MUNITIONS FOR NAZIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1940, Page 8

MUNITIONS FOR NAZIS

FRENCH HEAVY INNDUSTRY. LINK WITH GERMAN FIRMS. French heavy industry, it was revealed, is to produce armaments for Germany to use against Britain. Secret negotiations between French and German industrial magnates have resulted in an agreement involving what is to all intents and purposes a merger between the principal iron and steel firms of both countries. A spokesman of General de Gaulle disclosed that the intermediary in these talks was cx-Premier Flandin, political champion of French big business. who after Munich sent a telegram ef congratulation to Hitler. Negotiators on the German side were Dr. Roechling and Dr. Buecher, chief figures in Germany’s iron and steel industry since Herr Thyssen fled the country. Behind these negotiations is the failure of Germany’s military occupation! 'o assure an orderly production of war material. The Gestapo alone cannot run big factories in France, largely because of the danger of sabotage. The Nazis therefore have sought the co-operation of French employers. From the moment the works ' are run by their owners the position becomes quite different in the eyes of the employees. Under the agreement now reached the Stahlverein, the immense steel combine of the Ruhr, formerly controlled by Thyssen, will become an important shareholder in two of the main French steel-producing concerns. The Hermann Goering works will become financially linked up with other French iron-ore mines and steel factories. On the other hand the De Wendel company, the leading Lorraine steel producers, is to acquire shares valued at 50,000,000 Reichmarks in the Hermann Goering works. Nearly all the chief iron-ore mines and steel foundries in France are included in German-occupied territory.