Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1943. EUROPE’S UNDERGROUND FRONT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 1943. EUROPE’S UNDERGROUND FRONT.

(JLAIMS by Hitler and his henchmen that, the Axis Powers have organised Europe as an impregnable fortress and are capable of defending it indefinitely are in all respects unconvincing. Primarily these claims are being undermined by the development of Allied offensive plans. It is, of course, upon full-powered military action that the United Nations must depend for victory. The Axis grip on Europe is menaced also, however, by underground forces of actual and potential revolt ■which are declared by those best acquainted with the facts to be immensely formidable and capable of making a very important contribution to the overthrow of Nazi and Fascist tyranny.

A Yugoslav professor, Dr Boris Furlan, who was taking until recently an active part in the underground campaign against the Axis Powers and is now an advisor to his country s Government in exile in New York, stated recently that owing to the similarity of the means of oppression used by the occupation forces, the same forms and tactics of resistance, develop in territories widely separated. Adding that the main forms of resistance were sabotage, guerilla operations and the maintenance of an underground Press, he said that sabotage embraced “practically every field of social life.”

Giving examples of industrial sabotage, Dr Furlan observed that in Norway workmen in shipyards pursued “go-slow” tactics, skilled Polish workers presented themselves to the Germans as unskilled labourers, with the result that months were wasted in training them to operate machines with which they had actually been familiar for many years. The Yugoslav professor gave particulars also of many instances of direct sabotage, including tlid destruction of machinery, equipment, factories and their products. In one.factory alone, 2,000,000 containers wore perforated, so that the whole output had to be thrown away. Communications were sabotaged, trains derailed, bridges blown up and collisions of troop trains occurred. Farmers, too, were doing their bit in. various ways to wreck the Nazi economy.

An impressive and encouraging feature of the underground campaign in Europe is the resolute and indomitable efforts of the underground Press in many occupied countries to oppose the imposition of the Nazi way of thinking, to build up and maintain the spirit of resistance and to educate and prepare the people for the final struggle.

A very important section of the underground Press is devoted (Dr Furlan said) to the symptoms of disintegration shown by the invaders. The lack of efficiency and planning in their administration, the red tape and corruption of the Nazi-Fascist armies are abundantly discussed and examples of the vanishing military discipline are given. The myth of the efficiency and invincibility of the enemies’ armies is thus appropriately undermined.

Much evidence of a similar kind has come from other sources and good grounds appear for a belief, not only that the Axis armies are in fact standing on a lava crust in their allegedly impregnable European fortress, but that in many of the countries meantime occupied and enslaved a remarkably high degree of organisation is being maintained. It may be anticipated that this organisation, besides contributing in an increasing degree to the overthrow of Axis gangsterdom, will do something to facilitate the tremendous task of relief and reconstruction that will have to be undertaken in Europe when the war is over.