RELEASE NO. 152 SEPTEMBER 28, 1942 NEWS FLASHES FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA UNDER NAZI DOMINATION (The news which is coming through in spite of Nazi censorship!) HENLEIN PURGED number of soothing speeches delivered by Henlein was sufficient to improve the weakened morale of The latest victim of Himler's purge of the Nazi the "Sudetens." Today the once famous leader of ranks is Konrad Henlein, a leader of the "Sudeten" the Sudeten German revolt finds himself in a Ger• Nazis and Hitler's most important tool in bringing man jail. about the Munich crisis and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. PLANS FOR POST-WAR According to Nase Noviny, a Czecho• RECONSTRUCTION OF CZECHOSLOVAKIA slovak daily in London, Henlein has been impris• oned. He shares his cell with Dr. Walter Darre, The Czechoslovak Ministry of Economic Recon• ousted German Minister of Agriculture. struction, first ministry of its kind to be set up by The arrest of Henlein is another sign of continuing one of the governments-in-exile, made public, on disintegration of the Nazi party owing to the strain September 6th, a detailed account of first plans for caused by the unfavorable turn of events on the the post-war rehabilitation of Czechoslovakia. Eastern front, where the Germans were able to gain The plan divides the country's post-war problems new territories but unable to crush the Russian into two categories: those of immediate importance, armies and achieve speedy victory. or the short-term problems, and those of importance in the more remote future. Henlein organized the revolt of the Nazi Germans in Czechoslovakia. He founded the Sudeten German The problems which will arise immediately after Party, which started as a party opposing by legal the war will need about six months after the war's means the alleged oppression of Germans in Czecho• termination for their satisfactory solution, according slovakia and later inaugurated the revolutionary to the ministry's reckoning. movement appealing for outside help from Hitler The foremost task in this period will be that of against Czechoslovakia. From the beginning to the dealing with the expected unemployment resulting end this party was supported by Hitler to serve him from the termination of work in the armament in• as a pretext for meddling in Czechoslovak internal dustries and the return of workers from Germany. affairs. By employing Henlein as a willing tool, Problems involving food and transportation will Hitler, posing as a protector of the German minority also be among the first dealt with under the minis• in Czechoslovakia, succeeded in making of all the try's reconstruction program. Czech people a minority in Germany. The alleged The ministry's program envisions the improvement oppression of one group of German people was of economic conditions at the end of the six-month rectified by him by enslavmg the entire Czech na• period. tion. While the Germans in Czechoslovakia con• The ministry, which is headed by Jaromir Necas, stituted the best treated German minority in Europe for a long time minister of social welfare in the pre• — certainly much better treated than the German war Prague government and former Chairman of the minority in Italy, Germany's ally—the Czech minori• International Labor Office, expects close interna• ty in Hitler's Reich is most brutally persecuted and tional collaboration in the economic field. It calls threatened with annihilation. attention, in the report concerning its program, to the lend-lease appropriation as an outstanding example Henlein served his master well. But the day of his of a new and original method of economic collabo• glory is gone. All is not well not only with the ration. Czechs in the "Protectorate" but also with the Ger• mans in the so-called Sudetenland, where consterna• tion was caused by the huge losses of men on the CZECH FARMER ORGANIZATION Russian front. Hitler gave his "Sudetens" ample op• NAZIFIED portunity to pay for their "deliverance," for which All Czech agricultural organizations have been dis• they had to pay in blood. solved and their property taken over by a new body The cost is appaling. The flower of the Sudeten called the Organization of Agricultural and Forest German youth was destroyed in Russia. Discord and Workers in the "Protectorate" of Bohemia-Moravia. dissatisfaction prevails in the "Sudetenland." No Membership is compulsory to all peasants. NEWS FLASHEIS FROM CZECHOSLOVAKIA UNDER NAZI DOMINATION NO OUTSIDE GUARDIAN FOR BRITISH MINERS HONORING GERMANS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA CZECH MINING TOWN The Czechoslovak Press Bureau in London, on On September 6th a huge meeting was held at September 1 5, reports that three groups of Germans Stoke-on-Trent, England, for the purpose of starting from Czechoslovakia — namely, the Social Demo• a movement for the