AUSTRO-GERMAN CRISIS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21982, 17 June 1933, Page 11

AUSTRO-GERMAN CRISIS

AN act of sabotage ARREST OF NAZI LEADERS (United Press Association.) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) LONDON, June 16. (Received June 16, at 5.5 p.m.) The Daily Telegraph’s Vienna correspondent says that an act of sabotage attributed to Nazi terrorists occurred on Wednesday night. Acting on expert knowledge the perpetrators chose a spot on a little-used road, dug down, and severed the underground telephone cables connecting Austria with the neighbouring countries. Thirty-four telephone ca‘l boxes were also wrecked. It is now announced that 1179 of the Austrian Nazi leaders were arrested including 387 State officials, 52 State teachers, 37 gendarmerie officers, 61 railway officials, 81 mayors, and' 37 lawyers and judges. Fifteen German agents have been deported. Vienna is relieved that the Corpus Christi holiday passed without incident. Fearing Nazi demonstrations, hundreds of plain clothes police mingled with the etowds. Their officers, for the first time since the war, wore the old Imperial uniforms in preference to the German field grey.EYES ON THE CONTINENT INTRIGUES FOR POWER. LONDON, June 4. Mr Wickham Steed, writing in the Sunday Times, declares that Herr Hitler’s interference in the affaire of Austria is part of a large project, now maturing, aimed at a Super-Jleich, or “ Third Empire,” to include all the Germanic peoples of Europe, and make the whole Continent a Pan-German State. Four Nazi organisations already are working in Switzerland, while similar intrigues, conducted by Nazi “ cells,” are proceeding or are contemplated in Czechoslovakia, Belgian and French Flanders, Holland, the Baltic States, Luxemburg, Denmark, and Scandinavia, for the purpose of creating “ people’s movements ” in favour of Federal relationships with Germany. j Eventually Nazi commissaries will be sent to lead the movements. The German Vice-Chancellor, Herr von Papen, dutlincd the policy on May 25, when he claimed that one-third of the Germanic people is living in 25 States outside Germany. Interpreting Herr Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag, made on May IT, Herr von Papen explained that the Chancellor, in repudiating the assertion that the Nazis aimed at the Germanisation of other. States, proved himself to be revolutionary in foreign policy because he pointed the way to European co-opera-tion. Mr Steed, t commenting on Herr vcn Papen’s declaration, says it throws new light on Herr Hitler’s repudiation of war, as he aims at dominating the Continent peacefully. Meanwhile, however, Signor Mussolini fears Nazi triumphs in Austria and Switzerland as a menace to Italy, Much more than the fate of Austria depends on the struggle between Dr Dolfuss, the Austrian Chancellor, and the Nazis.' SYMPATHY APPRECIATED AUSTRIA’S FIGHT FOR INDEPENDENCE. LONDON, June 16. (Received June 17, at 0.55 a.m.) Dr Dollfuss, on the eve of his departure for Paris to meet M. Daladier, expressed his heartfelt thanks to the British Ministers and the press for their sympathetic reception. His contacts with other statesmen at the conference had convinced him that appeals for moral and economic support by Austria in her fight for political and economic independence would not go unheeded.