Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 1941. WESTERN HEMISPHERE DEFENCE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 August 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, AUGUST 4, 1941. WESTERN HEMISPHERE DEFENCE.

JN declaring that it was nothing more or less than barefaced

impudence for Germany io tell Mexico or any other country what it should do to protect its sovereign rights, the United (States Assistant Secretary of State, Mr Sumner Welles also praised, as very heartening, the action of several Latin-American countries in taking energetic measures against the Axis. The independent republics, he said, were fully alive to the dangers now existing.

If must be hoped that this is not an unduly optimistic summing-up of the situation in Central, and South America. A number of the republics—Mexico, Bolivia, Brazil and others — are aligning themselves positively with the United States in opposition to Axis intrigues and designs. Argentina, though she was reported on Saturday to be refusing, on account of legal difficulties, to support the United States black list, also appears to be taking some action at last against the Nazi conspirators within her borders to whom she has extended thus far an extraordinary latitude.

In Argentina more perhaps than in any other Latin American republic the Nazis have developed elaborately and unscrupulously the underground warfare in which the lie is given to Hitler’s recent assertion that the idea of a Nazi invasion of the Western Hemisphere is about as fantastic as an invasion of the moon. An explicit account of what Hitler’s henchmen are attempting to do in South and Central America was given recently, in an article in “Current History,” by Dr Otto Strasser, who collaborated with Hitler in founding the Nazi Party, but broke with the party shortly before it attained power. Dr Strasser is now the-head of a Free German movement, an anti-Nazi organisation, and the article mentioned is based on information received from his associates in South America.

Though Nazi infiltration extends to many South American republics, it is particularly formidable in the two River Plate States of Uruguay and Argentina. In both republics there are large numbers of German citizens and much larger numbers of people of German descent. The chiefs of the Nazi underground machinery, Dr Strasser states, are on the staff of the German embassies in these Latin American countries and the division chiefs in the provinces are usually the German consuls. Propaganda, military, espionage and Gestapo departments have all been organised actively and on an important scale..

Besides extending its propaganda into every corner of -Argentina, the Nazi organisation, through the Gestapo, establishes an arbitrary and rigid control over all German citizens and people of German descent and has established an S.A. (Storm Troops) formation which is divided into cavalry and infantrv units and an air corps.

The exact strength of the S.A. (Dr Strasser stales) is not known. However, it amounts certainly to several thousand men, since all German citizens between 18 and 35 years of age are compelled to join it. Furthermore, every German must perform military service in the S.A. This is the only known case where German citizens abroad are able to execute their military duty outside of Germany in a local S.A. They are. even forced to do so.

From the Argentine, Nazi espionage extends throughout South America. For instance Dr Strasser observes that- a net of espionage is being built around the Panama Canal 1 .

The active efforts the United States is making to unite all the American republics against German espionage and conspiracy are the more necessary since the Nazis, simultaneously with the development of their underground war in the Latin republics and in the 'United Slates itself, are doing their utmost to secure in the Far East and in Africa bases for attack on the Americas. An alert awareness in Washington of what these efforts imply is made manifest, amongst other things, in the latest warning addressed by the American State Department to the Vichy Government —a warning that the future attitude of the United States towards Vichy will be governed by the effectiveness with which French territories are defended against the Axis Powers.