Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1941. HITLER’S PLANS AWRY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 November 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 1941. HITLER’S PLANS AWRY.

DISCUSSING- in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the underlying purpose of the conference held in Berlin this week —a conference of Axis quislings presided over by the German Foreign Minister, Herr von Ribbentrop—the British Foreign Secretary (Mr Eden) said that purpose probably was to seek and prepare for a peace offensive. In the scope of the enemy plans to this end as they were outlined by Mi Eden, no doubt on the basis of dependable _ information, there is impressive evidence of the extent to which the hopes of Hitler and his gang have been shattered by recent war developments.

Mr Eden made it clear that there was no anticipation of a formal peace offer by Hitler. What was expected was that he would try to persuade the Axis-dominated countries of Europe that their only hope of peace was in joining the Nazi new order. Apart from the conclusive evidence now afforded that this programme will appeal only to a handful of traitors in the countries concerned, France included, there is here a tremendous descent, from the peace offensive plans Hitler and his accomplices undoubtedly were contemplating only a month or two ago. (

According to an American who arrived last month in Caii.o from Germany, Hitler hoped to be able before the end of this year to announce that Russia had been put out of the war and to state that he was going ahead with his new order and would ignore Britain except to carry out reprisals against her for any bombing of Germany. In pursuance of this plan, the American stated, Germany’s full offensive power would be coucentiated against Russia for the next six weeks (from the beginning of October), Hitler hoping that he would then be able to tell the world that he had put the Soviet Union out of the war and crushed Bolshevism. As their plans were laid, the Nazis would then have declared that: — As far as Germany is concerned, the war is over and we are going ahead with the organisation of the continent. From now on, our only war activity will be reprisals. For every plane Britain sends over, Germany will send at least one over Britain. Foi every bomb dropped, Germany will drop at least one on England. For every German killed, we will kill at least one Englishman. We can hold out indefinitely. It is said that the Nazis admitted that Britain and the United States probably would spurn a peace offer on these lines when it was made, but thought that the English-speaking countlies might feel differently after six months of such a stalemate. War events have gone far to demonstrate that this was broadly the programme the Nazis hoped to develop. As Mr Eden has pointed out, however, the plans of the Nazis hate gone awry, primarily because their all-out effort to defeat Russia —an effort made at frightful cost in German lives and material —has failed. On some parts of the Eastern front, particularly at the moment in the Moscow zone, the position and outlook are admitted by the Russians themselves to be serious and critical. The commanding fact, however, is that after more than five months of the greatest and most costly efforts of which the German Army and the Luftwaffe are capable, Hitler finds himself confronted, as Mr Eden has said, by continuous and vigorous Russian resistance.

Against the clangers that still exist in Russia and elsewhere, ° there is to be set the rapidly rising offensive power of the Allies and the firm assurance that they will more and more effectively combine and co-ordinate their efforts against the common enemy. The end is not yet in sight, but there are now excellent grounds for believing that Hitler and his gang will never gain the respite for which they had hoped a respite which would have enabled them to concentrate upon the organisation of the resources of enslaved nations in preparation for further aggression as soon as that organisation had been carried to a sufficiently advanced point.