UNKNOWN

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 83, 20 June 1944, Page 4

UNKNOWN

German rulers are not yet so convinced of coming ,at and retribution as to have abated the ferocity of methods in occupied countries. Two cable messages within the last few days have shown Nazi inhumanity at its worst. The chief of police in Oslo was shot at dawn for not arresting Norwegian girls who refused to report for labour, and probably a worse fate, in Germany; police officers were threatened with shooting if they did not sign\ a declaration of loyalty to the Quisling regime, and, as the latest sequel, it is reported that all Norwegian officers have been sent to prison camps in Germany on orders from Hitler. A worse horror is announced from the Ukraine, where British correspondents saw the bodies exumed of about 300 Russian soldiers, as well as some women, believed to have been shot en masse, the men standing, the women lying down, in a prison yard. The prison register, it is said, records 1800 burials, but that is believed to be not much more than a third of the real number, and other victims were buried outside the city as recently as last May. The bodies were; crowded in layers like sardines, to be discovered when the Russians recaptured the city. Probably it would be beyond the Nazis' nature for such habits to be changed of a sudden. One can hope they have shocked some Germans, because iil the last few months a new tendency has been noted, in propaganda meant for home consumption, of excusing them, whereas previously they were never mentioned or discussed. The Press has been concerned to explain that if German methods have been terrible and inhuman, that character has been forced upon them by the inhuman methods of "Stalin and his Jewish Commissars" and all the Reich's other enemies and victims. In the occupied countries apart from Russia Germany, it is alleged, has had to protect herself against the consequences of sabotage, terrorism, and secret service agents smuggled into those countries by the British. German authorities, it is admitted, have had to take counter-measures that produced hatred, but this should be understandable, since "precautionary measures must be as far-reaching as the situations they are intended to overcome." According to the 'Volkischer Beobachter,' Germans have never claimed to be accomplished in dealing with other nations; they have not that "British cool indifference so much admired in peace time." But this clumsiness in dealing with neighbours is explained to be due to the narrow space in which the German nation has had to live* more "lebensraum," in the shape of colonies, would cure it. It is a singularly unconvincing explanation and with the back swing of the pendulum in Normandy perhaps we can look forward to a hastily modified programme of beastliness.