News Agency Quotes Secret Plan

Chronicle (Levin), 21 June 1948, Page 5

News Agency Quotes Secret Plan

( N.Z.P.A ,

-- -ii--- 1 "V ~!J~. —Reuter.

Copyright)

Received Monday, 10.45 a.m. kONDQN, June 20. Russian troops and German police have formed a no-man's-land along the whole western demarkation line of Germany from 12 to 25 miles wide, aecording to the German news ageney Dena. The agency also quoted confidential reports that the Russians plan to close the frontier suddenly and copipletely early tomorrow.

In Moscow the newspaper Pravda . said today that the Western German currency reform had created \ the "prerequisites for the complete > political separation of the Western Zones, and the international boyders will now be more UHe state frontiers than lines of demarkation." British transport offieials in Berlin said that the Russians had reduced rail freight traffic bearing supplies for Berlin's population by 40 per cent by their insistenGe upon rigidly inspecting the cargoes and train crews. The money changing went off smoothly for the most part, but in Hamburg the money arrived two hours late at the exchange offices and the police had trouble in holding back the impatient crowds. The British authorities at a British border post on the road to Berlin confiscated from German travellers to and from the Soviet ' Zone all their old marks except 60. The Russians turned some of them back, but the British authorities refused to return their money. A frontier control officer explained that the measure was meant to hit blackmarket pperators. It was a heavy blow to Germans residing in the Soviet Zone, where the old marks are still good. ^ Although tlie average German is ready to vvelcome the introduction of tlie new currency, becau.se it ineaus that the iuark will now Imv something, German oflicials are less entlinsiastic and sav the reform has not i'ulfilled maiiy German desires. Tlie immediate prospects for the Western Germans are: (1) The average wage-earner feels he has little to lose; lie has 60 marks, with the prospect that this and his fnture earnings will be worth more than before. (2) The middle class is likely tq lose a substantial part of its savingg; (3) The millionaire class is likely to lose all, particularly if their profits came during the war. (4) Black marketeers, with only enough money in circulation to pay for rationed goods at regular prices, will have a tough time. it is believed that there are between 00,000,000 and 80,000,000 old marks in the four zones oi' (iermanv, of which two thirds a re in Ihe western zones.