MURDER GANG.

Auckland Star, 2 September 1933, Page 9

MURDER GANG.

Central European Anti-Red , Organisation. POWER BEHIND HITLER? LONDON, August lp. The existence of a powerful but secret world-wide anti-Communist organisation, chiefly consisting of former high officers, notabilities and secret police, under the Czarist regime in Russia, to which the most notorious documentary forgeries and espionage cases in recent years may be attributed, is revealed in a remarkable article in the "Week-End Review." The article discloses the part the organisation's agents played in the Reichstag fire, the Zinovieff letter, the issue of spurious Soviet coins, the Bulgarian terrorism affair, and the case of the Hungarian franc coiners. All these are traced, it says, to this anti-Communist circle, which maintains very close connections with the extremist and terrorist elements of Europe. "Its headquarters are in Berlin, and it has wealthy backers, well known in most Foreign and War Ministries," the writer states. The article alleges that the organisation is allied with the "group which is the real power behind Hitler"—a group of well-known old German Right Wing extremists and terrorists. "They are almost all pathological cases, sadists, drug addicts and murderers, shrinking from no crime whatsoever," the writer says. He names many of these extremists, including Edmund Hemes and Ober-Leutenant Schultz. It is alleged.that these men, with the aid of the Russian organisation, hatched the plot to burn the Reichstag, giving the Nazis the chance to "overthrow" a Communist rising which existed only in their minds. It was Heines (later sentenced to death for a brutal murder) who led the plotters to Captain Goering's presidential residence, from which a subterranean passage connected with the Reichstag. "The rest was easy," the article adds. "The Nazis are now relentlessly pursuing all who possess knowledge of the facts, ruthlessly murdering them or inducing them to commit suicide." Distribution of the "Week-End Review" in Germany is regarded as a "treasonable act, punishable by death."