SUPPLY OF ARMS

Taranaki Daily News, 17 September 1934, Page 5

SUPPLY OF ARMS

MUNITIONS FOR GERMANY

AMERICAN INVESTIGATION

HITLER’S RISE TO POWER

PRIVATE ARMIES SUPPLIED

CENSORSHIP ON EVIDENCE

By Telegraph —Press Assn. Copyright. Rec. 6.30 p.m. Washington, Sept. 14. Questioning of the Dupont Company by the Armaments Investigating Committee of the Senate concluded to-day with evidence that on February 1, 1933, the company entered into contract with Jungo Geira, described as an “international spy,” to act as its agent for the sale of military explosives to the German Government. The company’s executive committee had tom up the contract but later made a new agreement with Geira, which stipulated, however, that no contracts should be entered into for the rearmament of Germany except with the approval of the United States Government. It was further revealed that considerable quantities of American small arms and machine-guns were smuggled into Germany from Holland. Most of the equipment went to the Nazis before Herr Hitler’s rise to power, but Communists and other private armies received some. Lammot Dupont, president of the E. I. Dupont de Nemours Company, fold the committee that he had reports indicating that Germany was making war explosives in considerable quantities in violation of the Versailles Treaty. At this stage a censorship was placed by the committee on a sheaf of cables apparently relating to a successful effort by the Dupont Company and the British ally, Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., to keep a German concern from building a powder plant in Argentina. If those cables were made public, said Mr. Stephen Raushenbush, secretary of the committee, it might mean the destruction of life and property. Senator Bennett Clark (Missouri, Democrat) asserted that the rise of Herr Hitler had been financed indirectly _by French munitions manufacturers to stimulate their own arms sales.