NAZI DOCTRINES
WINNER TAKES ALL I I • — I ACTION IN OCCUPIED f TERRITORIES. SOME NAZI BROADCASTS. ! ••Germany has no intention of plun- | dering the occupied territories.” proI claimed Goebbels on December 14. j ’ She is only exercising the rights of a power of occupation.” Here is a fine distinction—too fine for our perceptions. And seen in the light of other Nazi pronouncements it turns out to be just another way of serving up the Nazi doctrine that might is right. Glib as usual. Goebbels contends that the Reich has no need to plunder: "It is absurd to say that Germany seized French corn since Germany , produces in each year far more corn than she is able to consume.” (German broadcast in English 3.12.40). He keeps quiet about the other uses to which that corn can be and is being put —about the fuel alcohol that can be squeezed from French wheat and the nitroglycerine from Dutch and Danish fats. Spontaneous multiplication? There is no denying that German stocks of many raw materials and foodstuffs have increased since last April. Some of them are greater now than they were at the outbreak of war. But it is too much to ask us. as Goebbels does, to believe that the storehouses have filled by spontaneous multiplication. When he boasts that: "The reserves of the Reich have greatly increased since the beginning of the war. notably the stocks of rubber, butter and meat." (German broadcast to Africa), we cannot help recalling the compulsory slaughter of cattle in Scandinavia, the severe butter rationing imposed upon butler-producing Denmark, and the fact that Holland marketed the rubber of the Netherlands Indies, one of the great rubberproducing areas in the world. TRUTH WILL OUT. For all his protesting that these replenishments are not plunder, Goebbels. swaggerer that he is. cannot resist blowing his own gaff. The dark secrets of the store chamber come tumbling out in his over-eagerness to prove some other point—for instance, when he is proclaiming the excellence of Germany’s transport organisation: "Feats hitherto never performed were carried out in connection with the quick defeats of Holland. Belgium and France, such as the removal of enormous quantities of booty, All was achieved without any noteworthy disturbance of traffic." < German TransOcean News Cable). Or when he is trumpeting her ability to store against a long war: “A system of\defence economics has been organised as a special division of the German High Command .... its efficiency is enhanced by the fact that quantities of raw materials captured during the war with France arc so large that German storage is greatly relieved through their use.” (German broadcast to North America). DOG IN THE MANGER.
There is no room for altruism in the Nazi economy and the plight of the plundered territories evokes Goebbels: "Germany is master of her fate through her own resources. She will never allow her food resources' to be depleted owing to the weakness or inefficiency <>f other states." (Official Gorman News AgC-ncy). But when he proclaims that "Foodstuffs stored in the Reich are reserved for the needs of the German people only," he does not add that in Nazi eyes these needs include the German War Machine. He refrains from menlionmg that because this fond is being pumped into Nazi factories in order to emerge as munitions, even the German home broadcasts arc obliged (Radio Munich) to recommend panaceas for malnutrition, bad teeth and rickets.
Tlie whole situation has been lately summed up by an American observer: "1 learn from a very good source that some time ago Germany requisitioned the entire diesel oil supplies of the Norwegian fishing fleet to run German submarines. If the Norwegian fishermen had had that oil they could have brought in enough codlivers to make sufl'ic’cnt codliver oil to supply the children of al! France with the proper vitamins” 'John Macvane*,
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1941, Page 9
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642NAZI DOCTRINES Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1941, Page 9
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