WITHOUT PRECEDENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1942, Page 4

WITHOUT PRECEDENT

POWERS TAKEN BY HITLER OVER SUBSERVIENT i GERMANS ABROGATION OF EVERY CIVIL RIGHT. ATTEMPT TO MAKE REVOLT IMPOSSIBLE. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 12.50 p.m.) RUGBY, April 26. A resolution passed in the Reichstag, following on Hitler’s speech this afternoon, giving him full powers over every German citizen, abrogating every civil right and privilege and making special mention of the necessity for judges in the Law Courts to recognise this fact, is felt here to be the final ratification of a whole series of recent decrees further strengthening the Nazi Party at the expense of industry, the Civil Service and the

military power. It is wondered whether Hitler feel? the need of tightening the rein to make it impossible —with the help of the Gestapo —for any rival section even to make a small beginning. At the same time it is realised that Hitler in fact is taking powers over -the subservient Germans which no dictator in history has hitherto dared to claim. The words of a Nazi spokesman, introducing this sweeping change, that “It was Hitler who took measures necessary to overcome the unheard-of hardships of the weather in days when it seemed impossible to go on resisting, in spite of the greatest valour,” were an echo of the speech itself, in which Hitler virtually claimed to be a greater man than ■Napoleon, because the latter was forced to retreat in a winter not nearly so cold as that faced by the German troops. Such a sentiment is thought to. come queerly from the leader who boasted that he . would achieve victory in Russia before the winter began, and suggests a miscalculation by Hitler as War Lord which is now being covered by the remarkable achievement of Hitler the leader who saved his army from fuinous defeat. To students of Hitler's speeches, the important elements of them are often the points he omits, and these include no mention of victory in the near future, but rather boastfulness of full readiness to cope with transport problems next winter, no special arguments about “second front” and no welcome to the new satellite, Laval. Noteworthy, also, is the phrase: “If God loves those who accomplish the impossible, then he will also give victory to those who have stood the test against unheard-of odds,” for it would seem that these words might have been spoken much more appropriately of the Battle of Britain, when the small R.A.F. smashed Hitler’s Luftwaffe armada.