THE RICHEST MAN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 10, 30 January 1942, Page 2

THE RICHEST MAN

LOOTS OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

Germans are beginning to wake up to the that Hermann Goering's Four Year Plan for German industrjr is making him the richest man in the world, says the Sunday Express. It was on July 31, J937, that Goering got himself appointed plenipotentiary for the carrying out of the Four Year Plan. It was the smartest piece of work lie ever did. Two days later he founded the Goering Works Avith a capital of five million marks. He made German firms surrender their exploitation rights in exchange lor shares in the J new enterprise. Then he thought it would make for greater efficiency if he-took over the great Rheinstahl B:>rsig armament works. Hitler's territorial ambitions meant some wonderful pickings for Goering, as hn incorporated! into the Riechswerke Hermann Goering all the worth-while industrial concerns ol the countries successively mopped up by Germany. In Austria and Czechoslovakia he picked up at one swoop the groat

| metal plants of the Alpine Monlangeselischaft, the Skoda works, the munition factory in Brno, where the Bren gun was first made, the iron works at Witkowiee (previously owned by Rothschilds). In Lorraine lie took over the whole of the heavy industry. In-Pol-ish Upper Silesia he appropriated every foundry and colliery owned by cither Poles or Jews.

The picture would not be com- | p!ete if Goering did not. control the Freuhandstelle Gst, the huge concern formed to run the heavy industries of German-occupied Poland, He docs—and this "loot" is almost astronomical. In Poland alone Goering lias taken over 294 large factories/