By CYRIL BROWN
By Wireless to The New York Times.
BERLIN, Nov. 19—Food rioting and plundering have been resumed in Greater Berlin and the stores so far unplundered remain closed. If you succeed in slipping in by the back door it is only to find the shopkeepers unwilling to sell anything, particularly the butchers, who meet the world-be customer with the stereotyped answer. “We have no meat.” This shortage is largely due to the expectation that the price of meat as well as other food prices will be many hundred per cent higher in a day or two.
A prospective meat price for tomorrow of 7,000,000,000,000 marks per pound was quoted today, which at the best bootlegger rates for a dollar is nearly per pound. Bread was unbuyable either yesterday or today. It is learned that the military dictator, General von Seeckt, is considering some sort of food rationing system, the details of which are being worked out. These provide that the fashionable restaurants, semi-empty hotels, dance halls and other places known as “luxury enterprises” shall, when the necessity becomes acute, be converted into mass feeding stations and “warming rooms.”
AUGUST 5, 1932
JAPAN THREATENS DRIVE INTO CHINA
CHINESE READY TO FIGHT
By HALLETT ABEND
Wireless to The New York Times.
SHANGHAI, Friday, Aug. 5—The situation in Manchuria and North China grew more grave today as the Japanese concentrated more troops at Chinchow, whence they are in a position to strike either at Jehol Province or North China, and the renewed widespread attacks on South Manchurian cities by irregulars continued unabated.
The tension also increased greatly at Shanghai, where the Japanese naval patrol was more than doubled, the commander condemning the “terrorizing tactics” of boycott organizations.
Furthermore, expressions by both, Japanese and Chinese leaders showed determination to settle the Manchurian issue by the strongest measures. General Shigeru Honjo, the commander of the united Japanese armies in Manchuria, said that he had decided to resort to “last measures” because Gonshiro Ishimoto, the kidnapped Japanese head of an official mission in Jehol, was ill and there was little prospect of his rescue.
At the same time, the Nanking Government approved the agreements reached at the Peiping Politico-Military Conference, which were understood to call for a strong policy, and Governor Han Fu-chu of Shantung issued a statement from Tsinan expressing willingness to lead his own troops in an attempt to recover Manchuria—regardless of the prospects of success.
GEN WU URGES RESISTANCE
General Wu Pei-fu, the former North China war lord, also announced in Peiping that he favored a campaign against Manchukuo.
Military observers believe the increased activity of the Chinese irregulars between the South Manchuria Railway zone and the Gulf of Liaotung constitutes part of a carefully pre-arranged plan for a campaign to harass the Japanese and increase the prospects for success of a drive from Jehol against Mukden and Changchun, the capital of Manchu-kuo.
In Peiping the nervousness has mounted to new heights and the directors of the museum located in the Forbidden City rented a warehouse today in the legations quarters in order to be able to safeguard the palace treasures from possible looting. They appropriated $100,000 to pay for a rush order for packing cases in which to store the jewels and art treasures valued at tens of millions of dollars and appropriated an additional $30,000 to take out war risk insurance on the irreplaceable objects of art.
DEFENSE PLAN ABANDONED
These steps were taken after the directors discarded a tentative plan for surrounding the museum with machine guns, electrically charged barbed wire and a trench system.
The Japanese commander of the patrol forces in Shanghai, in announcing his decision to increase the number of the patrol units from eight to twenty-two, assured the Japanese residents of the city of the Japanese Government’s readiness to afford them adequate protection.
“The Japanese residents are hereby notified,” he said, “that if their business is interfered with or they are terrorized by anti-Japanese groups, to report to the landing party immediately. Protection of the interests of the Japanese here is my paramount duty. Our reviving trade has been damaged and the situation is becoming worse through illegal interference with the transportation of Japanese goods and the terrorizing tactics of the so-called Bloody Group for the Extermination of Traitors.
“Really, no words are too strong against the activities of the Chinese people,” he added.
AUGUST 8, 1932
SCHLEICHER WARNS GERMANY CAN’T WAIT FOR ARMS EQUALITY
Says Reich Will Support Every Measure Of Disarmament, but Must Have Security.
By FREDERICK T. BIRCHALL
Special Cable to The New York Times
BERLIN, Aug. 7—The busiest of the Ministerial buildings that house the German Government these days is a solid structure of gray granite away from all the rest of the pleasant tree-lined streets where the Landwehr Canal cuts through the city’s heart.
It was formerly the War Department, but war is a word that has fallen into disfavor in present-day Germany. Besides, all the nations have signed the Kellogg Pact. So the building is now the Reichswehr-ministerium, the home of the German Ministry of Defense.
It used to swarm with heel-clicking, brilliantly uniformed officers smartly tailored to the last button, and on the whole it was not the most comfortable place for a civilian to visit. Nowadays, however, there is as much mufti as uniform among the occupants.
