SOVIET THOUGHT NOT ECONOMICALLY STRONG ENOUGH FOR WAR

Wanganui Chronicle, 29 December 1947, Page 5

SOVIET THOUGHT NOT ECONOMICALLY STRONG ENOUGH FOR WAR

(By Richard Kasischke, A.P. Correspondent.) Berlin, Dec. 10. ; Some German prisoners of war recently repatriated from Russia express amazeement at suggestions published in the western Press that war between the United States and the Soviet Union might be imminent. They say that what they have ob- ! served in several years of labour in I post-war Russia has convinced them that the Soviet Union will not be I economically strong enough for such I a war for several years and that : Americans who think otherwise Are i overrating the Soviets. A 34-year-old Mecklenburger discharged after four years of labour at I Kiev said he believed the Western nations did not fully realised the Im- | mensity of Russia’s war losses, human | and material, and the present iow j estate of its citizens. NEED TO BE BETTER FED ! A 23-year-old Berliner, back from ' three years at Stalingrad, expressed the same opinion. He said: “The Russians you would fight if war came now would have to be better lea than those I saw in Russia.” I “In my mother’s bomb-damaged * house here, getting the lowest iood| ration card (1550 calories daily), I' live better than millions of Russians do today.” "We know,” the pair added, “that Hitler underestimated Russia’s strength—or at least its size and endurance. “But, as East Front soldiers, we also know that the tide of the war there definitely turned against us when we saw the Russians coming at us with British and American machines and supplies shipped to them from the West.” Like most Germans returned from Russia this pair were in poor physical I condition. They reported what has been stated by official American military government investigators here —that the Russians generally have been repatriating only those p.o.w.s who are no longer able to work. They said that, except for not getting enough to eat to perform the heavy labour required of them, the> were not mistreated by the Russians. DISAFFECTED OF COMMUNISM. “But we came back,” they said, "thoroughly disaffected of Communism and Russian methods. “We are actually very sorry for the Russian people.* They looked so pitifully poor, and so many of them live so primitively. "It s difficult for Westerners to believe how they can be so backward technically. "Blackmarketing and corruption are the accepted thing there. Appare.My one has to do it to keep alive. ' The Mecklenburger stayed in Berlin only briefly and then departed for western Germany, occupied by Britain and America ,to seek a new home. He said he had contracted tuberculosis while working in Kiev —the last two years in a glass factory. He believed the food supply was better in the west, and said that because he was anti-Communist he did not wish to remain in Russian occupied territory. STILL HOLDING PRISONERS. Both the Mecklenburger and Berliner said that the Russians still hold many Rumanian, Bulgarian, Yugoslav, and Italian prisoners, and that they had worked alongside such men. I “This was difficult to understand,” I they said, "for have not peace treatie 1 they said, “for have not peace treaties been concluded with these countries?”