WESTERN PROGRESS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26848, 12 August 1948, Page 5

WESTERN PROGRESS

REBUILDING GERMANY ANXIETY REFLECTED IN SOVIET PRESS NEW REGIME ATTACKED N.Z.P.A. —Copyright Rec. 9.30 p.m. LONDON, Aug. 11. In its first comments on the German situation since the Moscow talks began, the Russian press yesterday attacked the projected setting up of a regime for Western Germany at Frankfurt. Identical articles appeared in the Red Star, the Russian Army’s official organ, and in the Moscow New Times. The articles declared that the working out of a peace treaty for Germany and the organisation of a Central German Government were absolutely essential for re-establishing Germany’s political and economic unity. The obstacle to this was the breed of British and American monopolists, who are accused of wishing to extend the period of military occupation and of trying to establish a colonial regime in Western Germany. Meanwhile, American industrialists were buying up everything they could in Germany. This comment, says the diplomatic correspondent of The Times, reflects that anxiety is evidently felt in Russia at the strides the western zones are now making, mainly as the result of currency reforms and the European Recovery Programme in contrast to the Soviet zone, where economic difficulties are known to be

steadily increasing. Germans from the Soviet zone, reports a later message, say that, as a result of the three-weeks-old western Allied order prohibiting supply trains from leaving or entering the Soviet zone, steel foundries in Turgelow, Meuselwitz and Tangenhuette have been forced to shut down for a lack of coal and coke, which they normally buy from the Ruhr. The Germans also say that in Stralsund, Dessau, Meissen, Wittenberg, Aschersleben and Potsdam gas supplies have been cut between one and three hours, daily. Further Moscow Meetings Further meetings will take place in Moscow this week between Mr Molotov and the envoys of the Western Powers, according to Reuter’s diplomatic correspondent. It is understood that the last two meetings dealt with the situation in Berlin and the request of the Western Powers for the lifting of the blockade before the beginning of any negotiations on wider German and European issues. Hard bargaining is undoubtedly taking place, and it may be some time before the discussions on the Berlin deadlock end. Anti-Soviet Leaflets

, The Germans of the Soviet zone have decided to play their own part in the war of nerves between the East and the West, says the Berlin correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. During the past three days hundreds of leaflets have been dropped and distributed in the streets of Halle, Dessau and Madgeburg, calling on the population of Saxony-Anhalt to work for a free German republic and against the “ slave system of the past three years.” The leaflets have been sent out by the “Action Committee of True Germany.” Three times in the past four days leaflets have appeared in the Soviet zone and the Soviet sector of Berlin criticising the administration of the Socialist Unity Party. The leaflet is a single typed sheet of paper headed: . “Against Terror and Oppression,” and is addressed to the population of Saxony-Anhalt and to all Germans in the Soviet zone. It begins with a warning that the Soviet Military Government and the Russiancontrolled Socialist Unity Party intend postponing the October elections and the staging of a national referendum, and it protests against the “ catastrophic food situation, the two-year plan, and forced labour in uranium mines. “ Talk over the contents of this leaflet in your place of work,” it goes on. “Show courage, for in your numbers is a power which nobody, not even the Russians, can break. After all, they cannot lock us all up.” News from the Soviet zone has shown that, in spite of all the machinery of a police State and natural German antipathy towards underground resistance, signs of unrest are likely to occur before this year’s harvest is brought in.