NATIONALISM IN WEST GERMANY

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29102, 14 January 1960, Page 9

NATIONALISM IN WEST GERMANY

“Swastikas Aspect Of Terrible Picture” (N.Z. Press Association—■ Copyright ) LONDON, January 13. In a “grim report” from Bonn, a special correspondent of the “Daily Mirror” says a dangerous and criminal attempt is now in progress to convert the youth of post-war Germany into the vanguard of a new Nazi movement. After travelling thousands of miles through Western Germany and talking to hundreds of Germans, he says, his main finding is that the “daubing of swastikas on synagogues and the desecration of Jewish graves is only one aspect of a terrible picture.

What in fact is happening is that the youth of Germany is being slowly and deliberately poisoned with the entire doctrine of the old Nazi regime, not only “Out with Jews,” but also the old perilous ideal of “Germany for ever, Victory or Death.” Openly and without punishment, he says, in spite of lessons of the war and the memory of millions who died at the hands of the Nazis, the new nationalists are teaching children that Hitler was a great statesman, that the Allies are the real war criminals, and that racial purity of the Germanic peoples is the only guarantee of survival. "The new Nazis are spread out in a vast spider’s web that extends from the Cabinet of the West German Government right through big industry, courts, police and the civil service into the class rooms of post-war Germany. “The Chancellor (Dr Adenauer) prefers to condemn anti-Semitism rather than to attack the social disease of which it is only one symptom. Feeble attempts are made to blame the Communists but the truth is that the old die-

hards—they have been lurking in the wings since the end of the war—are now openly on the stage.

“There are scores of youth groups named after ‘heroes’ such as the war criminals General Guderian, Admiral Doenitz—who was Hitler’s successor in the last days of the war—and ‘martyrs’ of the Hitler brownshirt days. Many groups are in turn linked with the ‘Kyffhauserbund,’ which is an organisation of Germany’s war veterans and the old Steel Helmet Movement.

“All this,” says the correspondent, “is not to say that the youth of post-war Germany is lost to neo-Nazis. But it does mean that the disease is spreading rapidly and that unless something is done soon to stamp out the new Fascists then Germany most certainly faces a major crisis.

"It is true that the neo-Nazis, even in their strongest adult group, which is known as the German Reich Party, have no seats in the German Federal Parliament, but just as it was in the rise of Hitler to power this is not their objective. "The pattern is precisely the same as it was with the brownshirts and stormtroopers of the early 1930’5. The development of the political situation is following exactly the same lines “There is no lack of money and worse still no lack of printing presses for the flood of Nazi leaflets. The most tragic of all is the situation in the schools where reliable estimates state that three out of every 10 teachers stem directly from the Hitler days “And. what is more, every Wes? German school under the law of the Adenauer Government was obliged to reinstate teachers who were sacked by the Allies when they took over control at the end of the war. This is the heart of the matter.’’ the correspondent says.