BLUNTED WEAPON

Taranaki Daily News, 24 September 1940, Page 7

BLUNTED WEAPON

By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.

NAZIS' TERROR TACTICS FAILURE AGAINST BRITAIN

British Official Wireless. Rec. 5.5 p.m. Rugby, Sept. 22. The Nazi method of carrying out serial bombardments over a wide area by single machines or small formations undoubtedly imposes a severe strain on the civil population and necessarily causes damage, 'but by its very nature military gains are small. In a large area such as London , which as a centre of population has grown up gradually and absorbed what once were satellite towns and villages, "military targets" in the broadest sense of the term are inevitably scattered throughout residential arid commercial areas. Consequently, of the number of bombs indiscriminately dropped, some are bound to land on such places as gasworks and factories as well as hospitals and railway stations. The greatest number have burst on what forms the highest proportion of the targets surface — roads and streets. These, of course, cause damage of varying degrees to surrounding buildings, the vast majority of which, when hit, sustain damage which from a military point of view is not commensurate with ihe cost incurred in hitting them.

Militarily Ineffective. It is probably for this reason that the German High Command— knowing its pilots are unlikely to reach that high degree of individual efficiency and courage which distinguishes Royal Air Force pilots and crews and enables them to deliver, one after another, successful attacks on genuine military objectives— regarded, and probably still regards, night air operations as militarily ineffective. The German technique is a crushing blow delivered by mass formations, and the German High Command has shown by its two efforts that it would, if it could, apply this method to mass daylight attacks. Both these endeavours, however, have been signally defeated by the Royal Air Force, and while the Luftwaffe chiefs are thinking out a third set of daylight mass tactics night bombing seems to be regarded as a cheap— as far as losses are concerned — and harassing alternative. Nazi Political Armoury. Attack on civilian morale is, however, a well tried weapon in the political armoury of the Nazi. Hitherto disruption from within has been found to be sufficiently effective, especially if accompaniel by some measure of physical brutality, the latter being increased proportionately to the inability of "ideological" subversion to bring about the requisite state of internal confusion. In apply ing their methods to Britain the Nazis found but poor soil for their seeds for discord. The British people, whatever may be their individual political views, are for practical purposes . unanimous in their hearty dislike of Nazi doctrines and have shown their determination to resist them. The ideals of freedom are too deeply rooted. Consequently the weapon of physical fear is employed in endeavours to break down resistance by nervous exhaustion. Just as mass air attacks failed and the endeavour to produce intemal discord met with no success, so does it appear that the weapon of terror is not only blunting its own edge, but is itself forging a counter-weapon which will utterly destroy and root out from the world fbr ever the malignant growth of Nazi practice.