APPROACH TO END

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1943, Page 4

APPROACH TO END

SEEN BY THE FIGHTING FRENCH

ACUTE GERMAN SHORTAGE OF MANPOWER.

FRANTIC EFFORTS TO OBTAIN LABOUR.

The French, both in Britain and in France, believe that the Germans are beginning to run seriously short of man-power. Those among them who have had experience in the last war and in this, of fighting on a grand scale, believe that the unsuccessful attack in Russia last year, when they did not succeed in taking Moscow and Leningrad, although Hitler loudly prophesied that they would, cost the Germans very dear, and that the attack renewed this year has cost them even more dearly. The Nazis have hidden their losses from the German people, but one of their leaders has had to admit in a broadcast speech that almost every family has lost one of its members fighting for the Fatherland—which disgruntled Germans are beginning to interpret as fighting for a megalomaniac named Hitler.

Real anxiety is being shown by the Germans to secure French labour, and the measure of this anxiety is, the French say, a measure of their need to replace men for the fighting line. If the German reserves were not already beginning to dwindle, there would not be this frantic effort to get men. Although it has been denied, it is well known in French circles in London from reports received through secret channels, that foreign labour is being sought by Germany even in North Africa. The expulsion of Jews from France to Germany, carried out by the Vichy Government at the peremptory order of their Nazi masters, is only one more means of securing labour for German factories.

The appeal for Italian labour for German factories is also considered a sign of desperate needs of the Germans, for nothing but extremes would push them to placing their allies the Italians on the same footing as their enemies.

Germans are constantly being recalled from France and sent to the Russian front, without apparently being allowed leave in Germany on their; way, since the men are warned before departure where they are going. Reports received in London concur that they leave with little enthusiasm, in one instance firing shots at crowds of French looking on with no little satisfaction at their departure. The loss of men is explained by the failure to end the campaign in Russia last year, by the unexpected Russian offensive during the winter months, ahd the failure again this year to bring the campaign to a conclusion. What the French consider proof that Hitler was sure of a rapid victory over Russia last year is that the German troops had no sufficient winter equipment. Germans are notoriously methodical and have prepared every campaign with great care, and this omission would not have occurred had they considered a winter campaign likely. The campaign that was to have lasted a few weeks, as the others had lasted, dragged on and drained the German army of men sorely needed elsewhere.