RUMOURS CURRENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 November 1943, Page 3

RUMOURS CURRENT

OF AN EARLY MEETING OF ALLIED LEADERS SOME REPORTED DECISIONS. REGARDING DEFEAT & CONTROL OF GERMANY. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, November 29. Rumours which are current in Switzerland state that Messrs Churchill and Roosevelt are on their way to meet Premier Stalin, probably somewhere in North Africa, and that President Chiang Kai-shek will also join in the talks, says a message which was relayed through Sweden by the British United Press correspondent in Stockholm. The possibility of a Churchill-Roose-velt-Stalin meeting, the place for such a meeting, and the likely decisions, and also General Montgomery’s message to the Eighth Army calling on it to hit the Germans a '“colossal crack’.’ were the dominant subjects under discussion in most European countries at the weekend, says the “Daily Telegraph’s” Zurich correspondent. Some kind of dramatic announcement —for example, a last warning to Germany from the three Allied leaders before invasion—is thought possible, or even probable, the correspondent says. General Montgomery’s message, with its “the time has now come,” is widely interpreted as meaning that some great .political or military decision has been reached.

Those arguing thus believe that the Eighth Army was onlj r partly handicapped by the adverse weather, and that some other big decision was awaited before such an order as General Montgomery’s could be given. REICH AS BATTLEFIELD. According to the “New York Times’ correspondent in London, the three leaders have already agreed on the following principles for the treatment of Germany:—First, Germany must be converted into a battlefield before she will cease invading her neighbours; secondly, Germany, after her surrender, must be totally occupied and administered by an Allied military authority; and thirdly, Germany’s warmaking capacity must be controlled for years to come.

The correspondent adds: “This means ‘not only that the German Army must be destroyed and the Nazi criminals punished and their organisation destroyed, but also that the Reich’s heavy industry and raw materials must be controlled. The three Powers have agreed that the Germans will learn best by suffering and consequently that the war must’be carried as far into the Reich as possible. The New York “Herald-Tribune’s” correspondent at Atlantic City says that Mr Pieter Kerstens,' the Netherlands member of the council of U.N.R.R.A., told the Press that the destruction for all time of Germany’s position as a major economic power is envisaged in discussions which some representatives of Europe’s occupied nations' have already begun in London. These discussions seek to discover how much of Germany’s share in the economic life of Europe must be abolished and how that share is to be divided among the European nations after the war. Mr Kerstens said that these were his views and not those of his Government. He added that Germany should be deprived of the enormous industrial capacity on which her war power is based, and allowed only enough economic strength to live. He asserted that Germany had had the productive wealth of the Rhine and Silesian districts to fight seven wars within 150 years. The Associated Press of America interprets the views as meaning that the invaded nations will arrive at the peace conference ready to strip Germany to an 'economy which will be nothing more than bare living within her own borders.