A white marble bust of the von Moltke who carried the German armies to Paris in 1870 and brought them back triumphant still stands in the entrance hall, and once daily a slim platoon of the Reichswehr, which furnishes the sentries on duty here, at the Presidential Palace and at a few other government buildings, marches in through the heavy arched gateway and passes out again.
ATMOSPHERE DIFFERENT NOW
But the atmosphere is generally quite different from the old days and just now the building’s principal distinction is that it covers the activities, military and political, of Generalleutnant Kurt von Schleicher, Minister of Defense in the von Papen Cabinet and the most talked of man in Germany.
Half of Berlin speaks of General von Schleicher with bated breath. He is the “iron man” dear to the German heart, the “man behind the Cabinet’’—he is actually in it—the “real ruler of Germany,” and so on.
General von Schleicher himself speaks little, but when he does he usually has something to say, as France discovered quite recently when for the first time in his life he talked over the radio.
So his fame has grown. When the Communists become quiescent it is because they fear von Schleicher; when the Nazis milden their truculence it is because the General has given a quiet tip to Adolf Hitler that things have gone far enough.
Nobody ever credits the rather kindly von Papen with any of these things. It is von Schleicher who has temporarily taken the place in German legend that the former Kaiser and President von Hindenburg have held in turn.
I sought out General von Schleicher in his office to ask him to elaborate somewhat on the views that he recently expressed regarding Germany’s present handicap among the nations and her determination immediately to set about making her future worth while.
AN ORDINARY OFFICE
It was an ordinary office such as might have been occupied by any German business man. The only uniforms visible were those of the unteroffizier orderly at the building’s portal who took in my name and the General’s Adjutant, who listened to the interview.
The man who rose at his desk in greeting was clad in a gray business suit, and I should say that shrewdness rather than sternness was the prevailing characteristic of his rather genial face. They say that no man knows better and estimates more correctly the political currents in Germany. Probably he could bang the desk to good effect, but certainly he did not look half as truculent as our own General Dawes.
General von Schleicher, it had previously developed, had become g
unshy regarding interviewers after several rather disastrous experiences. He had therefore requested that the questions put to him be previously submitted in writing. He does not speak English, although a rather understanding twinkle in his eye seemed to indicate that he comprehended at least the drift of what was said in that language. His answers are here translated from the German.
“How does the Minister of Defense view the internal state of Germany?” was the first question.
“I can answer the question only so far as it concerns my official capacity as Reichswehr Minister” was the General’s cautious reply. “I object to the Reich-swehr being thrown into the struggle of internal politics. That I reject any sort of military dictatorship I made clear in my recent radio talk.
OBEDIENCE TO PRESIDENT FIRST
“The commander in chief of the Reichswehr is the Reichspresident. The Reichswehr is a non-political instrument of force which on given occasions the President has used to enforce his orders. The Reichs president is elected by the people. He alone in the scheme of German Government can claim the authority of a clear popular majority. The Reichs-wehr’s service to the people can therefore be no better performed than by obeying the President’ s orders.
“For a few days in July it was necessary to confer executive power on the commandant of the Berlin military district. By this means the President’s will was enforced without the Reichswehr having to intervene with its arms. I am convinced it will be so also in the future.
“The Reichstag elections show no difficulties in the government of Germany nowadays. The greatest success was attained by the radical parties, not only by the National Socialists but also on the other wing by the Communists. The outside world has ground for wondering at that. More than 60,000,000,000 marks (about $14,280,000,000) of our national wealth has been taken from us. Can anyone then really expect the German people to be content with existing conditions?
“On the contrary, there is reason for wondering that the German people bear their terrible distress so calmly and with such discipline.
SEES AUTHORITY UNDERMINED
“Neither must there be astonishment abroad at the rise everywhere in Germany of party organizations that violently battle against each other. This has been made possible not only by the fact that the authority of our sovereign State was undermined by the Treaty of Versailles. A country treated for thirteen years as a pariah by the outside world, a country to whom equality is denied to this very day, simply had to forfeit the respect of its own people.
“Only when the German Government can demonstrate to its people that it possesses equal rights with any other country in the world—only then shall we again have fully stable conditions in Germany, only then shall we be able to subject the parties and their organizations unquestionably to the State “There is therefore no question of German policy more important both with respect to domestic affairs and foreign relations than that of equality of rights. The German Government is determined to solve this question in the very near future.
“This leads to the second question you have asked me to answer—concerning my attitude on foreign policy.” (General von Schleicher had been asked to voice his views on the foreign situation, especially on the course of the disarmament conference and its results thus far.) “To me, as the Minister of Defense, the question of disarmament is in the very centre of foreign policy.
