until there had been
a “show-down and_ settlement”
with Russia. ;

Anthony Eden, who was in San
Francisco, received a frantic tele-
siam to this effect from Church-
ill on May 4. Churchill wanted
the show-down while the British

end U.S. armies were at full
strength.

His final effort was made in a
message to President Truman on
June 9, 1945, but Truman replied
on June 12.that the inter-Allied
agreement “made it impossible
to delay the withdrawal of Am-
erican troops from the Soviet
zone in order to press the settle-
r‘ent of other problems.” —

e

It is not without significance
that a “German government” un-
der Admiral Doenitz was kept in
being at Flensburg throughout
May 1945, and that surrendered
Cerman formations were kept in-
tact.

If Sir Winston was planning a
“show-down” with the Soviet
Union, by the full might of An-
gio-American power, it is easy to
understand why he thought it
might be useful to rearm the
Nazi soldiers.

Churchill’s plan for a “show-
down” was the only threat to
peace in Europe in 1945.

It remains the threat to peace

in Europe today. Churchill wants
to rearm Germany in 1954 not to
negotiate peace but to force. a
“show-down.” :

By LIEUT.-COLONEL
JOHN PURTON

[7 was a lovely morning when
1 Iooked out of the window
onto the clean, trim little har-
bor at the mouth of the River
Traue on the Baltic coast.

The fighting had just ended.
The last two days had seen tbe
mass surrender of the German
armies on our front. The
period of peaceful reconstruc-
tion had begun. :

Our occupation tasks were
to demilitarize, denazify and
democratize Germany.

Who was to govern the new
Germany? My thoughts turn-
ed to the concentration camp
inmates, the German under-
ground. Those who had suf-
fered most would be most de-
termined to change it all.
Those who had fought back
could be relied upon.

I asked for orders. Our
orders were to get hold of the
old regular police force and

appoint the senior official
mayor of the tewn. id
The militaristic Prussion

police, used by Hitler as a
source of recruits for his
armies, were to be given power
again. What a fine start! Per-
haps in time the real new
forces of democratic Germany
would be unearthed and help
us in our task. :

C) /

Several days later a German
appeared at battalion head-
quarters in our part of the old
city of Luebeck, where we had
now moved. He was wearing
an anti-fascist badge.

At that time we were not
supposed to fraternize with
Germans. That was Mont-
gomery’s supreme solution to
the German problem: no ques-
tion of sorting out the real
democrats, befriending them
and punishing all the Nazis.
The orders of the Christian
general were to reform the
Germans by ostracizing them.

Fortunately a knowledge of
German enabled me to arrange
unobtrusively with this anti-
fascist to meet in a small

talion headquarters.

My friends said they could
draw up lists of many Nazis,
civilian party members and
factory owners who should be
arrested immediately’ for war
crimes.

I promised to take the
leader of the group to our
Field Security Headquarters.
He was hesitant, as a result of
being long on the run from
the Nazis, and of a knowledge

of the sympathy shown to fas-

The betrayal
began in 1945

worker’s flat not far from bat-.

cism by the British ruling
class and army leaders before
the war. However we went.

Our visit was fruitless. The
interview at Field Security
Headquarters was used merely
as a means of screening this
German underground worker.

The British High Command
clearly sought respectable
businessmen and landowners
to put in charge of the new
Germany; the same classes as
had put Hitler in power and
planned two world wars. Be-
fore long I was to have furth-
er evidence of this.

A few weeks later we were
taking over from an American
battalion in the area of Magde-
burg on the Elbe. A British ,
colonel of the military gov-
ernment entertained me to
dinner. é

He was very pleased with
his charming German secre-
tary and equally pleased to
tell of a famous trick he had
played on the local anti-fas-
cists, 3

According to his story, the
director of a sugar factory had
been arrested for war crimes
and the leader of the anti-
fascists, a local doctor, had
been placed in charge of the
factory.

Such a thing was not to be
tolerated, a respectable busi-
nhessman put in jail and re-
Placed by an anti-fascist! So
he reversed their positions.

During the last months of
1945 I was in command of a
control unit responsible for
the 26th German Army Korps,
awaiting demobilization.

There was a complete army
corps staff with two lieutenant-
generals and 30 full colonels.
It was in complete violation of
our agreements with the other
Allies to keep a German army
formation in being, even | -
though disarmed and await-
ing demobilization.

Already a number of new
German units has been form-
ed totalling about 700. mem-
bers, by December 1945, for
doing transport and other work
for the British Army. F

Clearly this was the begin-
ning of the re-formation of
the German General Staff and
Germany army.

So, on the morning of vic-
tory, the agreed aims of de-
militarization, denazification
and democratization ‘were be-
trayed.

@ Lieut.-Col. John Purton,
MC, fought in Sicily, Italy
and Germany and at the

end of the Second World =
War was a British General
Staff officer.

Hitler’s backers to control atomic research

By PHYLLIS ROSNER

Tre German companies that
backed Hitler, and notably the
notorious 1I.G. Farben chemical
monopoly, are to play a leading
part in West Germany’s atomic
plans, if West German rearma-
ment is ratified..

The menace of this develop-
ment is underlined by an official
announcement from Bonn that
once West German rearmament
is ratified a full program of
atomic research is to be carried
out.

Under the seemingly harmless
title of “Society for Physical Re-
search,” 16 leading West German
chemical, electrical, engineering
and other firms have combined,
with the backing of the Adenauer

government, to carry out the
atomic plans.

And among the 16 firms are the
successors to the notorious I.G.
‘Farben and the Siemens concerns.
The “society” has its headquar-
ters in Duesseldorf, centre of the
Ruhr steel magnates. :

Full U.S. backing is to be giv-
en to these plans, for the chair-
man of the “society” is Dr. Boetz:
kes, of the West German Industry

Credit Bank, which also dis-
tributes U.S. “dollar aid” in West
Germany. See

The former I.G. Farben works
at Leverkusen, now called Bayer
Werke A. G., is to treat iron ore
to produce uranium salt.

Another former LG. Farben
plant at Ludwigshafen, now call-

ed Badische Anilin und Sodaia-

briken, has the dominating con-
trol in the Frankfurt firm of
Degussa which will produce the
pure uranium.

Another former LG. Farben
concern, Farbwerke Hoechst, has
just announced that it has enter-
ed ‘into partnership with U.S.
chemical firms to establish a new
company in Brazil with U.S. “dol-
lar aid.”

In February 1933, I.G. Farben
gave 400,000 marks of the three
million marks contributed by Ger-
many’s industrial magnates, in-
cluding Krupps, to Hitler’s funds.

It was LG. Farben which be-
fore the war had tie-ups with U.S.
firms like Du Pont de Nemours,
Standard Oil and others to: help
Hitler’s war preparations.

The LG. Farben contacts with

Standard Oil continued after the
war began and, in the words of a
Standard Oil executive, they
worked out “a modus vivendi
which would operate through the
term of the war. whether or not
the U.S.,came in.” ;

- Today IG. Farben has got its
own men in:leading positions in
the Adenauer government, par-
ticularly in diplomatic posts in

the West German Foreign Ser-_

vice. f

The financial and technical re-
sources of the firms who backed
Hitler are to be combined with —
the scientific knowledge of the
man who directed the Nazis’
atom bomb research, Professor
Heisenberg, to ensure that West —
Germany gets an atomic pile in
record time. <*

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — DECEMBER 17, 1954 — PAGE 10