GERMAN-SOVIET COMBINE

Taranaki Daily News, 9 October 1928, Page 9

GERMAN-SOVIET COMBINE

ALLEGED SECRET TREATY CODE USED FOR AGREEMENT JUNKERS’ WORK IN RUSSIA By Tell-graph— Press Assn.—Copyright. Australian Press Association. Received Oct. 8, 11.45 p.m. Times. Berlin, Oct. 8. Herr Kunstler, the Socialist member of the Reichstag, has given the Vorwaerts details of the alleged secret German-Soviet military arrangements negotiated in 1922-23, which included the establishment of a Junkers’ aircraft and aero engine works in Soviet Russia. Herr Kunstler says everything and everybody was given a code designation. Thus Junkers’ works were “the firm NN,” the German Ministry of Defence was “the special group,” and aeroplanes were “cases.” The Vorwaerts publishes the key to the code and quotations from letters written to Professor Junkers and others by the “mixed commission” and sent from Moscow in December, 1921. “If Herr Kunstler’s disclosures are genuine they confirm the version hitherto current but never clearly established,” says the Berlin correspondent of the London Times, who points out that when the question of relations between the Reichswehr and the Red Army came up in the Reichstag two years ago it was admitted Junkers’ activities in Soviet Russia had the German Government’s official backing, but the Government then gave assurances that the relations with Junkers had long since been dissolved. Declaring the whole disclosures as ancient history, the Nationalist newspapers accuse Herr Kunstler of treason in publishing them and regret that parliamentary immunity protects him from prosecution.