EMPHASIZES RIGHTS
“Consider our position. By the treaties of 1919 we have the right to have the other signatories disarm according to the same methods that govern our own disarming. As a member of the League of Nations we have, moreover, the right to a degree of security equal to that of any other country.
“Thirteen years have passed since 1919 and our right is still unrealized. The disarmament conference sat for six months and adopted a resolution that neither achieves disarmament nor acknowledges equality of rights. What has become of all the nine principles formulated by all the governments at the beginning of the conference? They have found their graves in the debates in the technical committees.
“About President Hoover’s proposals, calculated to carry disarmament a long way forward, there was amiable talk, but none of their more important provisions was included in the final resolutions. Germany’s own self-explanatory demand for equal rights received no consideration, even though any disarmament convention can be worth something only when signed voluntarily by partners having equal rights. Germany therefore rejected the resolution.
“The German people have waited thirteen years for their due. They can wait no longer. Germany will not again send its representatives to Geneva unless the question of equal rights has been previously solved in conformity with the German position.
“On this question there are among us no party differences. No German Government could sign a disarmament convention that in all things does not accord Germany the same rights as any other country.
“If submarines, bombing planes, heavy artillery and tanks are now designated as a means of defense, by what justification can one deny Germany this protection?
“That Germany alone among the great powers is unable to provide for her national security constitutes an immoral condition that we can no longer tolerate. Either the disarmament provision of the Treaty of Versailles must be applied to all the powers or the right to rebuild her system of defense and make it equal to the needs of national security must be conceded to Germany.
“We want no armament competition. For financial reasons alone we are unusual in that respect. But just because of our distressed financial position we ought not to be spending money on the costliest and at the same time the least productive system of defense, forced on us by the Treaty of Versailles, but should spend every penny to the best advantage.
“We are dreaming neither of establishing a peace-time army of 600,000 men—such as France now maintains—or of competing with the great naval powers. We do not wish to threaten the security of our neighbors. We support every measure of disarmament. But we do demand for ourselves also security, equal rights and freedom.”
AUGUST 16, 1932
HITLER DICTATORSHIP IN REICH HELD UNLIKELY
Woodbridge Thinks Nazi Leader Cannot Seize Power—Sees Steadying Force in People.
Professor Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, Theodore Roosevelt Professor of American History at the University of Berlin for the last year, returned on the Holland-American liner Volendam yesterday and said the probability of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists gaining power in Germany was not strong. He said he did not think it possible for Hitler to seize power and that the Nazis would have to wait for a majority in the Reichstag.
“All coalitions are very doubtful,” Professor Woodbridge said. “The present government, which does not depend on a coalition, is in a strong position and can keep up indefinitely because vast numbers of people do not want a disturbance.
“The present government is giving a sense of authority, control and progress. Hitler has undoubtedly proved a success as a leader of his movement. About his executive ability nobody as yet knows anything.
“I left Germany with the conviction that the German people, in spite of intense party differences and sentiments, would come through their present political difficulties with a genuinely constructive program and without civil war. When one looks at the political situation from the point of view of the strife of parties and partisan propaganda, one seems to see only chaos, disorder and peril; but as one observes what actually goes on from day to day and as one talks with people of different parties, one gets a profound sense of steadying forces that are firmly holding excesses in restraint.”
JANUARY 31, 1933
HITLER PUTS ASIDE AIM TO BE DICTATOR
Imprisoned For Munich Revolt In 1923
Adolf Hitler’s acceptance of the German Chancellorship in a coalition with conservatives and nonpartisans marks a radical departure from his former demand that he be made “the Mussolini of Germany” as a condition to his assumption of government
responsibility. It represents at the same time a recession from their former position by President Hindenburg and the Conservatives, who hitherto had been set against entrusting the Chancellorship to Hitler although willing to permit him to participate in the government. The net result is not altered thereby.
For the first time in his spectacular and tempestuous career Hitler is now called upon to prove in deed what he has been promising in word to the many millions of his supporters. He takes office at a time when his own party is passing through a severe internal crisis, expressed in a bitter factional struggle between extremists who have insisted on extra-constitutional action and the more moderate elements who have maintained that the party could not continue in the Opposition forever and could survive only through constructive participation in the government.
This factional struggle, in which the Nazi leader had tried to placate both sides, assumed acute form last December with the resignation of the leaders of the more moderate faction, Gregor Strasser and Gottfried Feder. Strasser was Hitler’s chief executive. Feder was the party ideologist credited as being the real founder of the party.
Both resigned in protest against their chief’s refusal to participate in the government unless the powers of a dictator were given to him. This position, critics in the Nationalist Socialist party argued, was responsible for the loss of about 2,000,000 votes in the Reichstag elections last November.
Adolf Hitler (right) rides with German President Paul von Hindenburg after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor of Germany in January 1933.
PARTY DECLINED SINCE AUGUST
The New York Times Book of World War II, 1939-1945 Page 4