EBB TIDE FOR GERMANS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 85, 7 October 1940, Page 8

EBB TIDE FOR GERMANS

PLANS GONE ASTRAY

AN AMERICAN'S SURVEY

Dispatches from Berlin report, Mr. Irvin went on, that the main Nazi objective now is to harry and wear down British nerves and courage and, finally, British military strength. As one American news agency has pointed out, this constitutes a tacit admission that the German High Command is resigned to a winter sieje of Britain. It is a tacit admission and a damning admission; an admission that the German plans for the invasion of Britain have failed, for there can be no doubt that Hitler had counted on conquering Britain this fall. He did not want the war to last through winter ' and he must know tha by spring invasion will be out of the question. Britain's Army is growing with each passing day; Britain's Air Force is gathering strength and is narrowing the margin of the Nazis' numerical superiority in the air; Britain's output of war materials is increasing and she is getting more and more planes from the United States. If the Nazis are not sufficiently strong now to attempt an invasion, how can they possibly hope to do so six months or a year hence? If this is to be a war of nerves, then I have no doubt as to the outcome. The British have not got any nerves. They have demonstrated that during the last four weeks. The Germans have nerves, nerves already on the ragged edge, nerves which have been strained and frayed by seven long years of oppression, seven long years of privation, seven long years of penury and suffering. * BITTER PROSPECT FOR WINTER. And now Germany must face another winter. That is not a pleasing prospect, another winter such as I experienced in Berlin last year and this. Those of you who have plenty of good food and warm clothing do not realise what such a winter is like! You do not realise what it is to be undernourished throughout the long, cold months; to live on an endless diet of potatoes and cabbage, cabbage and potatoes, such as the average German family has to do. You don't realise what it is to wear clothing not made of wool but of wood pulp. You don't realise what it 'tc wear shoes made j of paper that soon become sodden with moisture or to wear overshoes made of ersatz rubber that will not keep out the damp, and you don't rea- j lise what it is to go home shivering at night to an unheated apartment and have to go to bed to get warm. That is what I was up against last winter, and I was living in one of the bsst hotels in Berlin. I had good shoes because I had brought them from Switzerland and I had plenty of warm clothing also and boxes of bacon, eggs, and butter coming from Denmark every week. But even then it was bad enough. I cannot say I relished it, and none of the other correspondents in Berlin did. Still, what we had to put up with was nothing compared to the lot of the average German family compelled to live on from 200 to 400 marks per month. j OYSTERS FOR BIGWIGS. The higher-ups were not hungry, of course. The big Nazi officials and their friends, the industrialists from the Ruhr, got the best of everything. Night after night as I sat in the dining-room of my hotel I used to watch these Nazi war profiteers with party badges as big as silver dollars on their lapels guzzling oysters by the dozen at the cost of a mark apiece, that is, 50 cents apiece at the official rate of exchange, ior 2s apiece in English money. Thus the bloated .Nazi profiteers spend as much as the ordinary German father of a family earns in a week. This is Socialism, mind you; National Socialism. There was no coal in Berlin during most of the winter and there was none in most of the other German cities either. I spent the first six i weeks of the Russo-Finnish war in Finland, and the temperatures there were around 30 degrees below zero, but Finland was warm compared to my Berlin hotel. It could not have been more frigid at the North Pole. Don't think it is going to be different this winter, j THE PLUNDERED LANDS. j Tho Nazis, of cour.se, have plundered all the countries they have conquered. They have taken . most of the food from Norway, Denmark, Holland. Belgium, and France, even from non-occupied France. They don't mind seeing Europe starve. Besides, they hope that soft-hearted Americans will raise a hue-and-cry and insist on sending food to Europe, food that the Nazis will use to build up their own reserves. This is what is known in Nazi pai'lance as making fools of Americans. They pride themselves on their ability to do so and they glory in it. But don't think for a minute that all the plunder they got in the conquered countries is going to help the German people, that is, the rank and file. The needs of the party leaders will first have to be looked after, the party leaders and their parasites, the rich industrialists. Next comes the army. They have to do something for the army, of course, j The gang has to take care of its trigger men. Only a very small share of this plunder will trickle down to the lower levels of German society. And there is another thing worth bearing in mind. In all the conquered countries, all but France, that is, they have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. The cattle they have carried off from Norway, Denmark, and Holland will do little but provide a little more beef this winter. The butter supplies Germany has been obtaining from those countries will stop. The poultry they have carried off from Denmark and Holland will not lay any more eggs. Shipments of eggs from those countries will stop. THE GREAT COAL PROBLEM. Then there is the question of coal. Germany, of course, now has the coal mines of Belgium and northern France to draw upon as well as her own and those of Poland. She also has the railway equipment of the conquered countries to use in hauling that coal, but the transportation problem is not so simple as all that. She has still to supply her soldiers in Belgium, Holland, and France as well as in Denmark and Norway and Poland and Czecho-Slovakia. Her lines of communication stretch from far above the Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees, from the Bay of Biscay to the Russian frontier. Vast quantities of n ' liti .mst be hauled incessantly to the Channel ports if Germany is to continue to harass England. Vast quantities of gasoline and bombs for her air force must be transported. The troops must be fed enough and supplied with fuel. That means heavy traffic on the railways

