POLITICAL “CLEAN-UP”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26748, 17 April 1948, Page 7

POLITICAL “CLEAN-UP”

Pressure in Soviet Zone of Germany SECRET POLICE ACTIVE New Zealand Press Association Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Apl. 16. Contrary to some opinions which believe that Russian actions in Berlin have been taken with the objective of the early removal of the Western Allies from that city, the Manchester Guardian’s correspondent believes that the weight of Russian pressure has lain elsewhere—in the Russian zone of Germany. “ For three weeks,” the correspondent says, “ reports have been flooding in from the Russian zone. In the last week of March, a noted anti-Communist in Leipzig fled to the British zone after anticipating the arrival of the Russian secret police by half-an-hour. He was followed by the Liberal Finance Minister of Brandenburg. “ Early in April, a wave of arrests of anti-Gov-ernment Social Democrats began in Thuringia. The Russian commandant of the Pankow district of Berlin forbade Christian Democrats to attend a meeting of ‘ the Western Democratic ’ wing of the party. The political ‘ clean-up ’in the Russian zone is in full swing.”

“ In Berlin, the Russians told students of the university to study the Communist doctrine or they would be cut off from their normal issues of clothes and shoes. Berlin lawyers were told this week that they might defend in legal cases only in one town in the Russian zone. . “ Confiscations of property have reached unheard of proportions in the last three weeks and owners of firms have been evicted without reason or compensation. Owners of large farms have been dispossessed with the additional singular clause—that they should depart to at least 35 miles, from their holding to where they would no longer arouse local sympathy and dissatisfaction. ' “ The ‘ People’s Police ’ has been vastly increased and new ‘action committees’ have been formed in most of the large communities. The ‘ clean up ’ must be safeguarded and a regular movement of police to the western frontier has been going on for a month. “This sudden tightening up of Russian police defences has been observed from the British frontiers,” the correspondent adds. ■“ In general, good Communists have been enrolled as ‘ new ’ police, or married men whose family ties prevent them from escaping. British sources confirm the appearance of a black-uniformed police on the frontier. “All along the routes which these conscripts must travel schools, dance halls and restaurants are being requisitioned for billeting space. The new police are being armed and equipped with vehicles and search lights. Reports of Russian troop movements are so confused that these may well be Dart of the spring manoeuvres starting early in„the fine weather. Their scale is considerable but not alarming. It is reasonable to suppose that war is not the Russian objective, but that of drawing down of the ‘ iron curtain.’ “A a secondary measure, Berlin is being sealed off within the zone. Russian posts are now sited along the very boundaries of the town and not as before two to three miles back. The new posts have gone into position during the last fortnight.” The correspondent continues: “No more food parcels may be sent into Berlin from the Russian zone' and thousands of parcels addressed to Western Germany have piled up in Berlin. Mail clearance is slowing down and deliveries of finished goods from Berlin to the West have been declining disastrously. Here, the Russian aim would seem to be the economic detachment of Berlin from the zones of the Western Allies, and its consequent dependence on its Soviet-ad-ministered hinterland in Eastern Germany. “ Do these two certain actions — the sealing off of the Russian zone from Western Europe and the subsidiary sealing off of Berlin —explain ‘the Berlin crisis’? Clearly it is possible,” says? the correspond-' ent,” for although it is seemingly the Allies who suffer from the new traffic regulations, it is in fact the . Germans who are most affected. If Berlin’s western supply lines are cut, it is the German > population of the western sectors and not the Allies who will starve. “ Russian action during the last week has been successful only in this: It has diverted attention from the centres of action to the centfes of Four-Power misunderstanding and confusion. The personality of the capital city has captured the news. In Berlin, the situation is noWas the Foreign Office professes —normal, .but it is abnormal, rather because of what is going on outside it than because, of. what has happened inside its boundaries. American Bombers’ Arrival Twenty-eight American Super-For-tress bombers landed at Furstenfeldbruck air base in Bavaria to-day, after a 16-hour flight from Goose Bay, Labrador, according to the Associated Press correspondent at Wiesbaden. American officers said General Clay immediately asked that some of the planes should shortly make a sortie over Berlin. They would fly in the air corridor set aside for Allied travel. The planes will be based at Furstenfeldbruck temporarily before returning to the United States.