INSIDE GERMANY

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 289, 4 September 1942, Page 4

INSIDE GERMANY

After the big R.A.F. raid on Cologne, with its promise of largescale repetitions on other German cities, there was considerable interest in reports of its reactions upon public morale in Germany. Stories which leaked out about unrest and discontent were taken with some reserve. Conservative opinion in Britain preferred to base conclusions on certain indications which carried a suggestion that internal conditions were beginning to cause the Nazi leaders some anxiety. The Glasgozv Herald, for example, referred to the appointment of Himmler, Chief of the Gestapo, after the raid,, to the control of the whole of the Air Raid Precautions organization throughout Germany as suggesting a fear on the part of the Nazi chiefs that German public morale might crack. The same journal quoted from the German Press to show that the Nazi Party had been under criticism for its handling of the rescue and first-aid work. . Most observers appear to agree that if there is unrest in Germany and the beginnings of a revulsion of feeling against the Nazi regime it is due to two factors: (1) Hitler’s attack on Russia, the huge casualty lists that have appeared since, and the frustrated hopes of an early termination of the campaign in that theatre;.and.(2) the growing intensity and devastating effects of the British air raids. Hitler’s speech in the Reichstag, after the Cologne raid, in. which he demanded and obtained supreme powers over the judiciary as well as the administration and the armed forces was taken as a significant pointer. In this speech he played upon the fear consequences to the German people of a defeat. “We Germans, he said, “have everything to win in this struggle for existence or nonexistence, for the loss of this war would simply be the end of us. Commenting on this, the Round Table draws the conclusion that the motive of feai- is almost as essential to the German war effort as it is to the control of the occupied countries.

It would be rash optimism (adds the Bound Table) to doubt the response of the Germans to the new tone of their ruler s appeal. The more they feel that they are fighting to stave oif defeat, the more stubbornly they are likely to resist —far more stubbornly than in 1018, for now they believe themselves to know wliat defeat means. . . . So long as the German people believe that a victory of the Allies means for them a renewal of the miseries which they endured after the last war* so long is then will to resist likely to prove unbreakable. Signs of waning confidence in Hitler's and other Nazi utterances which, it is stated, are fully confirmed by American diplomats and journalists who were repatriated from Germany during May last • do not mean, we are warned, that the war can be won by a psychological assault.” This war has to. be won by hard fighting right, to the end, by a defeat of the enemy so crushing as to convince the German people of the disastrous policy of their present rulers.