Saturday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH
April 5, 1941;
ABETZ
MAN
unlike more
It
A spider it is difficult to
The SPIDER OF PARIS, BLOND,
imagine. Otto Abetz is COURTEOUS.
fair-haired-it is imost carefully
FLORID,
He spun a web to
parted on the left-he is thirty the aged Marshal of France, Petain,
Hoven, and his blue eyes are set
snare
and
wide apart. Which suggests failed. MORLEY RICHARDS met this man little too blue-a cold, expres in Amsterdam, tells you about a 1940 gangster.
frankness. Only they ore
sionless blue that has no lights in it.
When I saw him in Amster- dlam not long before the invasion he was doing his great act-- “Come into my parlour." It
the charming social help him spin the web, tried to Otto, decoy Murshol Petain into his climber, the moderate Socialist, the man who understood France. parlour.
Things happened very quickly He failed. The old marshal
in time that the web was after that. Abetz had been liv sticky, and arrested Laval, and ing from hotel to hotel in Paris. went like this: A suite of rooms refused to go to the ceremonies Now it was a salon. Hospitality at the best hotel, a lot of lovely where the ashes of the Duc de poured out. The Comite France ladies in constant attendance, Reichstadt. Napoleon 1.'s son, Allemagne-a French "Link" perfect dinner parties, friendly were handed over to France by was formed. flowing conversation in Ger- the Germans as a gesture.
man, French, sketchy English,
Parties of distinguished
a palatiall There he might have been as- Frenchmen went to sassinated or kidnapped. Laval, house in Berlin which Oito had Mme a little Dutch, all on the same seizing power, would have given mysteriously acquired, theme. This was it--
passage to German troops Bonnet, wife of Georges Bon- "We Nazis have been mis- through occupied France to net, then Foreign Minister, be- came the great friend of the judged. This war is stupid. Spain to rescue the Italians.
Abetzes. M. Bonnet became a So Abetz, now Ambassador of shareholder in a big German Germany can protect Holland and its wealth. We must be the Third Reich to France, has chemical dyeworks.
had to go to Vichy to fix the old good neighbours you help us, marshal with his cold blue eyes
we help you. Waiter, champagne."
more and ask him how dare he arrest.
his old friend Laval.
Ospending
TTO, at that time, was £2,000 # month bribing French news- 1 watched him entertaining Otto will probably be fuming papers, winning over industrial some Dutchmen. So gracious, inwardly that his plot has failed. ists by playing on their fears of und organising so unlike a German to look at. But I don't expect he will show Bolshevism,
The Spider
DE BRINON: history of a Fifth Columnist
Wherever they have Fascist Afth columnists do not pop up overnight. come to power, a study of their records has revealed a clearly charted course. Fernand de Brinon, recently appointed General Delegate of the Vichy Government to Hitler's Paris, is a case in point. His past is interest- ing, both for itself and as a symbol.
J
THE AUTHOR: Heinz Pol, author of Suicide of a Democracy a story of France's fall, has observed M. de Brinon's life for years. Mir Pol ̧ á former Berlin newspaper man, and later an anti-Nazi refugee in France, went to America early last summer after nearly nine months in a French concentration camp—a camp into which France herded many of its best-
By HEINZ POL
Fernand de Brinon bas been It was in those days that I first France's most energetic and success- saw de Brinon. He was standing in
A handsome fellow if you over his anger. Ile is too clever a Fascism in France. looked the suggestion of the man for that. Like a good many Too late Daladier's Govern- florid forties overtaking him. more men that Hitler turned up, ment acted against Abetz. He Perfectly dressed without dandy- he has first-class-ability,
was expelled from France. But friends. iam, free from mannerism ex- cept to outspread his strong
HE was a poor teacher then his work of breaking
of French at Karlsruhe down French unity was done, square hands palms' upwards as he talked.
We slow old British did rather as a very young man. He went
One day, about four to live in France of his own ac- better. thing at a waiter, and those cold cord. He married a beautiful years ago, Otto arrived at Croy-ful fifth columnist. It was de Brinon the lobby of the Relchstag, engaged
French woman. Deputies, in- Next day, dustrialists, journalists were all a Scotland Yard Special Bränch his friends. So was Joachim man to see him off, he left again. TUAT is Otto Abetz, the von Ribbentrop, then a cham-
Being the man he is, he bowed THAT
smilingly to me and the British man who undermined pagne seller. the morale of France, the arch- Hitler came to power. Rib- people with me in Amsterdam.
bowed back. And spy of the Hitler underworld, bentrop became his foreign Am- We the spider who, with Laval to bassador. Joachim remembered smiled.
