Sacked For Being Candid

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 5

Sacked For Being Candid

Nazi Economist Makes Startling Revelations GUNS LACK AMMUNITION United Press Association.— By Electric Telegraph.—Copy r igli t. LONDON. Mnv 11. nr. Kuaoir isrinKmann, Secretary of State of the German Ministry of economics, has retired, at Herr Hitler’s orders, on the ground of ill-health. lie has also been removed from the board of the Reichsbank. In a recent speech at Cologne, Dr Brinkmann declared that Germany wai paying for a single gun of inferio: quality at a price sufficient for ten Raw material resources were of sue! inferior quality as to threaten the na tional economy. “What use are guns without ammunition, planes without fuel, and an army that Is not properly fed?” he asked. A remarkable account of Germany’* economic position by Dr. Brinkmann till recently Dr. Funk’s assistant ai

the Reichsbank, has been published by the French journal Agence Economique st Financiere, which guarantees its authenticity. In a recent speech to party officials at Cologne, Dr. Brinkmann said that, in spite of the acute shortage of foreign exchange, wages had to be paid in foreign currency to 300,000 imported workers, owing to the scarcity of agricultural labour. German steel production cannot be maintained; yet last year it was 1,500,000 tons below consumption. The difference was made up by imports, paid for out of Austria’s gold reserves, which are now exhausted. At present Germany’s chances of imports are completely blocked. Manufacturing costs have risen; quality has deteriorated. Prices are four times higher than normal, and the State now pays for one gun what it used to pay for ten, and the quality is worse. The State takes 55,000-million marks out of a national income of 108,000-mil-lion marks; this proportion cannot be maintained. The Reich Budget is 6,000-million marks short and capital is disappearing. These figures, notes the London Spectator, throw a valuable light on the causes of Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia; they make further aggression more rather than less likely. Dr. Brinkmann himself is now under constant medical supervision after a nervous breakdown,