NAZIS ON PETAIN

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 15, 18 January 1941, Page 10

NAZIS ON PETAIN

CLEAN SWEEP WANTED

VICHY CABINET

INSPIRED PRESS REPORTS

LONDON, January 17.

The Germans, after a short lull in their propaganda about Vichy are now again pressing Marshal Petain to make a clean sweep of his Ministers and bring M. Laval back to power. Neutral correspondents in Berlin are being inspired to say that this has already happened, and that Marshal Petain will appoint, a new Government. The significance of the Berlin report as reflecting German wishes was made [ clear in a broadcast from Paris yesterday .which quoted a pro-German newspaper as saying that the entire Government must be re-sorted and rejuvenated. The same newspaper reported the Paris paper "L'Oeuvre" which, like all papers published in Paris., is completely subservient to German propaganda. It. said, that both internal and external affairs must be controlled by the same man. There must be a clean-up inside France and French foreign policy must not endanger collaboration with Germany. In Vichy tonight the Government officially denied a report that the Cabinet had given Marshal Petain its collective resignation to permit'him to name a new Cabinet. The Nazi desire to precipitate a crisis is clear in the report of a German news agency at Vichy. This said that the question of French and German relations would probably be clarified during the next 24 hours.