Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1943. A GANGSTER AT BAY.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 November 1943, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1943. A GANGSTER AT BAY.

GREAT deal of what Hitler had to say in his latest, Beer Hall address and broadcast, will awaken only. contempt It, is natural, but not interesting that a cornered criminal, visibly doomed, should snarl viciously and utter threats. The one statement of any practical interest he made was that people in Germany who hoped for an Allied victory—the scoundrels who existed today as they did in the last war—had no chance on this occasion of working out their schemes because of the “organisation of the State.” This goes close to an admission that Germany piobably would have capitulated before now but for the organisation of the Nazi Party, with its Gestapo and associated formations. It is no doubt true that the system of terrorism by which the Gei - man masses have thus far been held in subjection constitutes the essential difference between the conditions that exist today and those that existed in .1918. Hitler professed to believe that the number of Germans prepared to yield to the Allies was small, but there is point in the comment made in London that had this been true there would have been no need to mention the existence of a spiiit of defeatism in the Reich. Hitler obviously fears a collapse of German morale and he engaged in a wild travesty and misuse of language when he called the grip of the Gestapo an oigauisation of the State. That grip, however, admittedly is still exceedingly powerful. How-long it is likely to count for more than the mounting weight and effect ot Allied attacks by land, sea and air is as yet an entirely open question. A view of possibilities typical of that- held by many wellinformed observers is that expressed not long ago by Mr Arvid Fredborg, a Swedish newspaper man who returned home recently after spending two years in Germany. The majority of Germans, Mr Fredborg said, are certain that the war has been lost, and opposition to the Hitler regime is strong among adherents of all former political parties, although concerted oppositional action continues to be extremely difficult because of the Gestapo’s increased vigilance. Indications are as they have been that the problem thus raised is more likely to be solved by Allied military act ion, than by anything attempted by the German people on their own behalf. There is an. answer to all that Hitler had to say in Mr Churchill’s guarded but grim declaration that unless the Allies make some grave mistake in strategy the year about to open should see the climax of the European war.