TIDE TURNING?

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 229, 28 September 1938, Page 9

TIDE TURNING?

TRUST IN HITLER.

DEPRESSION IN GERMANY.

norm reu of war.

Public opinion is unanimous in Germany to-day, or so the master propagandists of the Nazi party would have as believe. No criticism may be freely ▼oiced, and the penalty for doubting the decisions of the party's leaders is internment in concentration camp, or worse. Under these circumstances it is impossible for the people to tell the world what they really think. It is interesting to speculate just how true was Herr Goebbel's assurance, given after Hitler had made his truculent speech on Monday night, that the whole nation was behind the leader and would fight to its last breath if necessary. That there is some opposition goes without saying, and if we can believe Mr. W. N. Ewer, a regular contributor to the London "Daily Herald," there is a very considerable section of the German people who have been alienated from Hitler in the past few months. Under the heading, "Twilight Over Hitler," Mi*. Ewer recently presented his conclusions, the result of reports gleaned from all sections of the Germanj people.

Something very curious is going on In Germany just now. To gauge it accurately is very hard. But one can sense something like the moment of turning tide; the moment when one is not sure whether the anchored boat ha« begun to swing, whether the flotsam is drifting seaward again, wrote Mr. Ewer. All the report* I have (and they are from very varying sources) give that same impression; as though the tide of Hitlerism had reached full flood with the annexation of Austria, and was now turning, perhaps already ebbing. From every source I have the same account. Enthusiasm has waned. Instead there is a restless anxiety, disquietude, depression of spirit, a loss of confidence in the Leader, a dread as to whither his leadership is taking the nation.

'The persisting impression in Berlin," says one letter, "is one of the utmost personal gloom, anxiety and almost misery of everybody one meets. I'm not talking about Jews, but ordinary middle-class Germans."

I have a similar report of otner than the middles classes; of the workers, of the peasants, of the old aristocracy, of the Army. Everywhere the same story. "It is beginning even among the youth," says one of my informants from the north.

Even of the party itself. "My impression," writes one traveller, "is that its glory has departed. During five days I heard only one man give the 'Heil Hitler' greeting. Not a single frontier official, policeman, waiter, shopkeeper used it. Four years ago everybody did. "All the S.S. men, who formerly looked so grim, now merely look glum. They no longer swagger about the railway stations and streets scowling at you, but seem to have settled into semimenial jobs like examining passports." How deep, how active, the discontent is among the officials, among the industrialists, among the officers, it is hard to judge.

It is dangerous to talk openly. But among friends who can trust each other the talk begins; always to the same effect; that things cannot go on so, that the Nazis unless they are checked will ruin Germany, that Hitler, unless he is stopped, will lead the country into war.

Fear of a war hangs over the country like a cloud. Nobody wants war. The Army, least of all, for the Army has n<» illusions about the possibility |of easy victory, or about the probability of victory at all.

"People talk about the possibility of war with a sort of puzzled bitterness," «ay« one of my correspondents. "The whole nation dreads the idea of war but fears that Hitler may drag them into it. That fear k turning the country against him. The change in the last few weeks is an astonishing one," t*av« another.

Propaganda is ceasing to have effect. The nation is wearied of it, distrustful of it. Appeals to patriotism are suspected of being a preparation for war. Everything is suspected of being pre-j paration for war. And the thought of war has become a nightmare.

Even the anti-Jewish campaign is defeating its own ends. It has gone too far. It is arousing pity for the] Jews even among those who most die-I

liked them. "I have been an antiSemite all my life," said a Prussian squire to one of my friends. "But this lis too much. Poor devils."

Add to the fear of war the feeling of economic decline. Time was when there was a buoyant optimism, a confidence in the Fuehrer's ability to solve Germany's economic problems. That has vanished. Things are getting not better but steadily worse. Bread is bad; butter is hard to find; meat is dear; potatoes are dear; clothing is shoddy; boots are shoddy. Taxes go up, for the Government is perpetually short of money.

The big Berlin middle-class restaurants are almost empty. The people who, a year or two ago, used to throng them, cannot afford it to-day. Instead, they eat what they can at home, or go to ;"Red Cross" restaurants, founded to provide cheap meals for the workless.

Business men, once loud in praise of Hitler, now hold their tongues. Whatever they are thinking is something which no man in Germany cares to say openly.

Everywhere it is the same story; among the gentry, among the middle classes, among the workers; in the I towns and in the country; gloomy fore--1 boding and a loss of faith in the Fuehrer. I Everywhere rapidly growing opposition jto the regime only checked from open | expression by dread of Herr Himmler's .spies and whips and prisons and concentration camps. It was not so a year ago, it was not so a few months ago. But I am now convinced by the evidence I have, that it is so to-day. We are at that moment when the flood is spent, and the ebb seems to have begun. Five months after his greatest triumph, Hitler is to-day, for tlie first distrusted by the bulk of the Cierman people. So what? What will happen now? That is the big and the ominous question ?

Will the tide continue to ebb until the ebb becomes irresistible and sweeps away Hitler and Hitlerism?

Will the Fuehrer find something to recapture his waning popularity and to re-establish his ascendancy? It is hard to see what he can do. All Germany is feeling that "something must happen soon." But nobody knows what.

Will it be war? Will Hitler, cornered and desperate, make the last mad gambler's throw, hoping against hope for a swift and brilliant victory, counting that, in any ease, war would rally the nation around its leader? j