NATIONALISM INCREASES

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 26943, 20 January 1953, Page 7

NATIONALISM INCREASES

U.S. Survey In Germany

BONN, Januaiy 18. A United States High Commission survey published today said that there had been a significant rise in nationalism among the West German public in the last 18 months.

More Germans now approved Hitler’s regime, and less wanted to cooperate in European federation. Fortynine per cent, of those questioned were against the present plan td pay reparations to the Jews.

The survey was published four days after the British arrested seven leading former Nazis on suspicion of plotting to regain totalitarian power in Germany.

The report said that there had been a distinct rise in pro-Nazi tendencies among Vice-Chancellor Franz Bluecher’s Free Democratic Party, the second partv (with 50 of the Bundestag’s 401 seats) in Dr. Adenauer’s Coalition Government. It said that one in four F.D.P. members would positively approve Nazi restoration.

One of the charges levelled against the seven arrested former Nazis by Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick, the British High Commissioner, was that they had tried to infiltrate Mr Bluecher’s party. The report said that comparative returns on sensibility to Communist and Nazi- attractions “leave no doubt that German susceptibility to neo-Nazism is a far greater problem than communism. Youth, particularly, seemS carried away by the appeal of a single strong national party. Fifty-six per cent, of those in the 18 to 24 age group approves such a party, compared with only 23 per cent, opposing it.” Questioned on the outburst by General Ramcke at Verden that it would have been an honour to be on the Allied war criminals’ roll and that the Allies were the real war criminals, 31 per cent, said this was correct, 25 per cent, said partly correct and only 25 per cent, said outright that General Ramcke was wrong. Fifty-nine per cent, said the German people need not feel responsible for Nazi wrongs to the Jews, 49 per cent, felt Parliament should reject the Ger-man-Israeli reparations agreement, and only 26 per cent, approved it. The report said: "The results of the study suggest that there has been a significant rise in nationalism among, the West German public. Attitudes have shifted from preponderantly internationalist in the middle of 1951 to preponderantly nationalist in late