HITLER’S PLAN

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 95, 20 March 1940, Page 9

HITLER’S PLAN

FOUR-POWER PACT. ZONES OF INFLUENCE. ANTI-BOLSHEVIK AIM. (United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) NEW YOKE, March 18. The Home correspondent of the New York Times says that Hitler’s original peace proposal, which the Pope heard from the German Foreign Minister (Herr von Bibbentrop) and Mr Sumner Welles heard from Hitler, as understood at the Vatican was as follows: 1. General, simultaneous and immediate disarmament. 2. A return to the Eour-Power Pact in the form of a new European directory, substituting for the League of Nations tour States dividing Europe into zones of influence, and inaugurating an antiBolshevik policy aimed at the liberation of Russia, by arms it necessary, from Communism. 3. Recognition of absolute religious freedom after Germany has forced . all Jews to emigrate under the direction of England, Italy and France to Palestine, Ethiopia, and Madagascar respectively. 4. Absolute freedom of trade and access to raw materials, with close economic co-operation with the United States, and the facilitation of Italian and German emigration. •5. Restitution within. 20 years of the German colonies, or equal colonial compensation, or at least protection of German emigration to determined areas in Africa. “RESTORING” POLAND. 6. Reconstruction of an independent Poland, composed primarily of the central zone ot the Polish territory with 10,000,000 inhabitants, with Gdynia to bo a Polish free port, and also with free trade for Poland through Danzig, and a general facilitation of Polish communication to the sea; a settlement of the Polish frontiers by an internationally-controlled pleb iscite, with the Polish and Danubian minority problems to be settled by transmigration. 7. The Czechs, Slovaks and Magyars to constitute a tripartite State allied to the Reich, which would .enjoy industrial and communication privileges therein for 25 years. 8. Austria to remain in the Reich. 0. A Danubian Federation to be constituted as a Customs union equalising the interest of the large and smail States in the Danube Basin, with Italy, Germany, Rumania, Yugoslavia, Bohemia, Slovakia and Hungary participating therein. 10. Status quo of the Balkans to be maintained. 11. Free Customs transit for Italian •goods through Jibuti (French Somaliland), anticipating an expiration of the Suez Convention, and also new status lor the Italians in Tunisia. It is believed that Signor Mussolini is convinced that a peace by this method would be hopeless, and that one of his reasons for meeting Hitler was to induce the Fuehrer to make modification.