NAZI MILITARISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 September 1939, Page 9

NAZI MILITARISM

NO POLITICAL ORGANISATION. The thing we are likely to forget is that the Third Reich is a military, not a political, State, says Mr Donovan Richardson, chief editorial writer of the “Christian Science Monitor.’’ It has a party which, contrary to the moaning of the word, has become the whole, and is in effect the State. And the party is primarily a military organisation,' not a political one. Chancellor Hitler emphasised the difference between himself and mere civilian leaders just the other day, when he declared, “I am a soldier who sometimes puts on civilian clothes.” Those who have attempted to deal with National Socialism in political terms —as the German Nationalists did internally and as democratic statesmen have externally—come to grief. One of the

keenest observers of the German scene, a long-time resident who loves the German people—as do all who have lived among them—contended that this military nature of the State causes it to be particularly concerned with any points of military opposition. He mentioned the Fuehrer’s speech of April 28, in which he listed the armaments of Czechoslovakia and declared they threatened the existence of the Reich. He believes that National Socialism will find it just as impossible to tolerate any military power in Poland or anywhere else in Eastern Europe — possibly in any part of the world —declaring that Nazi dreams are beyond anything ordinary folk could imagine. This brings us to possibly the biggest of all questions about Germany: How far will expansion go? After discussing this question, Mr Richardson considers that nothing will stop the'Nazis except military defeat.