HITLER REBUFFED

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23504, 15 November 1939, Page 10

HITLER REBUFFED

The German minority in Rumania is unwilling to play fly to Hitler's spider. At a meeting pledging loyalty to their adopted country, the Germans made it clear that they would not follow the example of the Baits in returning to the Reich at the Fuehrer's behest. Their decision will be felt as a chilling rebuff by Hitler because the Germans in Rumania comprise a numerous group. They are settled, and most of them have been settled for centuries, in four main groups, their total being between 700,000 and 800,000. Their unwillingness to leave the districts they have developed and in which they exercise cultural leadership can be understood, the more so because, if they returned to the Reich, they would probably be planted as colonists among the dispossessed and disaffected Poles. They have certainly nourished grievances in Rumania, but their lot has been pleasant under the easygoing Rumans compared with Nazi rigours. No doubt such reflections have guided their decision and reawakened a loyalty to their adopted country that in the last few years had not been noticeable. Moreover they may well be suspicious that Hitler's real motives have nothing to do with their welfare. In the past he has used them as political instruments to stir up strife and provide him with pretexts. Now, to judge by the case of the Baits, he would bring them back into the Reich in order to realise the property they would leave behind and so supplement Germany's desperately short supply of foreign credits. At their expense, too, Hitler would be able to pose as offering a constructive solution of vexed minority problems, a pretence that will not for a moment deceive those who care to study the complex ethnological map of Central and East Europe.