UNDER NAZI YOKE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 181, 29 April 1941, Page 3

UNDER NAZI YOKE

German Pressure On

Denmark

The Danish Minister to the United States refused to recognize Copenhagen’s order to return because the Danish Government, he said, was under Nazi duress. This followed his signing of an agreement to permit the United States to establish air bases in Greenland. There is no doubt about the duress. , Denmark did not resist the Nazi onslaught, but she has been treated harshly nevertheless, and today is enslaved by the Germans. After eight months of occupation Denmark had an outstanding clearing account with Germany of 400,000,000 kroner. That meant a German debt of about £20,000,000 for which amount Denmark theoretically is entitled to buy goods in Germany. But the latter neither can, nor will, supply the goods required, and it appears clear from all official Danish statements that even the promises of very limited fuel deliveries have been broken.

As information of the required foodstuffs is impossible, Danish farmers have had to reduce stocks whether they wanted to ?ell or not, and the result is that the stocks of cattle, pigs and poultry are now. halved. The farmers are paid with money which the National Bank must produce, but the country as such must give credit on the clearing account. That is not the whole story. Denmark also must pay for the honour of being "protected” by au army of occupation, and the latest information is to the effect that the price amounts to about 40,000,000 kroner a month. The whole State Budget of Denmark before the war amounted to only 500 or 600 million kroner a year. This process of piling up a debt which cannot be liquidated is the method devised by Dr. Schacht for the Nazis long before the war. By this means Germany obtained a stranglehold on the economic machinery of her victims. When the army went in, Nazi violence completed the bankrupting process begun during peace.