“GERMANY NOW COMPLETELY SPLIT”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22669, 21 June 1948, Page 5

“GERMANY NOW COMPLETELY SPLIT”

SOKOLOVSKY

(N.Z.P.A. —Reuter—Copyright.)

LONDON, June 18

Marshal Sokolovsky, the Russian military governor, issued a proclamation to the German people declaring that the separate currency reform completes the splitting of Germany.

“It was against the wishes and the interests of the German people and in the interests of the American, British and French monopolists,” he said. _ “It is a breach of the Potsdam decisions and the control mechanism which envisaged the treatment of Germany as an economic whole.” He claimed that, the Russian representatives in the Allied Control Council had taken every opportunity to reach an agreement on four-Power currency reform for all Germany, but the western representatives had used the discussions as a cloak for secretly preparing separate currency reform. Separate reform strengthened the political and economic position of the big German capitalist reactionaries and Junkers who helped fascism to power, and it harmed the German . working western plan would destroy trade relations with Germany, turn inter-zonal trade into trade as between two separate States since two different currencies would be used, and destroy prerequisites for free passenger and goods traffic between the zones. Reuter’s correspondent in Berlin says this is regarded as a hint that the Russian order today sealing the frontiers or' the Russian zone would be enforced permanently and not solely while currency reform is being brought into force.