WEIGHT OF EVENTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1943, Page 3

WEIGHT OF EVENTS

TELLING ON GERMANY INTERNAL CRISIS SAPPING HER STRENGTH. FAR-REACHING CHANGES EXPECTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, October 28. Far-reaching changes can be expected inside Germany within the next fortnight which will affect the entire war situation, says a Reuter correspondent from inside Europe. The worst is officially feared from the Russian offensive, necessitating drastic internal emergency measures, and important discussions concerning these are already proceeding. ‘'Germany is undergoing an internal crisis which is sapping her strength in the same way that the foundations of the Italian regime were undermined,” declared the Berlin correspondent of the Swiss “Gazette de Lausanne,” who has just returned from Germany. “The Germans have not yet grasped the full significance of the crisis through which the Hitler regime is passing, but the former blind confidence in the leaders has been replaced by pessimism and defiance.

“The potato ration is no longer the main topic of conversation; instead it is the tragic change in the war situation. The German newspapers, which hitherto were almost without readers, are again being devoured and their circulation has trebled.” The Berlin radio says that in Munich a German bank director in eastern Germany was executed “for spreading treacherous and seditious rumours among his employees instead of acting as an example to them.”