NAZI METHODS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 June 1940, Page 2

NAZI METHODS

TECHNIQUE OF TREACHERY. When they walked into Norway, unlocking the gates of Oslo with a traitor's key, the Nazis revealed the method. of their conquests, writes Mr Charles E. Gratke, an American foreign correspondent. As the Norse capital fell, its batteries silenced and its navy partially immobilised by Nazi-engineered treason, the Third Reich gave away a blueprint. It is a blueprint of Nazi tactics. Yet the most surprising thing of all was not the sudden, unheralded attack upon a neutral nation. It was rather that there was such wide astonishment. For if any one thing has been consistent about National Socialism, it has been its use of deceit and subterfuge. In degree, and in timing, the Nazis have altered their plans to fit immediate objectives. But from Vienna to Copenhagen—from the seizure of Austria to the over-running of Denmark —the cunning admixture of terror and treachery has been the advance guard of military occupation. And the method has never been a secret. The Nazis have even boasted about it. But it hardly seemed possible that such things could exist in a modern world. And it is this credulity which has permitted National Socialism to run through its successive phases, each time achieving a fait accompli virtually advertised in advance. One leading Nazi official has declared that, “the time to undermine the enemy is when he thinks he is at peace.” Elaborating the method by which Nazism hoped to overthrow the parliamentary system, Goebbels has written: “We enter Parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal cf democracy, with its own weapons ... If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this purpose, that is its affair . . . We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come!”