GERMANY SHAKEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 March 1939, Page 9

GERMANY SHAKEN

EVER-GROWING “MALAISE” CRUMBLING MORALE. CONDITIONS MAY HASTEN NEXT STEP. Reliable information continues to accumulate that there is ever-growing “malaise” in Germany, writes the diplomatic correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. Hitler’s triumph in Central Europe has made little impression on the German public as a whole, and, contrary to what was generally expected, his triumph has not perceptibly strengthened the, regime. The effect of the anti-Semitic pogroms is profound. It is true that the actual excesses were often cheered by crowds of onlookers, but a widespread movement of disgust and indignation is perceptible all over Germany, at least in the big towns, and many "Aryans” have taken considerable risks in sheltering and hiding fugitive Jews. The moral basis of the regime has been severely, perhaps irretrievably, shaken. It can be said without exaggeration that of the many Germans who combine common decency with intelligence there are few left who have any feeling of reverence for the regime. But the pogroms have to be considered under another aspect. They were to a certain extent an end in themselves in so far as the real feelings of the National Socialist leaders, Hitler above all, found uncurbed expression. The German Jews have been treated as he and his associates have always wanted to treat them. The pogroms were also an act of expropriation. Whatever wealth was left to the Jews was needed for re-armament. But the pogroms served a third and important purpose; they were a warning to the “opposition,” especially the Roman Catholics, but also to the Confessional Church, to the “dissatisfied” aristocracy—indeed to all who are now being classified, most ominously, as “White Jews.” As a warning to the Roman Catholics and others who are regarded as “opposition” they are altogether terrific; especially as the administrative and technical preparations for a national offensive against the Roman Catholics are now complete and the signal to begin may be expected at any moment. NOT THE SAME BRUTALITY. It does not follow that the Roman Catholics will be treated with all the brutish cruelty with which the Jews have been treated. What the National Socialist leaders intend is to expropriate the Roman Catholic Church in Germany and to destroy it as an organisation. But the anti-Semitic pogroms are made to serve as a warning. It is as though the National Socialist leaders were to say “That is what we can do when it come to the point,” and it is for the Roman Catholics to accept all measures of expropriation and penalisation, and not let it “come to the point” by offering any sort of resistance or even by complaining and letting the outside world know anything about it. It is understandable that there should be in Germany a growing sense of the sinister and the disastrous, but it does not seem that the “Opposition” is being cowed; indeed, the tendency is for an “Oppositional” mood to grow. Physical resistance to the regime is impossible; if it were to attempt the consequence would almost certainly be massacre on a gigantic scale. But the spirit of moral resistance has never been so strong as it is now. With its usual efficiency, the dicta- | torship has taken a number of preI cautionary measures. During the last few weeks a considerable number of senior officers of the Regular Army have been arrested. There have also been arrests amongst the aristocracy. The dictatorship is determined to exterminate everything that could be “Conservative” in Germany. A large number of Roman Catholics have been arrested, especially in Austria, and there have been many executions, though it is not known who the victims are—some of them, at least, are members of the National Socialist Party. As the "malaise” deepens the dictatorship itself grows more and more uneasy, and more and more determined to hasten on its next enterprise abroad. The evidence accumulates that the purpose of this enterprise is the separation of the Polish Ukraine from Poland. That Germany is moving towards a double crisis, both internal and external, is coming to be realised by more observers in Berlin, in London, in Paris, and indeed, in almost all European capitals.