SPEEDING UP GERMAN ARMY

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 June 1936, Page 13

SPEEDING UP GERMAN ARMY

ALLEGED WAR PLANS A serioud iridictment of what are regarded as Germany’s war aims is contained in “Germany’s War Machine,” by Albert Mueller, published recently. The author is a German, who is opposed to the present regime, and the original work, in German, was produced in Paris before the militarisation of the Rhine zone. Herr Mrieller declares that the entire motor industry has been brought under military influence.

He gives numerous passages from German military writers to show how this idea 6f motdYisation recurs. The following quotation from an article in the “Berliner Boersen-Zeitung" is fypidal: “The solution of the problem of how to equate the pace of the mechanised arm with that of the infantry is to increase the speed of the infantry, i.e., to motorise them. By that we do riot mean the shifting of reserves by the use of motor lorries, but the transport of troops to the actual field of battle in vehicles built for cross-country work.” Quoting figures from published reports he shows that since 1932 automobile production in Germany has moie than trebled, and that the labour employed in the six largest motor firms rose from 33,000 in 1933 to 67,000 m 1935. ,' - , The output- figures, he says, do not include the enormous number of tanks manufactured f6f , the;.. Army. He assorts, that since the “Dally Telegraph published the first . photographs of German tanks in July, 1935, the motor industry ha’s’ b'6'en busily turning out tanks, of all .sizes and kinds on masS-p'roductiori lines and under condition's of the greatest secrecy. Gerfriariy’s peace-time motor fuel requirements are 2,200,000 tons a year. In 1934 she imported 3,000,000 tons, in addition to her home production of 1,075,000 tons. Herr Mueller sees proof here that large stocks are being laid P The 4,300 miles of “super-highways” which the Hitler Government is constructing are nothing but strategic roads, the author asserts, intended to enable Germany to strike in any directloThe crowning proof of Herr Hitler’s

policy of military motorisation for the entire nation, the author thinks, is to be found in the way the young manhood of Germany is being trained for war in the Nationalist Socialist Motor Corps. With a rapidly growing personnel of 500,000 youthful motorists, this supposedly sporting body is organised on quasi-military lines, its members wear a uniform “exactly the same in design as that of the Army and Labour Service,” and practise war exercises, such as hand-grenade throwing, rifle and revolver shooting, anti-war raid manoeuvres, the use of gas-masks, despatch riding, and plan sketching and compass work.