FOREIGN WORKERS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1943, Page 4

FOREIGN WORKERS

MILLIONS VILELY TREATED IN GERMANY AWAITING MOMENT TO RISE. GROWING FEAR AMONG PEOPLE OF REICH. (The writer of the following article, Arvid Fredborg, is a widely known Swedish newspaper man. He has just concluded two years in Berlin as correspondent for the conservative Stockholm newspaper, “Svcnska Dagbladet.” The article was published in the "Christian Science Monitor.”) STOCKHOLM, October 27. Disgruntled foreign workers secretly are arming, even with the aid of German soldiers, to form such a threat to the German home front that, given the proper moment, they could induce the total collapse and surrender of Germany. Twelve million foreign workers now are watched closely, partly by police troops of the highest efficiency and partly by elderly Reservists. Allied air bombings, however, are giving them their chance. The continually growing disorganisation of the whole life of German society is putting them in a position where they could slip their controls and* pour over the weakly resisting German interior. The personnel for protecting the home front, from a military point of view, is thinly spread. Bombings are spreading this force even thinner, because they are being assigned new tasks.

For every soldier in the Army or Air Force there are at least three workers in industry. Supposing the strength of the armed forces is approximately 11.000.600 men, this would mean at least 33,000,000 persons are working in war plants. A great part of them are women. But at least 30 per cent are foreigners. There are factories where more than 90 per cent of the staff is foreign. There are towns and villages where foreigners form an absolute majority of the male population. If these foreigners had been welltreated the danger would not be so great. But many of them, taken by force, put into camps behind barbed wire and guarded by machine guns, with a minimum of food and a maximum of brutality, are keenly awaiting the moment to rise against their Nazi oppressors.

Communist propaganda has a good opportunity among these workers. A great many revolutionary organisations have been created in most parts of Germany. Not all of these are communistic in the political sense of the word, but nearly all are directed not only against the Nazis, but also against the Germans generally. If the guards at the camps were near a normal number, the foreign workers would never have a chance. But as the situation exists ,one must count with the fact thqt they can get the upper hand one day in the centres of Germany. The foreigners have obtained arms to some extent. In most cases the weapons were -stolen from supply depots.

There is a growing fear of the foreign workers among the German people. Many expect a night of long knives and mass rising beyond anything known in history. As far as I can see, their fears are not without grounds.