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Reich Output Seen Cut 20% by Labor “slowdown”; Goebbels Shift Looms

January 19, 1939
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William Philip Simms, foreign news editor of the Scripps-Howard newspapers, declared today in a Washington dispatch that he had learned from diplomatic sources in London and Paris of a “slowdown strike” by workers in Germany in protest against a policy which they felt was leading to war. The strike, Mr. Simms said, had cut production in the Reich by approximately 20 per cent.

The Reichswehr, Mr. Simms said, is still opposed to Chancellor Hitler’s “unnecessarily provocative attitude” and is also said to be against his too extreme anti-Semitic and anti-religious policy. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels is credited with being the chief instigator of the reintensified anti-Jewish drive, which he is reported to have launched in order to win back the favor of the Fuehrer which he had lost.

At the same time, an Associated Press dispatch from Berlin said reports, which were neither confirmed nor denied in official quarters, were current of far-reaching changes in the Nazi administration involving Goebbels and Field Marshall Hermann Goering. Goering, it was reported, will shortly become Vice-Chancellor and Minister of War, while Goebbels will be removed from the propaganda ministry and given a new post as Obergauleiter, or chief of all Nazi district leaders. The propaganda ministry, it was said, will be attached to the chancellery with State Secretary Otto Dietrich, Chancellor Hitler’s personal press chief, in charge.

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