News From Yesteryear

New York, Paris, Brussels– Millions of protesters demonstrated today against going to war with Nazi Germany over German violations of many conditions of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in 1918 after Germany was defeated in The Great War. The Germans have re-militarized the industrial center of the Ruhr River, and built up a huge army and stockpiles of munitions, in defiance of League of Nations condemnation and protests.

Germany has also annexed Austria, the Sudenland in Czechoslavkia and is suspected of gassing millions of its own citizens. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has been using diplomatic pressure and threatening war with Germany unless it stops troop build-ups on its borders and the continued manufacture of war materials. The Germans deny the charges, and the peace marchers are vehemently defending Germany and condemning British aggression.

“Containment and sanctions have worked so far against Nazi Germany,” said Pierre LeFou, a French peace-marcher. “The cowboy behaviour of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt are the real dangers in the world today, not Adolf Hitler!”

The peace movement organizers have held rallies in the last month, determined to stop any Allied pre-emptive attack on Germany no matter what conditions or treaties have been broken.

“Let’s give peace and diplomacy a chance before we start killing innocent Germans,” said Jacques Coq=Merde, while carrying a “Churchill is a baby-killer” placard. “The British and Americans are always the first to rush to war. It’s just an Anglo-American power grab, and they are trying to force their violent and war=like tendencies on the peaceful people of Europe. We are determined not to let that happen!”

Advocates of stopping the German annexation of territory and military build-up point to the Nazi oppression of Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, handi-capped people and homosexuals as a humanitarian reason to oust Hitler from power.

“These are internal German matters,” said Hans Muhlman, a Belgian pastry chef. “What does America want to become? The world’s policeman? Let the Germans handle German affairs. It’s none of our business! I don’t see Hitler telling us who to gas and who not to gas.”

Rallies and marches to oppose the Churchill administration’s plan to launch an unprovoked war against Germany brought hundreds of thousands of demonstrators into the streets.

Simultaneous demonstrations opposing an invasion of the German Democracy were held in Rome, Berlin, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Mexico City, and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Demonstrators carried a wide variety of signs and banners opposing US and British militarism. Among the more popular slogans were “Drop Roosevelt, Not Bombs,” “No Blood for Chocolate,” “Regime Change Begins at Home” and “War is Churchill’s Weapon of Mass Distraction.” There were also signs attacking the KatzenJammer Kids comic as being degrading to the German people.

The German American activists dismissed recent small demonstrations staged by members of the US-backed German opposition in Washington. “These people are puppets,” he said. “None of them has seen Germany for ten years or more, but they are hungry for power and hope that the US will give it to them. My view is that if Germany is going to change it should be the German people who change it, and not the US.”