CONQUEST OF EUROPE

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 6 April 1926, Page 5

CONQUEST OF EUROPE

GERMAN MAGNATES’ PI.AN. FOR HUGE INDEMNITIES DIVISION' OF THE EMPIRE. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATIpN—COPYRIGHT. LONDON, April 5. The death of August Thyssen, at the age of 85, recalls the -amazing German plan for conquering Europe and England and exploiting all the “wasted assets” of the British Empire. This project,, in universal assimila'ti°n., Which was devised at a. meeting of magnates’ 'held ait Berlin at the beginning of the century, was originally planned for 1912, says the Daily Telegraph, and was to be 'bu:sed on almost incredible indemnities, enabling German manufacturers to be exempt from taxation for years to come. A. syndicate with twenty millions capital was to handle Canada, while the inexhaustible wealth of India was to be poured into Germany. Thyssen’s reward was td be thirty thousand acres of the best land in Australia. Unluckily for the plotters, as the world now knows, instead of reaping, profits the magnates of the Fatherland 1 were called upon in 1915 to pay up to one hundred millions sterling towards the expenses of the war, against expectable profits frqm indemnities. Thyssen’® share was to be £200,’000 as a first instalment. He alone refused, and denounced the levy as blackmail. He was warned that if he broke from the compact there would be no more work, contracts or money, nor even payment of bills already overdue. But threats did not deter him. He said the majority might pay as it liked, and the world might scoff at the mortification of a greedy millionaire who’sold his self-respect for a bargain of a parcel of land in the far Antipodes. In 1918 he went to Switzerland, and published a remarkable pamphlet, in which he told the whole story, accusing the ex-Kaiser of bamboozling his subjects and their employers into a war which meant nothing but national bankruptcy.