Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1939. A PLUNDERED POPULATION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 February 1939, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1939. A PLUNDERED POPULATION.

longer ago than in his speech to the Reichstag, at the end of last month, Herr Hitler took it upon himself to sneer at allegations “in newspapers abroad” that Germany was faced by increasing economic difficulties. Having said, on that occasion that predictions of financial and economic crisis in Germany “only prove the sincere desire of the democratic nations to smash Nazi Germany,”.he added:—

Our economic troubles are due to over-population. We have been exploited and plundered for fifteen years; yet without aid from colonies and without help from abroad, we have saved ourselves.

Every one of these statements is demonstrably erroneous, to use no harsher word, and the facts of Germany’s economic position are forcing themselves upon attention in spite of all that Herr Hitler and his corps of propagandists can do to distort them or hide them from view. It is becoming at least possible that the Nazi regime may be wrecked as a result of its blundering mismanagement of German economic affairs and the remorseless fashion in which it has preyed upon the people of the Reich.

Illuminating messages on this subject have been included in the news cablegrams of late. One, which appears today, speaks of an acute and developing shortage throughout Germany of important foodstuffs. In a cablegram yesterday, the ’Nazi leader in Austria, Herr Buerckel, was quoted as admitting that, there was grumbling against the Government in Austria owing to food shortage. Pathetically following'his leader, Herr Buerckel placed the blame for. this state of affairs at the doors of “hostile democracies, whose threats of war compelled the production of guns instead of butter.”

Another news item, from Munich, spoke of the railways in South Germany being unable to cope with demands “owing to defective equipment and exceptional goods traffic,” stated that many passenger services were being cancelled, and added that it was estimated that, £200,000,000 was needed to restore the railways to a good footing.

There is increasing evidence that the run-down condition of railways here disclosed is typical of the state to which a great part of Germany’s industrial equipment, in other than armament industries, has been reduced. A British writer, Mr F. Elwyn Jones, summed up the position in his recent book, •“The Battle for Peace,” in the following terms: —

The cost of the Four-Year Plan is enormous and the illusion of self-sufficiency is being created by using up all remaining reserves. The soaring arms production makes it impossible to cope with the demand for replacements of existing plant other than that used exclusively for armaments. Industrial equipment, ranging from railways to warehouses and machinery, is daily being worn out. The standard of living of the German people is daily deteriorating. '

To this it has to be added that since the Nazis attained power, the standard of living of German wage-earners and their families has fallen by ten per cent or more and the fall is continuing. The gross income of the wage-earners has increased, but 4.1 million unemployed have been absorbed, and the actual wage scales have declined. Meantime prices have risen considerably and the quality of products has deteriorated.

It is almost the whole explanation of this deplorable state of affairs that wealth is being poured into armaments which ought to be available to the German people or applied to the maintenance of the country’s industrial equipment. In 19,36-37, Germany’s armament expenditure was much more than four times as great as it had been in 1933-34. There is every indication that this expenditure has since been further heavily increased, but even of the position as it stood in 1937, a British financial paper, “The Banker,” observed:—

If Germany were to limit her armament expenditure to a level, say, corresponding to that of Britain and France, there would be no German raw material problem. At present Germany is spending at the rate of just over £1,600,000,000 per annum on armaments. A reduction of this expenditure by one-half would still leave Germany with a formidable military budget. But it- would bring to an end all her raw material and food difficulties.

It is perfectly true that the German people are being plundered, but the plundering is not being done by foreigners, but by their own Nazi tyrants. Apart from the entirely unwarranted and needless hardship that is being inflicted on the German masses, the economic disorders ( of the Reich, like the very similar state of affairs that obtains,in Italy, directly menace the peace of Europe. The dictators are under a constant temptation to seek in aggression and plunder a solution of the problems they have themselves created. On the other hand they are in some danger of falling into the error against which they were warned by General von Fritsch, formerly Chief of the German General Staff, when he said: “You may be able to end up a war on ration cards, but you can’t start one on them.”