FRENCH SABOTAGE SLOWS ARMS FOR GERMANY

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23739, 10 September 1942, Page 4

FRENCH SABOTAGE SLOWS ARMS FOR GERMANY

(Published by Arrangement witl Sabotage continues to occur almost daily in France. According to reports reaching London from the occupied territory, one of the three nmst important underground organisations alone has carried out more than 1200 damaging acts against aeroplanes, electric power plants, bridges, war materials and factories working for Germany. _ . . The severity of German retaliation has caused the French saboteurs to modify their methods somewhat. They are relying more and more on a kina of non-violent sabotage which is harder to detect than more direct methods, but which at the same time succeeds in slowing down armament production for Germany. Production orders, issued by the merman authorities are delayed or deliberately misunderstood. (Telegrams sent to the factories disappeared. Railway freight cars transporting essential parts to assembly centres are mystenously dispatched to wrong destinations. French workers in armament plants show their inventive spirit in curtailing the production programme. These saboteurs will remove or destroy some identification tags or alter the specifications in a blueprint and they wiu succeed in disturbing the assembly line in a big factory • . Usually even the Gestapo will be unable to determine whether these disturbances were caused by accident or by ill will. Inferior assembly work is often not revealed until the new truck taken to the road breaks down or until the new aeroplane crashes in flames. Gestapo Control Widened However, if the organisations of French resistance have improved their methods of hoodwinking Nazi supervision, the Gestapo likewise has not been idle. Gestapo control over French factories has been greatly extended and the German police now work in close collaboration with the French - secret police, the Surete Nationale. French factories are surrounded by German sentries, special German test offices have been set up, and many stoolpigeons, mostly plain-clothes agents of the French police, have been introduced to work at the assembly-lines.. As many French-made aeroplanes were destroyed while being tested ; the German authorities ordered test flights to be made by French pilots or, if French aviators were not available, by German test pilots accompanied qy the French manager of the factory and by a delegate of the workers. When mass strikes occurred in one of the big French plants, the Gestapo arrested the strike-leaders, and, at the same time, closed down all food, stores in the neighbourhood of the factory. In many cases the starving workers were obliged to give in. ' . The Germans who succeeded in crushing Communist agitation in their own factories and who, moreover, are themselves experts in the organisation of sabotage, are dangerous foes for the underground groups of , the French factories If the Gestapo has been unable to destroy organised resistance, it has,

[By EGON KASKELINE.]

i the "Christian Science Monitor.”) . j nevertheless, succeeded in limiting ft.' damage done by sabotage acts ft spite of the heroic resistance pn of the French workers’ organisation? French factories turn out tanks, aaS planes, guns, ammunition for the GaL man army in increasing numbers » is very difficult to evaluate the exteiJ .in which sabotage has slowed dm™ France’s armament production in Ge? many’s service. Reports coming France estimate the loss in producuS through sabotage at about 20 per cert The Nazis are also attempting ft check the influence of the unde* ground movement by winning 0 v» French industrial workers to collaw ation. In granting special advantagSj especially higher pay, to workers S| key factories or in coal pits, they jgl deavour to divide the French worklni class and to create a privileged labow section. In the beginning French workers jk mained uninterested in high overtime payments. In France to-day monS cannot buy many essential goods. Tm Nazis, however, succeeded much betto when they introduced overtime paw ments in form of canned food. ><■ The French worker who knew that his wife and children were starving was tempted by this possibility to ml prove his insufficient food ration. cording to German reports, output-in French factories has considerably ft;, creased since the Germans set up thli system of payment, which speculates on the starvation of the French fafrillies. Removal to Germany To-day the Nazis, helped by Vichrt Chief of Government, Pierre' Laval are attempting to deal a crushing blow* to the movement of resistance among the French workers. In evacuatlrt hundreds of thousands of French work" ers whose factories will be closed down to German plants, Hitler not 'onifr finds much-needed manpower but at the same time deals a blow-at the net. work of underground groups which defy his power. Foreign workers wifi be more easily controlled in German factories where, since 1933, close super, vision of all labour has been set up.Yet the transplanting of French workers to Germany, which probably soon will become compulsory, is likely to be two-sided in its effects. "While weakening the resistance movement Jn the French factpries and diminishing the danger of sabotage, the Nazis f*t the same time will introduce mtey avowed enemies of Fascism in-the heart of their war-productipn plants. The French underground organist* tions will be only too glad to extend the work of their sabotage groups right into the centre of Germany’s industrial; power and to propagate: anti-FaScist ideals to the German’worker. The art of sabotage, of course,’#« French invention, and it is in France, that it has reached its highest degree of perfection. It was during the'Cer* man occupation of Firance in.ilßffl.7l' that French threer their heavy wooden shoes-(sabot)- into- toe, machines of French textile factories, thus originating both the word and the practice of sabotage.