German Communists Keep Up Propaganda, Cellar Press is Active

While the Munich Voelkische Beobachter is boasting that the trade unions are no more and that, with the Communists ousted, German labor will reconstruct its front, the old Communist newspapers are clandestinely circulating, unmasking the socialism of Hitler.

The Gewerkschafts Zeitung calls for revolutionary work on illegal bases to save the trade unions. The Rote Fahne, the old organ of the Central Communist party of Germany, has reappeared in illegal editions of as many as 300,000 copies. On June 16 it carried a short biography of Ley, present Nazi head of Labor and president of the Council of State. As a chemist he was dismissed by the great firm of Farben for incapacity. In Cologne he was well-known as a pillar of the cabaret. Last year he was in prison several months for having assaulted Herr Wels, leader of the Social Democrats, with a bottle.

All through the past four weeks it has exposed the result of four months of Hitlerism. It has boldly stated that Hitler has not, as he had promised, thrown out the princes of the banking and the stock-exchange world, nor destroyed the trusts, nor lightened the burden of taxation, nor limited the enjoyment of unearned money.

In Thuringia, another illegal newspaper, the Junge Garde, is circulating among the workers, calling them to fight against Hitlerian terrorism and imperialistic militarism.

The official Viennese Reichspost comments on the ### of Berlin with Communistic tracts after Hitler’s governmental declaration in the Reichstag. The tracts were found in the railroad stations, on the streets, in restaurants and business houses. The police were furiously active, arrested everyone they could lay their hands on. But not one of the central subterranean Communist ring was caught. The Communist propaganda continues.