The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1939. GERMANY'S WAR PLAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 209, 5 September 1939, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News,

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 1939. GERMANY'S WAR PLAN.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that reeds resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

For the first time since the new German Reich began its campaign of oppression against its smaller neighbours the progress of events has not gone "according to plan." It was Hitler's plan to deal with Poland first, to crush her entirely before the next stroke in the west. But this time he was not permitted to choose his own time, and now he finds himself at war with western Europe much earlier than he intended. His expressed idea is that what he christened the Siegfried line, but which the military command calls the Westwall, will hold the Allied line until he has trampled Poland underfoot and that the whole weight of the army will then be thrown against the French frontier—with no doubt the usual violations of any other country if that should suit strategy or tactics. Even in theory that plan has its manifest objections. In practice it will be found that only wishful thinking could have conceived it. The High Command of France and England is not without its own plans, and the first signs of their development are reported.

The interior lines upon which Germany fights are still an advantage. With Russia on her side and her neighbours terrorised she can no longer be completely blockaded, but in spite of these facts the German position has very obvious disadvantages. Germany enters the war upon a foodrationing basis. She began the last with huge credits abroad which she was able to use for the purchase of munitions from neutral countries; to-day she has become a debtor State, with no credit and a negligible reserve of gold. She has lost the possibility of a lightning blow against an unsuspecting enemy, made on a day and under circumstances which she had prearranged. She has a shortage of adequately trained officers of the rank of captain and major. She can produce only 80 per cent of her food requirements, less than half her iron-ore requirements and less than 40 per cent of her oil requirements. She may compel Sweden to sell her ore, Rumania to sell her oil and Hungary or Denmark food, but such compulsion would be a drain on her military resources. There is growing opposition to National Socialism on the home front. Though this may be curbed in war, it will have its effect upon the army. Himmler recently said: "If ever* we have to stand the test, Germany's fate will be decided on the home front. We will have to place a very considerable number of uncertain elements into concentration camps unless we are prepared to let them become sources of infection which might later, lead to very unpleasant developments."

In the last war the naval forces opposed to Germany held the seas in a blockade that was, comparatively speaking, passive. On this occasion, according to such competent authorities as Mr. Hector Bywater, a different campaign may be expected. The navy will, it is believed, take a much more active part in hostilities, and though German shipping will be off the seas and any raiders which may already be out will be rounded up in a very short space of time the guns of the British and French navies will bark a sterner message than they did in 1914. Even a neutral need not close his mind or his conscience, President Roosevelt told the American people, and the conscience of neutrals will undoubtedly be shocked by the return, in the first days of the Avar, of the policy of "frightfulness" begun in the last war by the piratical sinking of non-combatant vessels. The sinking of tho Athenia recalls all the horrors of the "sunk without trace" campaign, a campaign which in the end brought America into the Great War. Of course it is already denied by Germany that she has thus broken her thrice pledged word, but the facts remain. The claim that a mine was responsible will not stand examination. If a mine were the cause it must have been laid at so distant a point before the war began. The Germans have shouted that they will smash the Maginot line Avhec the time comes, but as the French general staff has said: "If you sing too loudly others learn the tune," and so it may be that, this time, Germany will have some of the horrors of Avar on her own soil.