Russians As “Missionaries”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 88, 30 August 1948, Page 5

Russians As “Missionaries”

FAIL TO EARN GERMANS’ TRUST (By Reece Smith, New Zealand Kemsley Empire Journalist) Berlin, July 27. “Your great advantage in your contest with Communism” a Berlin socialist said to me today, “is that the missionaries are Russians.” In this he drew attention to the tendency in London, and presumably throughout the Commonwealth, to see in the Berlin struggle, and kindred disputes, a political struggle against Communism. To Berliners it is a physical struggle against the Russians. They have had one taste’ of the Red Army in action, and do not want a second. A good part of their friendship for the British and Americans, with the French a poor third, in Berlin today is not any natural affection, but something more like supplication for protection. They would feel much the same were the Russians capitalists or even teetotallers. The same socialist went on to say, with much discretion, that, before Hitler the German communist party was quite strong. Indeed, the Nazis never really won Hamburg . over. The party there, he suggested, was more or less of German inspiration and growth. With respect to the Western allies—it is hard to tell whether a German is telling you what he feels, or what he thinks you would like to hear—he held that Communism as a creed was nowhere near such a bogey in Berlin as the evident presence of Red Army troops. The Red Army has put sections of crack units into the Berlin front window, excellently equipped and behaved compared to second line troops stationed down , io the Russian zone.

According to British intelligence officers, the reasons for the endeavours to pitchfork the Western powers out of Berlin are threefold. First, Russia has a spy phobia, as strong as ever the Japanese had. Berlin is to them a Western centre set 140 miles back into Soviet territory, and they do not look on it as a good idea. , Second, and more political, stems from the Russians being long accustomed to exercising political persuasion in occupied territories without opposition salesmen appearing with rival wares. Throughout Berlin, including the Soviet sector,' the elected mayor, Ernst Reuter,. ‘ whom the Russians will not allow to take his seat, the deputy mayor, Frau Schroeder, and Franz Neumann stand up and say just what they think of the blockade, and of , the Russian manipular tion of political office, and the like. Weak though German politicians may be throughout the bizonal area to the west, do not under-estimate these stalwarts of Berlin. Except for naming the specific wall, they know just where they will be if the Russians grab the city by force. Seeing their outspoken courage, Germans who otherwise might tag along with the Russians for the sake of a whole 1 skin and something their plate take heart. No one has been heard to estimate how Communism would fare, in ruined, hungry Berlin were it not fo v the Russian missionaries. The city is in the physical depths where Communism best blossoms. For the present the question is academic. The fear of the Red Army m Berlin, so it seems from conversations I have had, is something like the fear which would have swept New Zealand womenfolk in 1942 had they known a Japanese invasion to be imminent.