GERMAN POLITICIANS DEMAND ENDING OF DENAZIFICATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 August 1949, Page 6

GERMAN POLITICIANS DEMAND ENDING OF DENAZIFICATION

LONDON, August 2.—A former Prime Minister of Bavaria, Dr Wilhelm Hoegner, in a speech in the Federal election campaign at Frankfurt, said that the Allied dismantling of Germany factories was wrong, but the reason for it was the Allied fear of a newly-rearming and militant Germany. “This fear is the fault of the new Nazis who think that they will be in power again two years from now” Dr Hoegner added. Dr Hermann Puender, a spokesman for the Christian Democrat Party, which is the strongest Right-Wing partly in Germany, today demanded that denazification should be ended. Di\ Puender said that the regular officers of the Germany Army had not been “Hitler’s banner carriers, but his victims.”

German political leaders were taking “great risks” in criticising the occupying Powers in their election speeches in Western Germany, said The Times today. In any occupied country, the easiest way for a politician to win applause was to criticise the occupying Power, and particularly in Germany, where, as politicians knew, nationalisation was still the most powerful force.

The newspaper said that, nevertheless there was a need for a unified policy of dismantling among Britain, America, and France. The Western Powers had to decide whether to continue their dismantling policy at the risk of further aggravating German resentment and hostility, or to modify "their policy at the risk of losing all their authority in Germany.