HERR HITLER’S FOLLOWERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22023, 4 August 1933, Page 9

HERR HITLER’S FOLLOWERS

FANATICAL YOUNG MEN LONDON, July 22. “ Herr Hitler talks peace, not because lie believes in it, but because in the next five or 10 years there will be no alternative,” writes Mr Robert Bernays, Liberal member of the House of Commons for Bristol North, after a tour of Germany. “ The German Chancellor is a realist and knows that war now would be fatal to himself and Germany,” says the writer. “It would be just a race to Bei lin between the Poles and the French, and would involve overwhelming defeat and a Communist revolution.

“ However, Germany re-armed would bo a different proposition. Germany regards herself as surrounded by hungry enemies.

“In the shops are displayed horrific pictures of Germany’s armaments compared with those of the rest of the world. Gas masks are sold alongside soft hats.

“ War propaganda is ceaseless and systematic. Organised bodies of students are touring the Polish frontier in order to have their nationalism inflamed by stories of injustices.” Mr Bernays, in an estimate of Germany’s potential military strength, declares that the 100,000 regular troops permitted under the Versailles Treaty constitute probably the finest standing army in the world, but the really alarming factors are the unofficial armies. The Nazis alone number nearly 1,000,000 young men. They belong to the middle classes, and care nothing for the ex-Kaiser. Their God is the Reich, with Herr Hitler as its prophet. Their pride is in the Brown Shirts. They are almost fanatical, and would bare their breasts to machine-guns if Herr Hitler gave the order. The provisions of the Versailles Treaty seem to be fairly and faithfully observed, says Mr Bernaye. Some small arms are clandestinely manufactured, but the big gun factories'are silent, because the workers are too disgruntled to enable armaments to be made without the secret reaching the ears of France. It is more difficult to generalise about poison gas, says the writer, but, fortunately, the chemists are mostly Jews, now converted into vindictive exiles.

The situation to-day is that Germany possesses more than 1,000,000 drilled men, but she lacks arms to make them effective.