ENEMY SHIPPING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 July 1941, Page 7

ENEMY SHIPPING

ONSLAUGHT BV BRITISH FORCES WELL OVER THREE MILLION TONS ACCOUNTED FOR. NAZI LEADERS PERTURBED. LONDON, July 7. March 12 was the opening date for a parallel onslaught on the enemy’s shipping which, owing to lack of rail facilities now tried to creep along his Channel and North Sea coasts, delivering war supplies to the so-called invasion ports and returning with plundered foodstuffs for Germany. Up to June 10, 1941, we had accounted since the beginning of the war for 3.211,000 tons of enemy shipping. Of this total 911,000 tons, or not less than 29 per cent was sunk in the ten weeks March 25 to June 10 alone —that is in ten weeks which coincided with the R.A.F.’s new onslaught in northern waters. '

The Nazis are perturbed at this mounting volume of attack in the west. They know that the spectre of a war on two fronts frightens the German people and they are trying to conceal it from them —particularly from the clandestine listeners to the 8.8. C. Firstly they are pounding with redoubled severity on these “radio criminals”; secondly since this deterrent seems insufficient they are trying to confuse the issue by exactly reversing in their own bulletins the scores previously announced over the air from London. Take the following from among many similar examples: June 26, 8 a.m. British morning Press and wireless bulletins give the air battle score for June 16—26 as 136 to 40 in Britain’s favour. The same day at 4.30. p.m. the German High Command communique broadcasts the figure 136 as the number of British planes destroyed since June 15. The same day at 9.45 p.m. the German radio announces that “The English themselves have admitted the loss of 136 planes in one week.” The Nazi hope is that the furtive listener to the 8.8. C. on hearing the German radio- blare out the identical figure will assume that he must have misheard the London announcer. But London announcers are wise to this device and have exposed it. Today the German people are realising that Britain’s hammer blows in the west are forcing the Reich once again to fight on the dreaded two fronts. Constant Nazi broadcasts protest that the Third Reich, unlike its predecessor, can manage both at once. “Even the momentous struggle in the East cannot prevent the German armed forces from prosecuting the fight against England.” (German home broadcast, June 28). The very frequency of this assertion —it has been reiterated several times daily in the German home programme of the week under review—merely serves to demonstrate the nation-wide re-birth of an old and justified fear.