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Pre-War Germany Recalled By Student Now in Business School

John Shallenberger Was in Munich in Summer of 1939

Remarking on the dislike which German men held for their own two years of compulsory military service, John B. Shallenberger 2GB, who spent three months in Europe at the start of the present conflict, criticized German women and praised the efficiency of the Fifth Column in the United States in an interview last Saturday.

A former undergraduate in the University of Stanford, Shallenberger was in Munich at the war's outbreak on a scholarship granted, in reality, by the Nazis, although it was not in the German Government's name.

Just before the English Channel was closed, he fled to England, where he dug air raid shelters in Wimbledon, a suburb of London, for almost three weeks. He later reached the United States on a secret crossing of a large British ship.

German Women Unpopular

According to Shallenberger, German women not only use very little make-up but they are also "toughened up" by six months compulsory labor. The result was that his German friends in Munich were willing to foot all the bills if he would double date them with an American girl. He related that one of the students at Munich fell madly in love with a girl from California and is still writing her amourous notes. Which she does not answer.

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Shallenberger went on to say that, with all their love for military life, Germans heartily disliked their own draft before the war. "They could see no reason why they should give two of the best years of their lives to the army," he said.

Fifth Column Well Organized

Sabotage groups in America are unbelievably strong, Shallenberger feels. They are tremendously well organized and never do anything until they are sure of its success. "Fifth Columnists are smooth operators and will have little trouble pulling the wool over many American eyes." he stated.

Shallenberger's friends say that he himself is sometimes pestered by subversive elements. One time two people visited him on the pretext of wanting to practice their German. They came armed with a bottle of Scotch, and, after they thought he had been "softened up," they peppered him with Nazi propaganda. On another occasion a stranger invited Shallenberger to come with him to greet a boatload of Germans who were entering the country illegally--an invitation which he refused.

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