Army Musi be Defeated First

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 60, 14 March 1944, Page 5

Army Musi be Defeated First

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Correspondent.) Received Monday, 7.15 p.m. LONDON, March 12. The opinion is expressed here by well-informed circles that the German military leaders know they have lost the war but that the war will certainly not end before the German Army is militarily defeated by the invading forces in Europe. It is understood that German officers captured on the Russian front admitted the position was hopeless but that the German Army must continue fighting there or starve. It is many miles from Germany faced by the Russians who have taken a few prisoners while behind there are partisans who take no prisoners. What the position may be when the front line recedes nearer Germany may be another matter. The “Round Table” asks: “Will there be a crack in Germany?” Discussing the question it says: “The answer is not easy. All it is safe to assume is that whatever change may occur inside Germany will be the direct outcome of military developments. “At a certain stage of the war a combination of the High Command and the big industrialists may organise a coup for the forcible elimination of Hitler and his immediate collaborators.” The journal adds: “A mass movement of desperation against the regime is also conceivable if, for example, bombing ever reaches the point of human unbearableness. It is important to distinguish between such a movement which springs from individual sorrow and a popular rising which is concerned about a better ordering of German life within the European family of nations. There is, it has to be recognised, no present evidence whatever of a new dynamic in Germany. The taunt that the only people in Europe to be cowed by the Gestapo is the German may be cynical but it is not without truth.” Discussing the underground movement in Germany, the journal says: “It is true enough that such a movement exists and is sustained by much sacrificial effort;, but on the disclosed facts it would be wrong to suppose that the movement constitutes organised opposition capable of threatening the stability of the regime.” Regarding the German home front, the Round Table says: “There is no doubt that the National Socialists have maintained their stability. The presence of a large foreign element among the workers who are known to be hostile to Germany, however, is a definite source of weakness which may be expected to have very serious consequences as Allied military pressure grows. The German agricultural population has proved a more stable factor than the industrial, not being exposed to bombing, while it has done fairly out of the war. The revolt of the peasants is not in sight. The Church has not yet carried its resentment to the point of condemning the regime for its succession of aggressive wars while the middle class is in no mood or condition to start a counter revolution.” The journal sums up by pointing out that there are indications that the professional soldier has taken the direction of the war out of the hands of the party leader, which can only mean one thing. Whatever changes are brought about in Germany in the coming months will be the result of their own military action. The crack will come from without, not from within.