HITLER DISCOVERS A MEPHISTOPHELES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 8, Issue 11, 26 September 1944, Page 4

HITLER DISCOVERS A MEPHISTOPHELES

BRITAIN, says Hitler, has allied herself with the devil. Russia. It is the. same devil as Hitler allied himself with when, in 1939, he offered Russia Polish and Baltic spqus to keep Russia quiet while Hitler looted Europe. Hitler and Ribbentrop calculated that, by throwing a bone- to the .Russian devil in 1939, Nazi Germany, could seize the: whole carcase of middle and western Europe; after which, in due course, Germany could devour Russia also. Stalin, nc> doubt, watched all the proceedings of 1939-40 with a shrewd idea that his own turn was coming. Anyone following the German-Russian drama as played in those years would have had little doubt that, if there was a Mephistopheles in the cast, it was Hitler, and if there was a Faust it was Stalin. And after Hitler's murderous attack on Stalin on a night of June, 1941, any lingering doubt as to their roles would have disappeared. Yet today Mephistopheles Hitler comes out with the charge that the real Mephistopheles is Russia. This is entirely in accord with the principle of the audacious lie preached in "Mem Kampf.' Truth, says Hitler, can ever be drowned in,words. There is no sin that he could not shift to other shoulders. In Hitler's latest message, Britain is represented as a Faust who has sold herself to the to the devil, and Hitler proceeds to argue his case in terms of balance of power. His case is based on the assumption that out of the war will arise a European Colossus. Who is this Colossus to be? Field-Marshal Smuts, already has named Russia for the part, and it thus becomes clear that Hitler's devil and the Colossus of Smuts are the same Power. Hitler's next step is to prove that while a Russian Colossus is necessarily a bad thing for Britain and for western Europe, a German Colossus wo;ild not be a bad thing—in fact, a victorious Germany would not be a Colossus at all. His argument wears very thin when he finds himself forced to contend that "the necessity of preserving Europe against Bolshevism does not depend exclusively on the existence of one dominating Continental Power." But if that one domin-* ating Continental Power" had turned out to Germany* would Hitler have condescended to share his domination with another Power? Obviously, Dictator Hitler is the last man in the world who would have done so. He would have? been the Colossus of the Continent and. its dictator in a manner brooking no rival. If a war-created Colossus thero must be—and only time will tell—and if the Colossus must be Nazi Germany or Russia, let Europe at all costs be saved from the Nazis.