But once he snapped some
ever.
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tween Petain, Laval, Hitler, Goering bels and a few other National So- und Ribbentrop. His confirmation cialist Deputies. He spoke German as the Vichy representative In Paris fluently, and he was constantly in was first announced from Berlin, motion. Later he was introduced to That was natural. He has been Ber- me, and without the customary ex- lin's man for years.
change of courtesies, he at once got down to the subject of politics. He His story goes back many years, was a small, stocky man, exquisitely As a student in Paris he found his dressed, with shiny, dark hair, a dark main interests in politics, though
shortly before the first World War Complexion and fiery, black eyes. he turned to journalism. In the war "Don't you agree," he asked me, he was first an artillery ofeer, and "that a nationally oriented Germany then a liaison officer in the General would be far better able to reach an Staff. After the war, he was one of understanding with France than is the first French journalists to go to the Left now? The Left hus failed Germany where he sought out fead- completely-in France too, by the ing politicians and industrialists. way. Somehow it seems outdated."
He believed in a now order in
CAUTIONED
Europe-a new order dominated by I replied that he might be right, front line veterans and based on un- but I cautioned him against succum- democratic and unparliamentary bing to the fallacy that reconellla- authority.
De Brinon.
For us Truc, the
MET ABETZ
ilon was possible with Hitler in power, Hitler, I sald, was neither Right nor Left, something altogether different.
He seemed startled, but then he vigorously shook his head:"
"I do not know Hitler myself, but there are many National Socialists among my German friends. Their views on the subject of France are entirely sound and reasonable."
His first interview with Hitler, In the fall of 1933, was the first Inter- view the Fuelirer ever granted to a French journalist. It appeared in Le Malin and created a sensation In Parls.
The interview was one great peon of praise for the "new regime" in Germany, Hitler had been fold of de Bringn's strong sympathies for National Socialism, and he took the opportunity to emphasise his "love of peace" in the most solemn fashion. The fact that Le Matin featured the Interview prominently greatly hanced de Brinon's standing In the Wilhelmstrasse,
en-
In 1034, just before the Soor plc. biscite, de Brinon published a book
France-Allemagne,
which
WRONG SIDE
His German friends-among them entitled the fuehrer of the so-called Young was at once translated into German German Order, a semi-Fascist or- and widely distributed by the Nation- ganisation quickly brought him to- al Socialist Party. It was a shrewdly gether with important German Indus- written book dealing with Germany's trialists like Stinnes and Thyssen, post-war development, with In their own way these men too reference to relations with France. sought an understanding between the It concluded that there was no reason two nations, just as did their business to doubt Hitler's word, that after the associates across the Rhine, the all- return of the Saar there would be poweriur
members of the Comite des no further obstacles to a lasting
understanding friendship between the two neigh were after was altogether over bouring nations; and that therefore the heads of the people; it was purely an immediate rapprochement with and simply a business proposition. Hitler was essential, De Brinon became Berlin correspon- dent of L'Information, a Paris paper that openly espoused the interests of saw de Brinon for the second time. It was at this time, in Paris, that I French heavy Industry.
The occasion was a luncheon given by a Paris group of Journalists that in- cluded a few German emigre news Through the Young German Order papermen as wel 6 many well de Brinon made the nequaintance of known anti-Fascist
writers from young Otto Abetz, then still an Austria, Czechoslovakia and other idealist who had set himself the task countries. De Brinon, in high spirits, A lasting under hailed me, asking whether I had read
And his book. I replied in the affir Germany standinging about
Do Brinon became one of live. He put his hand on my the earliest members of the newly der; founded Franco German Society. My dear fellow, I don't want to
your because I When Hitler' came to power this so- nei cloly disappeared, only to be revived advance just how you feel about it. after 1930-in Germany under the I wish you would believe me that leadership of Abetz; in France under you and all your rolleagues hero that of de Brinon. It
an the whole lot of you who are oppos- essential element in the fifth column ing the new trend that is gathering which the Nazis organised in France, momentum in Europe you're all on In 1931 Laval, then French Pre- the wrong side. Your views belong mior for the first time, announced to the last century." that he would visit Berlin, and de occasionally. He remained as cour- Later, I continued to see de Brinon Brinon was overjoyed, Hohad. known the ambillous Laval for many teous as ever, though his tono grow years, and now he became a kind of moro condescending. I happen to solf-appointed press agent for Laval know that he maintained rolations In Berlin,
(Continued on Page 14)
of
France.
between
became
11
Monster Raffle
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