BOOK ON NAZI WAR CRIMES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27426, 12 August 1954, Page 11

BOOK ON NAZI WAR CRIMES

Suppression Attempt

Causes Resignation (Rec. 9 p.m.) LONDON, August 10. Lord Russell of Liverpool, the 59-year-old British Army and Royal Air Force judicial adviser, has been forced to resign from the Government service because he refused to suppress a book he had written about German war crimes, the “Daily Express’’ reported today. The book is called “The Scourge of the Swastika.” The “Daily Express” said Foreign Office chiefs ruled that the republication of facts about concentration camp massacres and tortures in a book by a high-ranking »Government official would be acutely embarrassing on three counts: It would intensify public anger against the Government’s plan to rearm the Germans. It might upset United States politicians and defence chiefs who were anxious to rearm Germany without further delay. It might strengthen the anti-German feeling in France, where there is strong opposition to German” rearmament. The Lord Chancellor (Lord Simonds) was instructed to x warn Lord Russell that he would be dismissed unless he withdrew* the book, which is due to be published next week by Cassels. Lord Russell refused and r< igned from his £2200 a year post as Assistant Judge Advocate-General after 20 years in the military law service. Contents of Book The “Daily Express” said official permission to write such a book as “The Scourge of the Swastika” was given Lord Russell two and a half years ago. He had since compiled it entirely from published records of war crimes trials and records of atrocities committed at Belsen, Buchenwald and Auschwitz and other extermination camps. He gives details of the massacre of innocent civilians at Lidice. Oradour and Autun. There are also 25 grim photographs showing evidence of torture and mass murder. The newspaper said the arrival of the book, with its yellow cover, showing emaciated prisoners standing in the shadow f a huge pair of jackboots. touched off a series of hurried meetings of worried Government chiefs. The Lord Chancellor’s letter to Lord Russell said: “The whole treatment of the subject and most particularly the Photographs, are such as to stir up hatred of the German people as a whole, and therefore to give support to the opinions of those who are most strongly critical of the policy of givir g Germany the opportunity, by rearmament or otherwise. of exerting an influence in world affairs. “This question is an issue of acute public controversy at the present time. .Publication of a book such as yours ■’’OUld be incompatible with the holdin? of a iudicial office.” Lord Russell last night maintained he ” as within his rights .in pub’ishing the book because it was entirely factual and historical. ’lt contains no expression of opinion or info? matron from confidential sources,’ he said.