IN NAZI GAOL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 November 1942, Page 5

IN NAZI GAOL

FORMER SUDETEN LEADER MAN WHO WORKED FOR HITLER. NOW THROWN ON SCRAP HEAP. The latest victim, of Himmler’s purge of the Nazi ranks is Konrad Henlein, a leader of the “Sudeten” Nazis and Hitler’s most important tool in bringing about the Munich crisis and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. According to “Nase Noviny,” a Czechoslovak daily in London, Henlein has been imprisoned. He shares his cell with Dr. Walter Darre, ousted German Minister of Agriculture. The arrest of Henlein is another sign of continuing disintegration of the Nazi party owing to the strain caused by the unfavourable turn of events on the Eastern front, where the Germans were able to gain new territories but unable to crush the . Russian armies and achieve speedy victory. Henlein organised the revolt of the Nazi Germans in Czechoslovakia. He founded the Sudeten German Party, which started as a party opposing by legal means the alleged oppression of Germans in Czechoslovakia and latei inaugurated the revolutionary movement appealing for outside help from Hiller against Czechoslovakia. From the beginning to the_ end this party was supported by Hitler to serve him as a pretext for meddling in Czechoslovak internal affairs. By employing Henlein as a willing tool, Hitler, posing as a nrotector of the German minority in Czechoslovakia, succeeded, in making of all the Czech people a mm-, ority in Germany. The alleged oppression of one group of German people was rectified by him by enslaving the entire Czech nation. While the Germans in Czechoslovakia constituted the best treated German minority in Europe—certainly much better treated than the German minority in Italy, Germany’s ally—the Czech minority in Hitler’s Reich is most brutally persecuted and threatened with anmhilaserved his master well.. But the day of his glory is gone. All is not well not only with the Czechs in the “Protectorate” but also with the Gelmans in the so-called Sudentenland, where consternation was caused by the huge losses of men on the Russian front! Hitler gave his “Sudetens” ample opportunitv to. pay for their deliverance,” for which they had to pay cost is appalling. The flower of the Sudeten German youth was destroyed in Russia. Discord and dissatisfaction prevails in the .‘Sudentenland.” No number of soothing speeches delivered by Henlein was sufficient to improve the weakened morale of the “Sudetens.” Today the once famous leader of the Sudeten German revolt finds himself in a German gaol.