GERMAN bombast

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1940, Page 5

GERMAN bombast

A statement by the official German news agency last night gave no details of the meeting, but it referred to the “Western Powers’ lack of understanding of Nazism and Fascism as shown by the foreign speculation about the meeting.” It added that England and France still do not understand Herr Hitler's speech of October G, which defined the principles of Germany’s attitude to the present conflict. "The enemy’s plutocratic statesmen brutally rejected this last word of the Fuehrer’s while simultaneously proclaiming their own criminal war aims," the statement said. “Since then the situation between the Western Powers and tiie German Reich they attacked has become completely clear.” Later the Berlin radio broadcast: “The world’s Press assumes that the Fuehrer and Signor Mussolini met to consider peace proposals, but this is not so. The world’s Press still does not understand that the Fuehrer has decided to wage the war to a victorious end." With his speech of October 6. referred to in the above cablegram. Herr Hitler launched his first peace offensive speaking in the Reichstag. He said that Germany and Russia alone would be responsible for the fate of Poland and would never allow it to be resurrected in the form made possible by the Ver-sailles-Treaty. I Stating tha this was “his last word" he proposed an international conference for the settlement of Europe's problems outside Poland. He also demanded the return of Germany's lost colonies. The speech contained repeated references to the futility of sacrificing lives to restore Poland or to break the Nazi regime.