GAULEITERS FOR N.Z.

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 9, 11 September 1945, Page 5

GAULEITERS FOR N.Z.

EFFORTS TO CONVERT PRISONERS FAIL Had the Allies lost the war ? New Zealand would with the rest o!' the world, have become, incorporated in the German Reich and three men had already been sorted out to come out here and run the country for the Fuehrer. So Captain Arthur McGregor of lnvcrcargill 5 one of the repatriated prisoners of war ? assured the Southland News in an interview, Captain McGregor added that he had met these three men at the big German propaganda camp where efforts were made to indoctrinate selected prisoners of war personnel with the Nazi ideology—efforts which lie added, met with a singular lack of success. One of these three men was all set to take up his quarters in Wellington and there practice Nazi culture on the people of New Zealand in the best concentration camp tradition. Others were to go to South Africa as gauleiters with plans of the newest and most up to date concentration camps equipped with all modern conveniences— whipping barbed wire dungeons and armed guards. in e.vcept sanitation and food.

Deep Dislike These are the people for wh'om Captain McGregor has brought back with him a deep and abiding dislike. "You have heard plenty about Bclsen, Buchenwald and Dachau and other concentration he said ? "and'you have seen pictures of the starving slaves and you have heard that of course the. Germans 9 y treated the Allied prisoners differently—that they were better fed and better looked after generally. But believe nw had it not been for the Red Cross every one of the Allied prisoners would have been in just the same condition as the oners of the slave races. As a race the Germans are absolutely callous —you will tind a few exceptions, of even among the SS troops —but I am speaking of them as a and for a nation which claims to be advanced they had the. worst form of sanitation possible even among themselves. Of in the prison camps it was and the conditions were appalling and unbelievable. There would for

instance, be one tap for 3000 men."

He spoke of lice and fleas in these samps and of the utter callous, ness and indifference of the Germans to the sick. All cases of illness were handled by the .Red Cross —the Germans did nothing. A man stricken with tuberculosis, would lie thrown into another room and left there until discovered and treated by the Red Cross. 'They are a people I can't make out at all " he said. Something of this peculiar German mentality is illustrated by photographs in the latest English illustrated newspapers showing German women being ordered back to see the atrocity films after laughing at a British newsreel of Kuchenwald.

Propaganda Camp

The propaganda camp, Captain McGregor said ? was a most elaborate affair where the Germans made tremendous efforts to convince their "students" what a grand thing it was to be a Nazi. "They did their best with the. heaviest line of propaganda he .said ? "but 'got no converts, least of all from the English l and the New Zealanders. But they are the most callous atxl smooth type, of people I have ever seen and that in itself is sufficient

to turn a decent man's stomach. They were very keen on their efforts with the South Africans and employed an SS general to work on them. Lt is commonly supposed that Hitler concentrated most of his efforts on German youth but 1 am quite satisfied from what I saw he also worked on the housewife and on elderly people generally. Everywhere I saw nice little homes which must have gone a long way towards helping the Nazi campaign. Certainly they were jerry-built and many of them are now beginning to fall down but they were at least 100 per »ent., better than what these people had had before Hitler came

into power."

The New Zealanders he said were

J > held in high regard among the Germans and for Captain Charlie Upham > V.C. t.hey had a wholesome respect. "Upham did things for which I or anyone else would hav

been 'killed " said Captain McGregor "but it was made pretty clear to the Germans that he stood for everything that the New Zealanders honoured most in their soldiers and if anything happened to him it wouldbe just too bad after the war. He was a great trouble 'o them and iit, the end they shifted him to a strafat camp where the King's relatives ajjtl' Stalin's son were kept."