WATERLOO

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 07, Issue 93, 25 July 1944, Page 4

WATERLOO

NEITHER the strict curtain of censorship, nor the terrorism of the dreaded Gestapo have been able to prevent the news leakages which are to-day reaching neutral countries from inside Germany. Rumblings of the approaching storm are to be heard in the stories of mutiny amongst the divisions in East Prussia. Mutterings of the mass eruption against Hitlerism and all that it stands for are to be sensed in the fierce rioting in the streets of Berlin itself. In the face of the dual invasion which is now taking place by the Allied forces in the east and in the west, the recent speech of Hitler soon after the attempt (reputedly) at his assassination last Thursday sounds but a bleak and shallow reassurance. Clearly the desperate state of Germany at present demanded drastic action, and whilst not wholly dismissing the idea that the attempt on Hitler's life was genuine, and possibly linked up with the outbreak of rioting and instances of mutiny mentioned above:, it is not beyond the bounds of Nazi deviltry to stage a first-class murder attempt with appropriate victims in a last-minute attempt to reconsolidate the nation which was already showing signs of cracking up under the strain. There is nothing like making a martyr of any leader in order to cement his leadership from sheer public sympathy. This logic is well-known to Hitller and his advisers, who were unscrupulous enough to stage the not-i orious Reichstag fire in order to start the first of the series of the bloody Jewish pogroms. Time and time.- again, Hitler has deliberately made a hero of himself in order to attain his ends. Coldly calculating he produced in 1934 the written evidence of an alleged plot against the Nazi regime, in order to justify the blood-bath which shocked Europe and which resulted in the death-spurge warning of hundreds of members of inner Party. Many were Hitler's personal friends, yet when hollowly he announced before the asembled delegates that the security of the nation had compelled him to take such measures, and that upon his bowed shoulders rested the full blame (in the interests of the people, of course) the concourse rose to a man and cheered the murderer to the echo. To-day, we find the wily Fuehrer the centre of assassination. Berlin radio blares fourth to the already disgruntled fighting battalions and to the long-tried and desperate civilians, that by a miracle the 'beloved' person of their leader in adversity has been spared. Solemn music is played fbr twelve hours, and Herr Hitler himself talks to his subjects reassuring them that he has been spared for on\e thing—to carry out his own high, destiny in the service of the German race. If he were honest he might remind his credulous listeners that his 'service' to the German race has already cost the nation its best and proudest blood, has laid in ruins half its industries, and has built up a terrible vengeance out of their own misguided deeds. We repeat in all seriousness, what is to prevent Hitler with his deep sense of the theatrical from deliberately stage this latest attempt upon his 'beloved' life, even though the price is to be paid for in more blood and crimes committed upon those immediately about his person whom he suspects of disloyalty— nothing! If Hitler is running true to type, what better to suit his ends than another purge! What better than to place the whole country under the brutal martial law of the Gestapo. Are not both measures to be considered admirably safety precautions, in the present crisis which is shaking the German morale. Knowing Hitler it is hard to believe that breathless voice over the radio in its stGry of his own narrow escape. What can more readily be read into his hysterical words is rather the eleventh-hour appeal to a duped people of a man who knows he is doomed and who tremblingly awaits his own Waterloo.