Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JULY 26, 1943. TERRORISM IN GERMANY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 July 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, JULY 26, 1943. TERRORISM IN GERMANY.

ALTHOUGH the campaigns of the war are still stretching outin long perspective, it is possible to dismiss with confident contempt the vague threats made by Goebbels in one ol his latest propaganda efforts. “We are facing the future with calm composure,” he has said. “We have the longer arm and we hold the reins of victory. What this means will become clearer during further military operations.” As an. indication of what the members of the Nazi gang are thinking and expecting, and in other respects, this no doubt is as complete an inversion of the truth as an admitted master of lying propaganda is capable of achieving. There is every reason to believe that war developments within the next month or two will add heavily to the evidence already visible that Nazi Germany is headed for defeat and knows it and that the still great and formidable fighting forces of the Reich are in action only to stave off the inevitable as long as possible. What the remaining powers of resistance of these forces are has yet to be determined. At the stage now reached, however, and in those that are to follow the course ol the war evidently will not be influenced only or solely by purely military factors. Not only are there increasing indications that the fighting forces and people of Italy desire to make an end as soon as possible of useless conflict and slaughter, but there is apparently trustworthy evidence that in a very considerable proportion of the population of Germany similar inclinations are being restrained only by highly organised terrorism. On this subject the Berne correspondent of the “Christian Science Monitor” wrote recently that:— The strong arm of Nazi political terrorism, or “discipline,” as it is euphemistically called, is holding in check oppositional forces inside Germany which otherwise would gather strength as the Reich's military positions worsens. The terrorism is carried out by the Schutzstaffel or SS (home guards) and the Sturm Abteilung or SA (shock troops) Both these black and brown-shirted troops keep a sharp eye on- all movements of public opinion in all parts of Europe. The SS is particularly feared in occupied lands. On account of the constant activity of these political troops — large bodies of men maintained in luxury and privilege to ter-i rorise and intimidate the masses of the people—such things as food shortage, enemy propaganda and military defeats do not have the same effect, according to men 'who were in Germany in the last war, as they had in 1918, 'when oppositional groups began springing up every where. That discontent and the spirit of revolt are being methodically and ruthlessly suppressed in Germany does not mean, however, that they are being eliminated. They are at most being dammed back for the time being. The correspondent just quoted observes that: — Although they are effectively preventing the crystallisation of opposition, the SS and SA men nevertheless are sowing a-harvest of bitterness that will be reaped when the Nazis are overthrown. With that important question in suspense, the reality meantime to be set against Goebbels’s talk of “calm composure” is to be seen, not only in what has happened and is happening to German and other Axis forces in Russia, North Africa and Sicily, but in the fact that in their home territory the Nazis are able to maintain themselves in power only by universal and elaborately organised terrorism.