GERMANY AND SOVIET

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 12, 9 October 1928, Page 11

GERMANY AND SOVIET

SECRET MILITARY ARRANGEMENTS ESTABLISHMENT OF WORKS IN RUSSIA DISCLOSURE BY MEMBER OF REICHSTAG A Socialist member of the Reichstag lias given the Berlin newspaper “Vorwaerts” details of alleged secret German-Soviet military arrangements negotiated in 1922-23„

(United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (“Times” Cables.)

(Rec. October 8, 11.45 p.m.)

London, October 8.

The Berlin correspondent of “The Times” reports that Herr Kunstler, a Socialist member of the Reichstag, has given “Vorwaerts” details of alleged secret German-Soviet military arrangements, negotiated in 1922-23, including tlie establishment of Junkers’s aircraft and aero-engine works in Soviet Russia. Herr Kunstler says that everything and everybody was given a code designation. Thus the Junkers’s works were “The firm N.N.” the German Ministry of Defence” was "The Special Group,” and aeroplanes were “cases.” “Vorwaerts” publishes the key, also quotations from letters written to Professor Junkers and others, by a “mixed commission” sent from Moscow in December, 1921. If Herr Kunstler’s disclosures are genuine, they confirm the version hitherto current, but never clearly established, says the Berlin correspondent of “The Times,” who points out that when the question of relations between the Reichswehr and the Red Army came up in the Reichstag two years ago, it was admitted that Junkers's activities in Soviet Russia had German Government official backing, but the Government then gave assurances that its relations with Junkers had long since been dissolved. The Nationalist newspapers, declaring that the whole disclosures are ancient history, accuse Herr Kunstler of treason in publishing them and regret that Parliamentary immunity protects him from prosecution.