ae

———

~The

By ALBERT NORDEN

Te West German government

of Chancellor Konrad Aden-
auer is proceeding with the re-
Militarization of West Germany,
€edless of whether other nations
Tatify the European Defense Com-
Munity treaties or not.

pate de facto West German War
Oe for instance, the “Blank
fice Which was founded three
Ay ago by Theodor Blank and
ve other Officials, today has
£Town to a mohster ministry with
0 officials—largest of all the
Ministries in the West German
Capital of Bonn.

& Without waiting for the revi-
10n of the West German Consti-
Ution which is legally necessary,
: 1S War Ministry has worked out
al) .vScription law, under which
for wale youth will be called up
or 18 months ‘service.

For a start the West German
atmy will consist of 550,000 men,
of whom 360,000 will serve in the
army, 80,000 in the air force,
50,000 in the navy, and the re-
maining 70,000 as service troops.

- , In addition, the job of mobilis-

_ kee, g

~ Beat

me 150,000 “volunteers” is al-
thee’ in full swing. Twenty
a eend of these “volunteers”
ag ct Present being incorporated
S Units in the U.S. forces in
‘tmany, under the command of
*tman and American. officers.

ante British occupation authori-
form, Germany have 70,000 uni-
Bare Members of the German
th “ice Organization serving in
rs British Zone, and taking part
an Titish manoeuvres; in the U.S.
ion” there is a similar organiza-
nown as the Industrial Pol-
0,000 strong.
ee US. occupation authorities
Dian: begun to form the In-
ing al Police into armed fight-
Units of battalion strength
Such
have been established
© towns of Esslingen and

Tg, an
grounds bs d at the manoeuvre

French zon

as pec battalions contain as high

and aeaga former SS officers

ment dumps of arms and equip-

ave or the new Wehrmacht
's. ‘lS been prepared by the
Zone authorities in the French
at Rin Such depots are situated
In the Sledelshof and Pirmasens.
at the ‘S. Zones there are dumps
th, ank depot in Karsfeld, and

@
Luftwafte depot near Erding.

rc
abot german General Staff was
Under the Potsdam
*, but it has been re-
i est_ Germany.
inger, Headed by General Heus-
Publisheq 2 his war memoirs,
i mn under the titlé Befehl
bitter crsteit, attacked Hitler
Britign 40? Not annihilating the
him he S™™Y at Dunkirk. Under
Mas ):180 staff officers, the
erly pouty of whom were for-
&ra) Stay mers of Hitler’s gen-

pel General Stumpf, for in-
i: Ritlers: Chief of General Staff
Ut t

prital ‘
“Ad oF

Co
Stan

Luftwaffe, and worked
Plans for the blitz on
€neral Dethleffsen was
€adership department

f Baumholder in the -
e.

In West German ae
ehrmacht

ts back |

A new Wehrmacht, under the old Nazi generals, is being created. -

of the Nazi General Staff, and thus
responsible for the main military
operations of the second World
War. ,

The president of the selection
committee for the appointment of
officers to the new Wehrmacht is

Lieutenant-General Kuntzen, who

commanded a tank division in the
invasion of France 13 years ago.

The West German War Minis-
try has already requisitioned a
series of former barracks in
Schleswig - Husum, Rendsburg,
Kiel, Luebeck, Ulm and other
places. Plans have lately been
completed for the construction of
250 new. barracks, each with a
capacity of between 1000 and ‘1200
men. Other plans call for the
immediate creation of 10 large
manoeuvre grounds, 20 airfields,
and naval anchorages.

(The new West Germany army,
which will be commanded by Nazi
generals, will receive atomic
weapons from the U.S., according
to. Industriekurier, West German
financial paper, on December 15.
It reported that French and Brit-
ish representatives on the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization had |
approved a U.S. proposal to this
effect.)

Another aspect ‘of the remili-
tarization of West Germany is the
great increase in the activity of
military associations and “veter-
ans’ organizations.” No less than
528 such groups are known to
exist.

They include groups with such

. Nazi names as Legion Kondor

(veterans of Hitler’s attack on
the Spanish Republic): the Third -
Interceptor Fighter Group Horst
Wessel (named after a Nazi
“hero,” the Berlin pimp Wessel);
the Hermann Goering Parachut- .
ists and the Fuehrer Grenadier
Division.

The work of these groups is
largely coordinated and comple-
mented by the Association of Ger-
man Soldiers with more than 3000
groups in almost every town and
village. This association is heavi-
ly subsidized by the U.S. authori-
ties.

As part of the propagandistie
and technical preparation of a
new Wehrmacht, there are more
than two dozen magazines in West
Germany today exclusively occu-
pied with military themes. The
number is actually greater than it
was under Hitler. Many of these
periodicals appear under the
same title and with the same
editor _as during the Nazi regime.

The Wehrtechnische Hefte, for
instance, a highly technical mili-
tary magazine for staff- officers,
stresses its identity with the Hit-
lerite paper of the same name.