4ilt begins to look as if the Nazi successes may h/ive reached their high-water-mark," said Mr. Warren Irvin, the well-known American commentator and journalist, in a broadcast from London under the title "Within the Fortress."

and there is a limit to the amount of traffic the railways can support, especially in Germany where brokendown equipment frequently cannot be repaired for lack of labour and essential raw materials. RAILWAYS OVERWORKED. Last winter the German railways were in a terrible shape. Much of their equipment was badly in need of repair and a large portion of it was unusable. The reason was that for years the Nazis had been using the earnings of the railways to build super-highways, or autobahnen, and the railways had been permitted to run down. The autobahnen were of almost no value when the war came, except to British pilots who on moonlit nights could follow the gleaming white ribbons with ease. The Germans were too scantily provided with gasoline and . vehicles for other than ,army needs. That is not all. There 'is still another side to this question, and a very important side —the needs of Italy. Before the war Italy got vast quantities of coal from England. She depended on these supplies to keep her industries going. She got coal also from France and Belgium, nearly all of it shipped by sea. Now Italian ports are closed and that "formidable Italian fleet" about which Mussolini has made so many boasts has. not emerged from these ports in which it is hiding, much less attempt to keep the seas open. "Mare Nostrum" is patrolled by British warships. THE DEMANDS OF ITALY. Italy being at war, her industries! must work overtime, to' supply the needs of her army.' She must have more coal than ever. Germany can supply it, theoretically, that is, because Germarly has supplies, but think what a transportation problem this creates. Millions of tons of coal must jbe railed to Italy, Poland. Belgium, and northern France. That means another huge burden on the railways. And coal is not all that Italy needs. She must have iron from the French mines in Lorraine, bauxite, and innumerable other materials vital to her war needs. But, above all, Italy must have food for her population. Economists agree j that Europe produced enough food toi supply its popul tion, but Europe can- j not feed itself because me transportation problem is'too vast. If the problem is too vast, and not only with respect to food, what must it be for the other things as well? What must it be for coal, the coal that Germany and Italy | need; what must it be for the iron that ! Germany and Italy need; what must it be for the thousand and one materials Germany must transport to 'Italy, in addition to the things- she must have for herself, as well as sup-1 plying the enormous requirements of her army? BRITAIN CAN "STAND THE i GAFF." So Germany plans to harass and wear down British economy, does she? Well, her own economy is likely to create problems enough at home. Brit-' ish economy, like British nerves, can "stand the gaff." The British have had experience before and have found the solution to it. They will find the solution this time, and. the fifty destroyers they got from the United States and which the German radio has been describing as "scrap iron" may play an important role in that] solution, just as the growing British air power is certain to play an important role in silencing German air attacks. Germany cannot hope to win this war by carrying the siege to Britain, because Germany herself is under siege. A short war is Germany's only hope, and to cut the war i short Germany must conquer Britain. The time for that was last July, when the British Army had left most of its equipment in France and British de- { fences were weak and inadequate. But the German High Command has missed the boat. In my opinion, they dare not invade now. Their plans; have gone awry. They have under- ■ estimated the strength of the R.A.F. ' and its fighting qualities, which are i vastly superior to those of their own j air force. WHY DON'T THEY COME? Helplessly the German army sits on the French coast and ponders on the i problem of making good the Fuhrer's boast. "We will come," says Hitler, I and Britain answers, "Why don't you?" The British have no fear of invasion. They are aching for Hitler to try it. They are confident that if he does his army will get its first real trouncing, and neutral correspondents who have had opportunity to inspect British defences all say the same thing, that the British cannot be bullied or frightened. Hitler's theory that all peoples except the Germans are cowards and can be cowed by a show of force has been punctured like a toy balloon, and while German officers sit drinking champagne in Paris,1 the master strategists of the German High Command scratch their close-cropped heads and try to figure out how to get an army across a 20-mile strip of water. The problem would be simple if there were no British Fleet and if the British did not have an air force superior in quality to their own, but the British Fleet is there, although the German Air Force is supposed to have proved that the Fleet is obsolete, and the R.A.F. is there, although the German air force, like everything else German, was supposed to be the most formidable in the world. Yes, it begins to look as if Nazi successes may have reached their high-water mark. We have watched with consternation the Nazi rise to power; we may soon watch with equal surprise its decline and fall. Secure in their fortress, the British can afford to wait.