The Sale of Latvian Germans
When Herr Hitler made a virtue of his plan for the move- ment of populations, and the transfer of persons of German origin from countries controlled by Russia, his fellow- countrymen can hardly have supposed that to M. Stalin these Germans were undesirables whom he was prepared to pay Hitler to get rid of. But according to the Riga correspondent of The Times they are pawns in a game by which the Nazi regime gets gold from Russia and German labour for Poland. Most of these people who are to be torn from their homes in Latvia and Estonia where their ancestors have lived for generations are to be transported, it seems, to Poland, where they will perforce turn to places and work allotted to them by Nazi labour officials. It will be their task to " Germanise " the conquered Polish territory, working, as bidden, in textile factories or on the land, and without the right to move back to their homes or into Germany. This traffic in human bodies, actually " Aryan " bodies, is one of the more ugly features of Hitler's deal with Stalin. It will help him to colonise some purely Polish parts of Poland and to buy ores from neutral countries, and at the same time materially strengthen Russia's hold on the Baltic States.
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