OPEN BID FOR PEACE ON BERLIN RADIO

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 198, 21 August 1943, Page 5

OPEN BID FOR PEACE ON BERLIN RADIO

TO NORTH AMERICA

Separate Appeals In East And West

WASHINGTON, Aug. 19.

A broadcast from Berlin, directed to North American listeners, in which the radio commentator made an open bid for a negotiated peace, accompanied by the assurance that the Germans were prepared to shake off their " totalitarian leaders," caused considerable interest here, particularly as it was identified as part of the peace offensive which is expected from now on to assume unusual proportions. Official sources here believe that the Germans are now ready to make peace with any of their principal enemies, in the east or west, one against the other. The broadcast is considered to be a "follow-up" to the report recently made through the Berlin correspondent of the Spanish newspaper, Arriba, with the approval of the German censor, that changes had been made in the political and military High Command of Germany, with affairs in the hands of a triumvirate, headed by Reich-Marshal Goering. The report to Arriba was not considered to be proof of anything like a revolution in Germany marking the end of National-Socialism, and making possible the end of hostilities with the German nation.

New Technique Adopted Reports reaching Washington indicate that the new German peace technique is in two parts—one directed to Russia, with the keynote that Russia has nothing to hope for from the capitalist plutocracies of the West, who will gladly allow her to bleed herself to death in the titanic struggle with Germany, and the other to Britain and the United States on a variation of the old bogy of Communism. It is. fairly well confirmed that within the past year the Germans have made repeated feelers for a cessation of hostilities with Russia, and that these have been scornfully rejected. Nevertheless, German leaders, it is thought, believe that when the Russians begin to reckon up their losses after the summer offensives, which will bring them nothing but local gains at great cost, they will be more ready to listen to the German proposals which emphasise that Germany long ago abandoned the offensive in Russia and is being prepared for an honourable withdrawal. The Russians could make such a withdrawal possible at much saving to themselves by agreeing on peace, a cessation of hostilities, or even a protracted truce. In short, with Russia the Germans' technique is to try to take up where they left off with the non-aggression pact of 1939.