*The Potsdam Declaration, sign-
ed on August 2, 1945, by J. V.
Stalin, Harry S. ‘Truman and
Clement R. Attlee, stated:

“The purposes of the occupation
of Germany... are:

“The complete disarmament and
demilitarization of Germany ...
all’ German fand, naval and air
forces . . . shall be completely -
and finally abolished in such a
manner as permanently to pre-

‘vent the revival or reorganization

of German militarism and nazism.
The maintenance and production
of all aircraft ‘and all arms, am-
munition and implements of war
shall be prevented.”

In East Germany--

By EMRYS HUGHES

WAS surprised to find how nor-

mal East Berlin had again be-
come. The Russian tanks were
gone and the only Russian
soldiers I saw on my first days’
look round were two who were in
@ musical instrument shop look-
ing at the concertinas, which had
been reduced in price.

Today the shops and markets
have a large variety of goods
which were not available in June.
Everybody with whom I spoke
agreed that the food situation
had improved. :

I saw a considerable quantity
of food imported from Russia and
Poland on sale. Russian tinned sal-
mon and crab and other tinned
fish from Poland seemed. to have
arrived in substantial quantities.

What the Germany in the East
seemed to be buying most were
technical textbooks, especially
those dealing with engineering
and architecture.

There is a good selection of
children’s books, but there is a
ban on American thrillers and
comic strips. At a children’s club
I found that a boy who bought
six comic strips on sale in the
West was given a beautiful Grim-
m’s Fairy Tales in return.

The most popular snacks at
the street kiosks seemed to be
hot sausage and roll, which is the
East German counterpart of our
fish and chips.

The anniversary of the Russian
Revolution was celebrated by a_

diplomatic reception at the Rus-

sian Embassy and parades, and I
saw large numbers of wreaths laid
on the Russian War Memorial,
which is just inside the British
Sector, near the Brandenburg
Gate. t

They were mostly from organi-
zations, trade unions and youth
clubs from East Berlin, though
there were one or two from the

They rebuild for peace

A low-rent, centrally-heated flat on East Berlin‘s Stalinallee. ©

West. Not only were there large
wreaths ... but I noticed ordin-
ary folk bringing small bunches
of flowers on which there was no
inscription, and laying them on

_the steps.

There are many Russian war
memorials scattered up and down
East Germany, which testify to
how fierce and merciless the
fighting was. The ages on the
plaques revealed how very young
were the Russian soldiers who
smashed Hitler’s armies in the
East. I saw one on the roadside
near Weimar where the average
age was only 19.

I saw more of the Russian
soldiers in passing through the
smaller towns where they are gar-
risoned . . . In some places they
are billetted on the inhabitants,
and I heard many stories of kind-

ly human relations when the’

soldiers had thawed and the uni-
form was forgotten.

I went to Leipzig primarily to
discover what had happened to
the book trade under a Commun-

ist government. The attitude of
the owners during the Hitler re- |
gime seemed to have been the
test as to whether or not a con-
cern should be nationalised with-
out any compensation being paid.

About 60 percent of the book
trade in Leipzig has been nation-
alised, while 40 percent remains
in private hands. Only if the
owners had been very actively
and aggressively Nazis were their
works nationalised.

One of the most important of
the nationalized concern employs
695 workers, men and women,
and turns out a very large
variety of all kinds of books and
prints for publishers in both East
and West. :

I had .expected to see the col-
lected works of Stalin, Lenin and
Marx, being turned out by the mil-
lions, but it was quite different.

They were producing all kinds
of productions ranging from cata-
logues for the export trade to col-
or reproductions on the finest oil
paper of the paintings of Leon-
ardo da Vinci and other old mast-

ers. They were printing the
Bibles and hymnaries of the Ger-
man Evangelistical Church... .

*

To Dresden on two terrible
days and nights in February 1945
tame the full retribution of the
war.... Nearly nine years after,
the centre of Dresden still looks
like a grim wilderness. It was only
in 1949 that the main-streets were
completely cleared.

They are painfully piecing the
statues together and building up
the most historic buildings. They
have finished the Rathaus, the
Town Hall, and the State Thea-
tre, and some of the art galleries.
They were busy at work on the
Catholic cathedral.

In East Germany all the emph-
asis in the propaganda is on the
fact that behind Dr. Adenauer
are the powerful industrialists
2nd the ex-generals who would
re-establish a reactionary regime
on Nazi or semi-Nazi lines once
again.

It must not be forgotten that
most of the men and women in
the East German government
served terms of imprisonment in
the Nazi concentration camps.

Can a really united, democratie
Germany emerge in the immedi-
ate future? It would be a good
thing for Europe if a neutral Ger-
many . . . could take the place of
the old nationalist aggressive Ger-
many that we have fought twice
in one generation.

If there would be some guaran-
tee of that, the fears of both
France and Russia, and indeed of
ourselves, would be allayed. For
the Germans have wonderful
qualities that could be used to
build up a peaceful economy in:
Europe, but they also have a
genius for war.

© This article by Emrys Hughes,
Labor MP for South Ayrshire,
‘ Scotland, is condensed from a
series originally written for
The Scotsman.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — FEBRUARY 19, 1954 _ PAGE 9