HITLER’S SCHEMES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1941, Page 7

HITLER’S SCHEMES

DISCUSSION BY MR EDEN PEACE OFFENSIVE PLANS UPSET. ATTEMPT TO PROP UP NEW ORDER. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, November 27. In a speech in the House of Commons today, the Foreign Secretary, Mr Eden, referred to what he said he believed was probably the underlying purpose of the conference held in Berlin between a party of Axis quislings presided over by the German Foreign Secretary, Herr von Ribbentrop, j “It was to seek and prepare for a peace offensive,” he declared. “I do not mean by that an offer by Hitler. Mr Churchill at the Mansion House, dealt so clearly with any' manoeuvre ■of that kind that we need not expect an offer. Hitler’s plan is different. He finds himself confronted by continuous and vigorous Russian resist? ance. His plans, which were laid on an early defeat of Russia, are to that extent awry. Therefore, he has need 1 of a respite and is trying to persuade the nations of Europe that the only way they can get peace is by coming into his new order. By joining him, he says, they will be successful in bringing Britain and Russia to terms. Well, he is wrong. “Whatever other countries may do about the new order will not affect our policy one jot. We know only too well what Hitler’s new order means. I would remind all remaining neutrals that this new order is based on the principle of the Herrenvolk. Plans are perfected, we know, for moving’ large populations from one part of Europe to another. The whole of the industrial activity is going to be concentrated in the eastern territories for the exclusive profit of the Reich. BERLIN AS SLAVE MARKET. “President Roosevelt has well said that Berlin is the great slave market of the world. A great part of the German mind and energies has been devoted to the creation of a military machine whose force would impose the German will on other nations. These are horrible doctrines, which have led to, five attacks on other nations in Europe. For 150 years they- have been built up, and they find their final expression in the Nazi tyranny.” Mr Eden gave a picture of what German rule means in Europe today. His picture was built up from figures officially admitted by the Germans. “In Czechoslovakia from September 27, the day of the arrival of the notorious Heydrich, to October 29, there were 332 executions, and 1308 persons were handed over to an even worse fate —the Gestapo. In Yugoslavia since the occupation there have been 1132 executions. In France, since August 13, there have been 250 executions. A German order reports that 100 Serbs have been executed for the assassination of two German soldiers, and so on. “These German figures,” Mr Eden emphasised, “are not ours. I think the House would probably be not far wrong if it were assumed that the kil-. lings in Yugoslavia alone since the German occupation have numbered perhaps 35,000. This is the German rule in Europe.” BRITAIN AND THE SOVIET. Referring again to von Ribbentrop’s speech, Mr Eden said: “Von Ribbentrep made the statement that in 1940 we had received an assurance that Soviet Russia would come into the war on the side of Britain. We never received such an assurance at all. Had there been such an assurance the whole history of the Balkan campaign and its outcome would have been very different.

"On the contrary we.were handicapper continuously by the fact that Russia held strenuously to her obligations under the German-Soviet Pact. Not till German troops had crossed the Russian frontier were there any conversations, military or political, between us and the Russian Government.”