rebuilding of Lidice after the cratic Party, the Democratic Party, and the Com• war. Dr. Edvard Benes, President of Czechoslovakia, munists issued a joint declaration of loyalty to the and Will Lawthers, President of the British Miners' Czechoslovak Republic and a statement of policy in Federation, were the principal speakers. Mr. Law- connection with the abolishment of the Munich agree• ther's address read as follows: ment. The declaration was signed by G. Beuer, K. "Just as that mining village of Czechoslovakia, Kreiblich, J. Zinner, J. Lank, Dr. A. Peres, and Dr. whose martyred dead we honor and salute this day, A. Popper for the parties concerned. has earned for itself a place in the pages of history, The declaration states that the Sudeten German so will today's inaugural ceremony mark a new phase anti-Fascists in Britain welcome the formal annul• in the greatest of all human atrributes — justice. We ment of the Munich Pact with deep satisfaction. The are here not to pay empty tributes to those who paid formal annulment of the Munich Agreement and the with their lives, but to see to it that a new Lidice recognition of the Czechoslovak Republic with its shall be born with the spirit of the destroyed Lidice pre-Munich frontiers means a further significant act permeating every stone that shall be built. It was the in the reconstruction of a sovereign Czechoslovak Secretary of the Midland Miners, George Jones, who Republic. At the same time it means a final rejection suggested that the British miners, with their fellow of the idea that the German population of other miners the world over, with their fellow citizens in states must see in Hitler their guardian and natural Britain, with all who hate every tyranny and desire savior. that justice should reign, should take steps that you The statement says: "At a time when great, new will endorse. possibilities have opened up, we feel a need to ex• "Today's demonstration of unity with the ideal press again with utmost emphasis our adherance to suggested will be taken up everywhere, wherever the Czechoslovak Republic. In 1938 we, together there breathes that spirit that Lidice typifies — re• with our Czech and Slovak brothers, defended the sistance to the evil thing even unto death. There is Republic against the Nazi invasion. Today we fight not a single individual in this or any other land who together to drive the bloody Nazi hangmen from the has respect for human decency who would not, if soil of our common homeland. The more firmly given the opportunity, have hailed that day when he Czechoslovakia, dismembered by Hitler, draws her could dispatch any of the Nazi fiends as the com• peoples together in a common struggle the more mon folk of Lidice are supposed to have done. We thorough will be the reckoning with the Fascist op• have today to begin this effort to show in the clearest pressors. The place of the Sudeten German anti- unmistakable way that future generations will enter Fascists is in the Czechoslovak front. The place of Lidice as a holy place, consecreted by the humble all able bodied Sudeten Germans is in the Czecho• sons and daughters of toil, who lived therein until slovak army in which hundreds are already being their destruction on June 16, 1942. To those un• trained for the armed fight on the Continent. This is known men and women of Lidice we say, with Walt the only way in which the Sudeten German people Whitman . 'Not until the sun excludes you will can shake off the Fascist foreign rule and achieve we exclude you.' freedom." "British miners have never hesitated to give and give again to worthy causes for noble ends. Born The declaration concludes with this statement: and reared under circumstances in which danger is "We who see the fight against Hitler as our first ever present, our hearts and minds go out to those duty, refuse to turn the questions of future relations who face risks; and today we say to those in all lands of peoples into a subject of controversy now. We under the domination of the Nazis: Every action of share the opinion of the President that the peoples the miners of the nations submerged is welcomed by of Czechoslovakia will themselves decide their social, the miners of Britain, U.S.S.R., U.S.A., and Austra• political, and national problems after they have lia. We will help you, and we know that, once the achieved the destruction of the Nazis. The more call goes out from Britain, the rest of the miners of unitedly we strive together in the war now, the more the United Nations will give also to rebuild Lidice. easily we will achieve, after Hitler's overthrow, a To the miners under the iron heel of the dictators solution of the national problems which will guaran• we express that assurance that we welcome the tee that liberated peoples can live together in peace knowledge that they will do all that lies in their and friendship.