NEW CRISIS?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 74, 29 March 1933, Page 7

NEW CRISIS?

DANGER OF SPLIT.

HITLER GOVERNMENT.

Arrest of Steel Helmets May

Cause Conflict.

MINISTER PROTESTS,

;TJnited P.A.—Electric Telegraph—Copyright.)

(Eeceived 10.30 a.m.)

BERLIN, March 28.

Herr Seldte, Steel Helmet, leader, and Minister of Labour in the Hitler Cabinet, conferred with Captain Goering, Controller of the Prussian Police, and sharply protested against events in Brunswick.

Herr von Papen, Vice-Chancellor, and Dr. Hugenberg, Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, are likely to support the protest, necessitating President von Hindenburg intervening to prevent a disruption in the Government.

A ' message from Brunswick stated that Nazi auxiliaries raided tlTe Steel Helmets organisation's guard house, disarmed its auxiliary police and arrested several leaders and. others on suspicion of a counter-revolutionary plot. Also they took the names of hundreds of civilians.

Herr Klagges, Nazi Minister of the Interior in Brunswick, alleges that the Steel Helmets recently enrolled members of the Reichs Banner and other forbidden organisations. He adds: "To-day the movement has assumed a mass character. Hundreds of former members of the Reichs Banner, Socialists and Communists marched to the guard house, protected by Steel Helmet auxiliaries, amid continuous shouts of "hail the freedom front,' 'hail the- Red front.'.

"Excited crowds of Communists and Socialists in the vicinity of the guard house shouted menaces against Herr Hitler and the Nazis. Moreover, with the Steel Helmets' toleration a Communist leader named Nob, who for weeks had been in hiding, ventured from his refuge and took part in the threats of the Steel Helmets and also maltreated young Nazis."

It is officially stated in Berlin that tho Brunswick clash is a purely local affair and will not impede the co-opera-tion throughout the country between the Nazis and Nationalists. The Steel Helmets deny any anti-Government conspiracy.

The Reichs* Banner and the Socialist papers throughout Prussia, which were due to reappear to-day, have now been prohibited indefinitely.

BRITAIN REASSURED.

JEWISH SUBJECTS IN GERMANY

(Received 1 p.m.)

RUGBY, March 28.

Asked in the House of Commons whether he had made representations to the German Governments regarding the safety of British Jews in Germany, Sir John Simon said: "Although I am not aware of any actual case of arrest or ill-treatment of Jewish British subjects, the British Ambassador at Berlin on my instruction spoKC to tho German Minister for Foreign Affairs on this question about three weeks ago. I also took the opportunity or mentioning the matter myself last week to the German Ambassador in London. In both cases tho replies were of a reassuring nature."

AMERICAN JEWS.

PROTESTS TO GERMANY,

NEW YORK, March 28,

The State Department announces that a report from the American Embassy in Berlin says: "Where there was for a short time considerable physical maltreatment of Jews, this phase may be considered virtually to have terminated."

In New York a gathering of 20,000 crowded Madison Square Garden. Other thousands met out-of-doors and heard a series of addresses, which were broadcast throughout the world.

Special committees in Berlin are to organise boycotts of Jewish firms in reprisal for the threats of a Jewish boycott of German goods. They will demand that the employment of Jews be confined to law, medicine, education and the civil service, in accordance with the Jewish quota of the population, which is 1 per cent.