Third Reich Rides Again

A recently formed organization set up to oppose West German militarism has complained of that country’s territorial demands on its European neighbors.

The group, the Ad Hoc Citizens Council Against West German Militarism, stated in a letter to this newspaper that the Bonn regime officially claims not only all of East Germany, but large parts of Poland, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, territories that were taken from Germany by the Potsdam Agreement at the close of World War II.

According to the group, it is the Bonn government’s practice to distribute maps of these borders at its embassies and consulates in order to emphasize its claim to the territories lost when Nazi Germany was defeated in 1945. Such maps are now on exhibition inside the West German pavilion at EXPO 67 in Montreal, and the pavilion itself is constructed in the shape of a giant map of Hitler’s Reich.

Even the Preamble to the Constitution of the (West) German Federal Republic makes the claim that the authority of that government extends over all persons living within the 1937 borders of the German Reich.

The Citizens Council is currently conducting a petition protesting the aggressive territorial demands of the Bonn Regime and the fact that Bonn is openly proclaiming these demands at EXPO. The petition is being circulated under the sponsorship of Charles R. Allen, Dr. Herbert Aptheker, Alvah Bessie, Walter Lowenfels, and others. Copies can be obtained by writing the Council at GPO, Box 2523, N.Y., N.Y. 10001.

Philip Oke, Council secretary, said, Bonn’s territorial claims are a crass insult to all the nations and peoples who fought against Nazism and to its millions of victims.

These claims are also a threat to world peace since Bonn’s dream of a Greater Germany could only be realized by war. Such a war would certainly lead to a nuclear holocaust.