Wirarapa Times-Age MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1940. HITLER’S WAR LEADERSHIP.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1940, Page 4

Wirarapa Times-Age MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1940. HITLER’S WAR LEADERSHIP.

"WITHIN the last day or two, the machinery of German propaganda has been concentrated busily on the 0 stirring nn an enthusiastic celebration of the birthday ol the Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. Partly on account of the measure ol success with which the facts ot the war are kept horn tie German, people, there has no doubt been a more or less impressive mass response to these efforts. It is well established and understood that by a combination of brutal suppression and ol astute propaganda—this last including as a most essentia feature the substitution of a debased and debasing propaganda for the true education of youth —Hitler, as head 01. the Nazi gang, has established a remarkable ascendancy. "The security of the Fuehrer’s position does not depend only, or solely, however, on the extent to which he is able to command popular adulation or submission. Something must depend on his ability to maintain control over limited, but actually or potentially powerful and influential sections of the German body politic, amongst them the militarist caste which has in some degree made him its instrument —sections whose menibers he cannot hope to deceive, or perhaps even to overawe, by the methods of espionage, terrorism, propaganda and mass suggestion which serve his purpose with the multitude. The possibility that Hitler may antagonise in particular the militarist caste in Germany, possibly with fatal results to himself, is not. put .out of court'by the fact that he has been able 11ms far to exercise a much greater authority than was possessed, tor example, by the then Kaiser in the days of the Great ar. Some rumours have gained currency that the invasion of Norway was undertaken by the Fuehrer in defiance o! the emphatically expressed objections and protests of the Geiman High Command. No direct test of the authenticity of these rumours is possible at present. It is contended very reasonably, however, that the invasion of Norway must have been ordered by Hitler in defiance of technical advice because no such enterprise would have been approved, in the only conditions in which it was open to Germany to undertake it, b\ competent naval and military commanders. That opinion finds strong, if not finally conclusive support in the events of the Scandinavian campaign at. the stage to which they have already been carried. Thanks to the magnificent work of the British Navy and Air Force, a very large proportion of the larger units of the German fleet have been destroyed or put out of action. At the same time, with every possible incentive to make maximum use of her Air Force to that end, Germany has failed completely to prevent, or even to hamper the landing of Allied troops in Norway. Recent German broadcasts have alleged successful air attacks on British transports, involving serious loss of life. It is reported officially from London, however, that not a man has been lost in the landing of troops in Norway and that French as ’well as British troops have now reached that country. The campaign in Norway is still far from having been carried to a conclusion and British authorities are making no promises of an easy and rapid march to victory. Failing the introduction of some new factor, however, it seems quite reasonable to regard the German troops landed in Norway as having been thrown away—to assume, that is to say, that their extirpation or capture will be only a matter of time. It is altogether probable that such an outcome of the Norwegian adventure was foreseen by German naval and military strategists and that they protested strongly against an adventure depending on communications over two hundred miles of sea. Any alternative theory would imply that German naval and military leadership has sunk to a contemptible and derisory level of inefficiency. That Hitler presumably ; was able to reject and ignore the advice and the protests of the German High Command implies, as has been said, that he exercises as yet a remarkably farreaching authority. Whether that authority can survive the exposure of egregious ignorance and blundering in the Norwegian adventure is, however, another question. Assuming that no national uprising against the Nazi regime is yet in prospect, in Germany, it has still to be considered whether the Prussian militarists, wielding or capable of wielding immense power, wiH continue to accept the dominance of a leader capable of plunging blindly into disaster which might have been avoided by an exercise of common sense. It would be strange if the Norwegian adventure and its outcome did not give rise Io contention and conflict amongst the ruling elements in Germany, irrespective of what the immediate effect may be upon the subordinate mass of the nation.